Harry Roy

Harry Roy (12 January 1900 – 1 February 1971) was a British dance band leader and clarinet player from the 1920s to the 1960s. He performed several songs with suggestive lyrics, including "My Girl's Pussy" (1931), and "She Had to Go and Lose It at the Astor" (1939).

Roy was born Harry Lipman in Stamford Hill, London, England to a Jewish family and after learning piano from the age of seven, went on to study clarinet and alto saxophone at the age of 16. In 1931, he wrote and sang "My Girl's Pussy", which has since been the subject of many cover versions and remakes. In 1935, he married Elizabeth Brooke (stage name: Princess Pearl), daughter of the White Rajah of Sarawak, with whom he appeared in two musical films, Everything Is Rhythm (1936) and Rhythm Racketeer (1937). During the Second World War, Roy toured with the Tiger Ragamuffins. He was at the Embassy Club in 1942, and a little later, toured the Middle East, entertaining troops with singer Mary Lee. In 1948, Roy travelled to the United States, but was refused a work permit. Returning to Britain, he reformed his band and scored a hit with his recording of "Leicester Square Rag". By the early 1950s, the big band era had come to an end. Roy's band split up, but he still drifted in and out of the music scene. In the 1950s, he ran his own restaurant, the Diners' Club, but it was destroyed by fire. In 1969 Roy returned to music, leading a quartet in London's Lyric Theatre's show Oh Clarence and his own Dixieland Jazz Band resident during the summer at the newly refurbished Sherry's Dixieland Showbar in Brighton, but he was by then in failing health. He died in London in February 1971.

Roy was married twice, first to Elizabeth Brooke in 1935.