Laurie London

Laurie London (born 19 January 1944, Bethnal Green, East London) is an English singer, who achieved fame as a boy singer of the 1950s, recording in both English and German. At the age of thirteen, whilst a pupil at The Davenant Foundation Grammar School in Whitechapel Road, he made an up-tempo version of the spiritual song "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" with the Geoff Love Orchestra for Parlophone Records (45-R4359) which was picked up by its co-owned American sister label Capitol Records (F3891). In April 1958, it reached #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and remained there for 4 weeks (#1 Most Played By Jockeys, #2 retail sales), but was to be his only hit record. It was the most successful record by a British male in the 50's in the USA, topping the charts. According to one online source, "he worked at the Abbey Road Studios, London with such renowned record producers as Norman Newell and George Martin" and "special songs were written for him, tailored to the German taste in popular music, and he recorded them in Cologne and Munich with producer, Nils Nobach." He participated in the 1959 "Deutsches Schlager-Festival" (German Hit-Festival) singing "Bum Ladda Bum Bum". He is mentioned along with his hit song "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" in the Colin MacInnes novel Absolute Beginners. London has a credit[3] as "singer" in the 1961 German movie Und Du, mein Schatz, bleibst hier, which might be translated as "And you, my darling, will stay here". He originally retired from singing at the age of nineteen. Later cover versions of the Cliff Richard hit "Lucky Lips" (1963), and "The Bells Of St. Mary" (CBS, 1966) went unnoticed. London then left the music industry except for a few rare public appearances. In the 1990s he ran a hotel, The Angel, in Petworth, West Sussex, but sold it in 2000. He currently lives in North London and manages a pub in Portsmouth called The Ship and Castle.