Evelyn Dove: A Tribute in Black History Month
By Sally Sellers
Trailblazing singer and performer
In Black History Month we pay tribute to Evelyn Dove, trailblazing singer and cabaret performer, who grew up in Battersea. Evelyn Dove dazzled audiences across the world throughout the first half of the twentieth century with her trailblazing cabaret performances and was the first woman of African heritage to be broadcast singing on BBC Radio.
Early life
Born in 1902 to Francis Dove, a wealthy barrister from Sierra Leone, and Augusta Winchester Dove, her white British mother, Evelyn lived as a child at 25a Barnard Road, Battersea. The 1911 census entry for the property includes a servant, and certainly hers was a privileged middle-class upbringing. This was not altogether unusual among Britain’s black Edwardian population; composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor had a similar background.
Evelyn trained as a contralto at the Royal Academy of Music, graduating in 1919 with hopes of a career on the concert platform. This, however, was almost impossible for a black singer in Britain at that time, so she worked in London’s cabaret shows and the all-black cast jazz revues that toured Britain and eventually took her to Europe and beyond.
Cabaret star
Evelyn was one of the true pioneers of the booming cabaret age of the 1920s and 1930s. She thrilled audiences around the world and her exquisite stage costumes helped to make her one of the most glamorous women of her time. The public and press couldn’t get enough of the rising star but she had to endure the pressure, put upon her and other black entertainers, to act out stereotypical roles for white audiences. Despite being British and growing up in Battersea, her own song and dance troupe performed under the name ‘Evelyn Dove and her Plantation Creoles’.
First black singer on the BBC
Once World War Two broke out, most of Evelyn’s travel was limited to the UK but she found great success on the radio. The BBC employed her throughout the war, and she proved to be one of radio’s most popular vocalists, appearing in a wide range of music and variety programmes. Many of these appearances were broadcast to the Forces. She was given her own music series ‘Sweet and Lovely’ and co-hosted ‘Rhapsody in Black’ before the highly popular ‘Serenade in Sepia’, with Trinidadian folk singer Edric Conner. The series was so popular that, in 1946, the BBC transferred it to their television service. Evelyn and Edric became household names and they were among Britain’s first television stars in the early post-war years, when the medium was still in its infancy.
Too long forgotten
Work became more scarce for Evelyn in the 1950’s, but she made a few TV and stage appearances and joined one of Britain’s first black theatre companies, the Negro Theatre Workshop, founded by her former co-star Edric Connor and his wife Pearl.
After suffering from depression and spending many years in a nursing home, by the time of her death in 1987 Evelyn was little known, despite her earlier fame, and her life was not marked by obituary columns. It was finally expertly documented in 2016 by Stephen Bourne in the biography “Evelyn Dove: Britain’s Black Cabaret Queen.”
Evelyn’s career was one of highs and lows, but at the height of her fame she was a worldwide sensation unconstrained by her race and English middle-class background.