Ruby Murray – Torquay’s record breaking singing superstar and Cockney slang legend

She dominated the pop charts and her songs set records that lasted until Madonna took them off her four decades later.

She was arrested in Torquay for being drunk and disorderly, and responded by serenading police officers from her cell with a medley of her favourite songs.

She gave her name to a Cockney’s curry and she died “a happy lady” on the English Riviera at the age of just 61, succumbing to years of heavy drinking.

Ruby Murray’s is a remarkable story.

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She was the biggest star in pop music in the 1950s. In modern terms she would be an Adele, a Taylor Swift or a Beyonce.

In March 1955, the Belfast-born singer made history by having five singles in the top 20 in a single week – and it would be 1996 before Madonna could match that feat.

When her record finally tumbled, a national newspaper picked her up from her Torquay home and took her to London where she dressed as Madonna for a photoshoot.

Harry Secombe in the summer show “Secombe Here.” Another star of the show is singer Ruby Murray. June 1960 M4458

Born Ruby Florence Campbell Murray in Belfast on March 29, 1935, she was to be spoken of as “the girl next door’’ by her fans, and was practically a professional performer from the age of 12.

Even as a child she already had the “beguiling huskiness” that later became her trademark. Her mother put it down to an operation for swollen glands when she was six years old.

She toured as a child singer and first appeared on television at the age of 12, but the laws governing children performing meant she had to stay in school until she was 14.

After being spotted by orchestra leader Ray Martin, she was signed to Columbia and her first single Heartbeat reached number three in December 1954.

She became the resident singer on the BBC’s Quite Contrary television show, and then her second single Softly, Softly gave her a first number one on the Hit Parade in early 1955.

Within three months of Softly, Softly’s release, the young woman who had only a few years earlier been touring Northern Ireland with the Holiday Express show in a hired lorry had sold 650,000 records.

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Born 29 March 1935, Belfast, Northern Ireland, died 17 December 1996. One of the most popular singers in the UK during the 50s, Ruby Murray toured Ulster as a child singer in various variety shows, and, after being spotted by producer Richard Afton, made her television debut at the age of 12. Stringent Irish laws regarding child performers held her back for two years, and she returned to school in Belfast until she was 14.

The New Musical Express voted her Britain’s favourite female vocalist.

During the 1950s she had her own television show, starred at the London Palladium with Norman Wisdom, appeared in the 1955 Royal Command Performance and toured the world.

For a year from the beginning of December 1954 she constantly had at least one single in the UK charts.

The following year she made her only film appearance in A Touch of the Sun, a farce starring Frankie Howerd and Dennis Price.

More hit songs followed, including Goodbye Jimmy, Goodbye which reached number 10 in 1959 and proved to be her final chart hit.

Many compilation albums of Ruby Murray’s songs have been released through the years since.

In 1989 she sang for the Queen at a Christmas party at Buckingham Palace. She made her final appearance on the London stage in March 1993, but failing health affected her performance.

Ruby was married twice, first in 1957 to Bernie Burgess, a member of the quartet the Four Jones Boys.

After they divorced in 1976 she moved to Torquay to live with an old friend, Ray Lamar, a former stage dancer and theatre impresario, who was 18 years her senior.

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HZS08512_HE_001 Ruby Murray and husband Ray Lamar in 1995. Herald Express photo by John Whitehead

When Ruby Murray was booked to star in a show at Paignton, the couple were reunited. “We fell in love all over again,” Ray later said.

They married in 1991 and spent the evening with a small party of friends and family at an Italian restaurant in Babbacombe.

Although her days as a major star were long over, Ruby continued performing until close to the end of her life.

She spent her final years in a nursing home near Kents Cavern, where she often delighted her carers with a song, and was visited by her friend Max Bygraves, whom also had a home in Torquay form many years.

According to Ray, her appeal to audiences across the world lay in her “Irish sense of humour and her naturalness”.

“She was unique and she was herself,” he told the Herald Express.

“She just sang with no gimmicks and none of the backing groups they have today.

“She died a happy lady. She was a great character and so well known. She will be missed by everybody.’’

Ruby Murray died of liver cancer on December 17 1996.

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Singer Ruby Murray in the 1950s

Ken Bruce’s Radio 2 show was stopped as broadcasters put out the news in a special newsflash.

Her old friend Bygraves, told of her death in a phone call to Australia, said: “There aren’t many of us left. It’s the end of an era.’’

Wisdom heard the news while working on a cruise ship in the Mediterranean and said: “Ruby was a dear friend and a great entertainer. Her death will be a sad loss to all her many fans and to the lovers of good music.’’

Babbacombe Theatre producer Colin Matthews added: “She was a remarkable person. People seem to forget just how big she was.

“Everyone had a lot of good things to say about her. She had an extremely good temperament as a true professional and was a very good performer.’’

Close friend, author and journalist Michael Thornton, said: “Ruby fought a long and valiant battle against alcoholism, the illness which she always feared would kill her.

“She had not touched alcohol for the last two years of her life and swore she would never drink again.

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Ray Lamar and his wife, Ruby Murray

“But irreversible damage had been sustained by long years of compulsive drinking. She really tried to kick the habit but few people realised how desperately shy she was or what an ordeal it was every time she had to walk on stage and face an audience.”

Nobody knows quite when it happened, but “Ruby Murray” became the accepted Cockney rhyming slang for curry and away from Indian cuisine, at least four Indian restaurants across the country have name Ruby Murray.

The phrase was used a number of times in the TV sitcom Only Fools And Horses, and Lamar recalled that young people who had no idea that Ruby had been a famous singer would come up and ask for her autograph just on the strength of her place in the dictionary of rhyming slang.

Ruby “sang” at her own funeral at St Matthias Church in Wellswood, as a recording of her biggest hit Softly, Softly was played.

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https://www.devonlive.com/news/history/ruby-murray-torquays-record-breaking-6711897

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