Benny Lee

My recollection is that I met Benny Lee just once, briefly, as he was about to leave my Uncle Spike (Hornett's) home in Beaumont Street, off Marylebone High Street, just as I arrived.

Later, Spike told me the story of Benny's "unbelievable" efforts to rescue bodies from the rubble that had been the Café de Paris, the night it was hit directly by a German bomb in 1941. His admiration for Benny has apparently conveyed itself to me by a sort of osmosis.

I would guess that most people who remember him will do so as an actor in radio comedy programmes such as Breakfast With Braden (later Bedtime With Braden) in which he sang alongside Pearl Carr. He also performed in Round the Bend with Michael Bentine (later It's a Square World).

His association with Spike Hornett came mainly from their each performing with the Johnny Claes band. And here let me quote from an extinct musical review

When Teddy Joyce died suddenly in February 1941 Johnny returned to London.

Johnnie was immediately approached by club owner Jack Leon of the Beach Underground in Wardour Street to form a swing band that could also play for dancing. Grabbing the chance to form his own band, an achievement he had eagerly longed for, he gathered around him musicians of high standing. The eventual line-up of the Clae Pigeons included Reg Dare, Spike Hornett on reeds, Rube Stoloff on trombone, Charlie Short on bass, Carlo Krahmer on drums, Art Thompson on piano, plus the addition of West Indian trumpet virtuoso Dave Wilkins. The band was sensational and attracted much attention from other fellow musicians who came to hear the band. So great was their interest that Johnnie was forced to instigate a strict rule that no visiting musician be allowed to ‘sit-in’ with his band.

Having heard a young jazz-style vocalist Benny Lee singing at Glasgow’s Piccadilly Club Johnnie had no hesitation in sending for him to join the band. By the end of April 1941 the Melody Maker was acclaiming the band to be the best English swing group ever. Besieged by offers to take his band into other night-spots Johnnie decided to accept an offer from the management of a new restaurant The Montparnasse in Piccadilly Circus. This move necessitated a four sax line-up and saw the introduction of Harry Hayes and Aubrey Franks into the fold. The Montparnasse, like the Beach, soon became the rendezvous for musicians to gather in order to listen to the Claes Band.

And let me here quote from an article in the Scottish Herald:

Benny Lee, entertainer; born August 11, 1916, died December 9, 1995

THERE was much generosity about Benny Lee. He was always a man who gave more than he took, in showbusiness and in life.

Back in the seventies I went to London for material about Tin Pan Alley. Knowing he had once been a Tin Pan Alley song plugger, I phoned his house out in the suburbs. Without a moment's hesitation he hopped on a tube train, travelled into town, and provided me with a wealth of anecdotes. It was so typical of the man.

He was never destined to be a major star, topping the bill at the London Palladium. But as an all-round entertainer he was always a great member of a team. He just loved being involved with showbusiness, whether his role was large or small.

Benny had been well known as a band singer before he achieved real fame in 1950 on the radio show Breakfast with Braden which graduated to Bedtime with Braden. This was before television took a grip and radio was the thing. Bernard Braden, just over from Canada for a West End acting role, had started it as a diversion and it revolutionised radio comedy in Britain. In the series Benny was singer, foil, feed, and comic in his own right.

He would have been a natural for the Fol de Rols shows that emanated from the end-of-the-pier entertainments. But this was one of the few areas in which he never worked.

A Jewish boy from the Gorbals, he had started as a tailor's apprentice. He became an acrobat, then a singing acrobat, a drummer with his own band, a song writer, a fairground barker. For a while he was an actor in the old Princess's Theatre, Gorbals, now home of the Citizens'. There was a stint with Essex Music Publishers at a time when song pluggers would jump on the running board of a car and sing to a likely buyer.

Johnny Claes, the motor-racing bandleader, heard him sing and he became one of Britain's most popular crooners, going on to do well over 2000 broadcasts.

In the early days of television he was in the situation comedy Friends and Neighbours. In 1960 he became a regular on Michael Bentine's television series It's a Square World. In the early seventies it seemed he had made the big breakthrough as one of the stars of the much-hyped West End musical The Barmitzvah Boy. The show was a costly flopperoo, although he was singled out for praise as the grandfather.

Always good company, he had a fund of affectionate Jewish jokes, involving characters like Hymie and Abie, in the days when it was politically OK to tell such stories. In London he lived modestly with wife Ettie in a street called Streatham Close. ``Close, like in the Gorbals,'' said the man who never forgot his roots.

by ANDREW YOUNG