Biography
Brian Lawrance combined the roles of crooner, bandleader, and violinist while displaying a habit of embedding location names in his ensemble titles. One such group, Brian Lawrance & His Landsdowne Orchestra, took its identity from the Lansdowne House Restaurant in London and produced numerous vocal recordings during the later 1930s. The Dutton Vocalion collection One in a Million later restored twenty-four of those selections, all cut between 1937 and 1939, to wider availability. Lawrance handled both violin and voice with equal facility, generating buoyant swing lines on the former and relaxed, unadventurous phrasing on the latter. His appearance also drew notice from potential sponsors who imagined him developing into a matinee idol or at least an Ozzie Nelson figure. He took the leading male role in two musical films yet withdrew from both screen work and live performance once postwar tastes shifted. Throughout his band’s active years he issued numerous singles, among them a version of “Singin’ in the Rain” recorded with the jazz unit known as the Quaglino Quartet.