Evelyn Dove

Evelyn Mary Dove (11 January 1902 – 7 March 1987) was a British singer and actress, who early in her career drew comparisons with Josephine Baker. Of Sierra Leone Creole and English parentage, Dove is recognized as a "trailblazing performer": in 1939, she made history as the first black singer to feature on BBC Radio, building a solid reputation not only through her work in Britain but also internationally, travelling to France, Germany, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, Hungary, the United States, India and Spain. She was featured as a Google Doodle on what would have been her 117th birthday in 2019.

Family background Evelyn Mary Dove was born on 11 January 1902 at the Lying-in Hospital, Endell Street, London. She was the daughter of leading Sierra Leonean barrister (Francis) Frans Dove (1869–1949), who became the first President of the Gold Coast Bar Association, and Augusta, née Winchester, from England. Her parents later divorced. Evelyn's older brother Frank Dove, who studied law at Oxford University, was called up by the British army in 1915 and fought at the Battle of Cambrai, being awarded the Military Medal. Her younger half-sister was Ghanaian journalist and politician Mabel Dove Danquah.

Early years Evelyn Dove studied singing, piano, and elocution at the Royal Academy of Music from 1917 until 1919, when she graduated, and on 27 September that year married Milton Alphonso Luke in London. On 9 October 1921, eight or nine members of the SSO and around 27 other passengers drowned when the SS Rowan sailing from Glasgow to Dublin collided with another ship and sank. Dove and other SSO survivors such as Cyril Blake took part on 14 October in the "Survivors Sacred Concert". who had to return to the US, and the show toured western Europe for a year, before going to the USSR to play in Leningrad and Moscow, where the audience included Stalin, according to Stephen Bourne, who has researched and written about Dove for the Dictionary of National Biography and elsewhere. She subsequently went to the US, where in 1936 she was the headline cabaret act at the famous Harlem nightclub Connie's Inn.

Her travels also took her to Bombay, India, where on 7 October 1937 The Evening News of India reviewed her opening-night performance at the Harbour Bar:

Dove appeared regularly on such popular music and variety radio programmes as Rhapsody in Black, Calling the West Indies, Variety Bandbox, Music For You, Caribbean Carnival, and Mississippi Nights. Particularly successful was the series Serenade in Sepia (1945–47), for which she made more than 50 broadcasts with Trinidadian folk-singer Edric Connor, attracting so many listeners that the BBC decided to make a television version.

In 1947, Dove and Connor – along with other artists including Mable Lee, Cyril Blake and his Calypso Band, Buddy Bradley, Winifred Atwell, and Adelaide Hall – performed in Variety in Sepia, an early example of a UK television special dedicated to Black talent, which was filmed live on 7 October 1947 at the RadiOlympia Theatre, Alexandra Palace, London, and aired on BBC TV.

Later career Leaving the BBC in 1949, Dove worked in cabaret in India, Paris and Spain. When she returned to Britain at the end of 1950, as Stephen Bourne has written, she struggled to find work, "though she did appear in the cast of London Melody with ice-skater Belita and comedian Norman Wisdom at London's Empress Hall in 1951. Despite her experience and talent, she found herself understudying Muriel Smith in the role of Bloody Mary in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific at Drury Lane." In 1955, her search for work led her to apply for a job as a Post Office telephonist, asking the BBC for a reference. In 1956 the BBC cast her as Eartha Kitt's mother in a television drama called Mrs Patterson, and more television work followed, and then a role on the West End musical stage, as one of the stars of Langston Hughes's Simply Heavenly, directed by Laurence Harvey. Bourne notes that another cast member was Isabelle Lucas, who later recalled:

Legacy

Dove features on the two-CD compilation Negro Spirituals – The Concert Tradition 1909 – 1948 singing the spiritual "Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray".

On 18 September 1993, Moira Stuart featured Evelyn Dove in Salutations, a BBC Radio 2 series celebrating black British and British-based musical entertainers who came to fame between the 1930s and 1950s.

A biography by Stephen Bourne, entitled Evelyn Dove: Britain's Black Cabaret Queen, was published in October 2016 by Jacaranda Books. Bourne appeared on the BBC's Antiques Road Show being interviewed about Dove by Emma Dabiri.

On 11 January 2019, which would have been Dove's 117th birthday, Google celebrated her life in one of their first "doodles" of the year.

On 29 September 2023, a Nubian Jak/Battersea Society commemorative blue plaque was unveiled outside a house in Barnard Road, Battersea, where Dove had live when young.

In October 2024, Dove's great-niece, Tiffany Dove-Abbam (daughter of Gisela Abbam), formed The Dove Foundation for Global Change in honour of the women in the Dove family.

Selected filmography 1954: Halcyon Days – Mrs Carter 1956: Mrs. Patterson – Anna Hicks 1957: Another Part of the Forest (ITV Play of the Week) – Coralee 1958: The Green Pastures (BBC Television, Sunday Night Theatre) – Noah's wife