Eve Boswell
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Eve Boswell | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Eve Boswell (1964) | |
| Background information | |
| Born | Éva Edith Keleti 11 May 1922 |
| Died | 14 August 1998 (aged 76) |
| Genres | Traditional pop |
| Years active | 1950s |
Eve Boswell (born Éva Edith Keleti; 11 May 1922 – 14 August 1998), was a Hungarian-born South African pop singer.[1][2] With the outbreak of the Second World War, Boswell's family moved to South Africa, where they worked with the Boswell Circus. After a few years in South Africa, during which she got married, Boswell was offered a temporary contract to work with a band in the United Kingdom. Boswell's success with that contract eventually led to her becoming a popular solo singer in Britain in the 1950s.
Éva Keleti was born in Hungary to professional musician parents, Hugo Keleti and Lucy Prager, who toured worldwide.[1][3] Educated in Switzerland, she studied piano before joining her parents on tour as the juggling act, Three Hugos.[1] When the Second World War was declared, the family left Britain with the Boswell Circus. She married, and as Eve Boswell became a popular singing star in South Africa.[1]
In 1949, she was heard by bandleader Geraldo (Gerald Bright), who persuaded her to return to Britain as a singer in his band, which was widely heard on BBC Radio.[1] Boswell was the singing voice of Vera-Ellen in the 1951 British film Happy Go Lovely. She parted with Geraldo in 1951, and launched a solo career.[1] Her first hit record came the following year with "Sugar Bush", partly sung in Afrikaans.[1] Starting in March 1952, she toured for several months with comedian Derek Roy in a musical revue, Happy-Go-Lucky, before flying to Korea to entertain the armed forces.[4] In 1953, she was with Harry Secombe in Show of Shows at Blackpool Opera House.[5] She was given her own radio show on the BBC's Light Programme called Time to Dream in October 1953,[6] and she appeared in the 1953 Royal Variety Performance at the London Coliseum.[1] Boswell played alongside Tommy Cooper in Happy and Glorious and later with him in pantomime in 1954 in Humpty Dumpty at the Dudley Hippodrome.[7] Boswell became a British citizen in 1955.[8]
Her major chart hit came with "Pickin' a Chicken", a South African tune with new words,[1] which rose to No. 9 on the UK Singles Chart[9] at the start of 1956. Her first LP, Sugar and Spice, on which she sang 10 songs in nine different languages, followed later in the year.[1] A continuous programme of radio and TV work[10] and tours followed, leading to more than one mental breakdown.
She faded from public view as public tastes for pop music changed through the late 1950s and 1960s.[1] Her husband died in 1970, and she opened her own singing studio in London, Studio 9, in 1974.[11] She later returned to South Africa, where she married the radio producer Henry Holloway, who produced her last LP, It's a Breeze, recorded in 1979.[12]
