A singer and actress, who was often compared to the legendary Josephine Bake, Evelyn Dove was recognized as a trailblazing performer" who, in 1939, made history as the first Black singer to feature on BBC Radio.
Born in London, in 1902, as the daughter of leading Sierra Leonean barrister and English mother, her reputation saw her being under great demand throughout Britain, Europe India and the United States.
She studied singing, piano, and elocution at the Royal Academy of Music from 1917 until 1919, before graduating, and then marrying Milton Alphonso Luke, whilst still in the UK’s capital. Evelyn was a member of the Southern Syncopated Orchestra, a band composed of British West Indian and West African and American musicians who were popularising Black music on the UK club scene
In 1921, Dove was one of the survivors, after the Glasgo to Dublin boat she was on collided with another ship and sank. Later that same year, she took part in the ‘Survivors Sacred Concert’, to remember those who perished.
She then went on to be part of the all-Black ‘Chocolate Kiddies’ revue which toured Europe from New York, before joining the cast, which toured western Europe and the USSR. Now well established worldwide, during the 1920s and '30s, she performed at London's Mile End Empire in June 1926, then five months later Evelyn Dove and Her Plantation Creoles, before appearing at the Wintergarten in Berlin.
Making history as the first Black singer to ever feature on BBC Radio - in 1939 – as one of the leading personalities of Europe's entertainment world, she was once referred to as “an artist of international reputation, one of the leading personalities of Europe’s entertainment world.”
The BBC employed Evelyn all through the war, and she proved to be one of radio’s most popular singers, appearing in a wide range of music and variety programmes. Noted writer and broadcaster, Stephen Bourne, once wrote of her: "Throughout World War II she enjoyed the same appeal as the 'Forces Sweetheart', Vera Lynn.
“The BBC employed Evelyn all through the war, and she proved to be one of radio’s most popular singers, appearing in a wide range of music and variety programmes." In 1932, she went to France to replace Josephine Baker and starred in a revue at the Casino de Paris, before going on to the US, where she was the headline cabaret act at the famous Connie's Inn nightclub, in Harlem, in New York.
She returned to Britain at the end of 1950 to appear in ‘London Melody’ at London's Empress Hall in 1951 and, in 1956, was cast, by the BBC, to play Eartha Kitt's mother in a television drama, ‘Mrs Patterson’, alongside more television work and West End musicals. Her reputation as a singer, though, soon began to fade as she became very ill and her spirit was breaking.
Evelyn Dove died in Epsom, Surrey, in 1987. She was 85.
