Here is Eve Boswell singing a few old time favourite love songs, in many different languages.
1. Sarie Marais
3. Boegoeberg se dam is ‘n lekker lekker dam
5. Die Alibama
6. Pickin’ a chicken and Sugar Bush – “live” – My favourite love song by Eve Boswell
I came across Jim Reeves singing this song, and then I found Eve Boswell singing it too. I heard this song when I was little, and remember being in our friends yard singing it. It brings back all those memories of Greendale, in Salisbury, Rhodesia.
This was one of my mother’s favourite love songs. I heard her singing it many times when I was little.
11. Keeping cool with lemonade
12. Stop whistling wolf & Where in the world is Billy
13. Blue star
15. Cookie
She pulls at the heart strings here with this old war time song.
17. I’ll walk alone
18. A little on the lonely side
20. I know why
21. There – I’ve said it again
This was another one of my mother’s favourite love songs.
22. She said
I used to play in an old timers band in Johannesburg, and Alan used to play this one on his harmonica. It was his favorite love song.
24. Tra La La
25. You’re my thrill
26. Once in a while
27. Moon above Malaya – with lyrics
30. If you love me (I won’t care) – (l’hymne à l’amour)
31. Do (Jo)
32. Amor, amor
33. Besame Mucho
34. Willy-Lilly-Rock-A-Billy – in German
35. Carolina Moon – in German
37. Liebes telefon
38. Cantez, chantez
39. Melodie D’amour
40. Come go with me – in German
41. Gypsy moon – in Hungarian
42. Autumn leaves – in French
43. Magisch, Magisch – in German (Magical moments)
44. Venga, Venga, Venga, Caballero
45. Labajana
46. Spatzenhausen – Katzenhausen – (The Loudenboomer Bird)
47. l’hymne à l’amour – (If you love, I won’t care)
48. Wenn du mich nicht liebst – (If you don’t love me)
49. Gib doch nicht so an – (Putting on the style)
50. Auf Wiedersehen, My Dear – in German
Eve Boswell was ‘n legendariese Suid-Afrikaanse sangeres en sang-onderwyseres. Sy het wel Afrikaans gesing, maar sy is nie in Suid-Afrika gebore nie. Sy is deur kennisse en bekendes in die musiekwêreld as die volmaakte kunstenaar beskryf.
Sy het veral in die jare veertig tot sestig bekendheid verwerf met treffers soos Sugar Bush, Blue Star, Pickin’ a Chicken’ en It’s a Breeze. Sy was wêreldbekend en het in 1953 by die Royal Variety Show in Londen opgetree. Sy het ook op die Ed Sullivan Show in Amerika verskyn en het die Five Past Eight Show in Glasgow, Skotland, aangebied. Sy kon in enige taal sing en was een van daardie wonderlike kunstenaars wat geglo het die vertoning moet altyd voortgaan.
She was born Eva Keleti, in Budapest, in 1924, the only daughter of a professional pair who toured the world with their musical act. Educated in Lausanne, Switzerland, she studied classical piano at the famous Lausanne Academy before joining her parents as a teenager. The act changed its name to the Three Hugos and as such made its debut in a Paris night-club.
When the Second World War was declared in September 1939, the act was on tour in England. The family was classified as alien, so, taking a job with the Boswell Circus, they promptly departed for a tour of South Africa. Here Trevor McIntosh, the son of the owner, taught her to speak English, and the two fell in love. In time they married.
It was Trevor who encouraged her to sing and to change her name to Eve Boswell, after the circus. Soon she could be heard over South African radio singing with Roy Martin and his dance band from the Coconut Grove in Johannesburg. Adrian Foley (Lord Foley), a pianist and composer working in South Africa after the war, liked her voice. Alan Dell, the disc-jockey who was a local radio producer at that time, made some private recordings of her and Foley took them to London to play to prospective publishers.
Geraldo (Gerald Bright), then the top dance band leader, heard them, liked them and sent Eve a telegram offering her three month’s work. Eve, Trevor and their small son Michael promptly sold up their African homestead and sailed for England. She opened with Geraldo at the Blackpool Winter Gardens on 1 June 1949. At the end of her first week Geraldo cancelled her contract and gave her a new one for a whole year. In the end she stayed with him for more than two years.
In July 1950, while Geraldo and his band were playing for holidaymakers aboard the Queen Mary, she returned to South Africa for a working holiday, and also supplied the singing voice for the Hollywood star Vera-Ellen in her British film Happy Go Lovely (1950). This would turn out to be her only brush with the cinema.
She parted with Geraldo in January 1952 and with her husband as her manager launched herself on a solo career. Her first true hit came in August 1952, “Sugar Bush”, with its chorus of “Oh we’re never not gonna go home, we won’t go” and the extra gimmick of the closing chorus being sung in Afrikaans. In 1956 she released her first LP, Sugar and Spice, on which she sang 10 songs in nine different languages. She toured regularly and also appeared on television frequently.
The rock ‘n’ roll revolution of the 60’s, with its basic beat, resulted in her gradually fading from public view. She died in Durban, South Africa, on 13 August 1998.
