Carroll Gibbons

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Carroll Gibbons was a musician, composer, and band leader. He was born and raised in Clinton, Massachusetts, USA, on January 4, 1903. In his late teens he traveled to London, England to study at London's Royal Academy of Music. In 1924 with the brassless Boston Orchestra for an engagement at the Hotel Savoy in the Strand. He liked England so much that he settled there and later became the co-leader (with Howie Jacobs) of the Savoy Orpheans and the band leader of the New MayFair Orchestra which recorded on the Gramophone Company, Ltd (makers of "His Master's Voice" records). In 1929 Gibbons appeared in the British Film "Splinters" (as Carroll Gibbons and His Masters Voice Orchestra). Gibbons made occasional return trips to the United States but settled permanently in England, though he did spend a couple of years, between 1930-31, in Hollywood where he worked as a staff composer for MGM films. He took exclusive leadership of the Savoy Hotel Orpheans, which recorded hundreds of popular songs between June 1932 and his sudden death in London, on May 10, 1954. As a composer, Gibbons' most popular songs included "A Garden in the Rain (1928) and "On The Air" (1932). The later was covered by Rudy Vallee in 1933 and by Lud Gluskin in 1936. Gibbons' instrumental numbers "Bubbling Over" and "Moonbeam Dance" were also quite successful in the United Kingdom.