Trivia

American-born cornetist and band leader, who started in the orchestra of Abe Lyman. During the 1920's, he worked as musical director for Fox Studios. Roy enjoyed his greatest popularity in England as a leader of several dance bands in the succeeding decade, making remote broadcasts for the BBC and playing the theatrical circuit. Illness eventually curtailed his career, though he continued to front smaller combos in the U.S. during the 1940's and another big band in Britain after 1946.

Fox had a house in Highgate, north London, before moving to a flat in Chelsea, next to where the Decca studios were located at the time. Unable to pay the rent on the flat, he ended up in Brinsworth House in Twickenham, the retirement home for variety performers run by the Entertainment Artistes Benevolent Fund.

His first major association came at the age of 16, when he joined Abe Lyman's orchestra at the Sunset Inn in Santa Monica, where he played alongside Miff Mole, Gussie Mueller, Henry Halstead, and Gus Arnheim.

Roy began playing cornet when he was 11 years old, and by age 13 was performing in the Los Angeles Examiner's newsboys' band. Soon after he played bugle for a studio owned by Cecil B. DeMille.

He developed a soft style of playing there which earned him the nickname "The Whispering Cornetist".

Fox went into semi-retirement after 1952, when he opened his own booking agency.

His autobiography, Hollywood, Mayfair, and All That Jazz (1975) is still in print.

In New York, he went into a residency at the La Martinique, from which he broadcast weekly. He then moved to a new club, the Riobamba, on 57th Street, at which the floor show included a young Frank Sinatra, who was making his solo nightclub debut, and told Fox that he was the worst conductor he had ever worked with. Fox told him off, but they became good friends.

Fox moved to Australia in the late 1930s, where he led the Jay Whidden Orchestra. Upon the outbreak of the Second World War, with his British passport taken away, he had no choice but to return to his native America, rather than go back to Britain.

In January 1936, he moved to the His Master's Voice (HMV) label, and toured Europe until 1938, when he fell ill again, and broke up the band.