Rival for Dinah?

The U.S. singing market is golden but unpredictable. Few European popular singers have successfully invaded it. Those who have usually accent their accents and bill themselves as Continental style. But last week a well-built English girl named Beryl Davis, with a purry voice and a nice sense of rhythm, started out to succeed the American way. She got off to a good start.

Fresh from England, as a guest on the Bob Hope radio show, she had caught the easy-to-catch but hard-to-hold ear of burly Eli Oberstein, who bosses all popular records at RCA-Victor. Victor was badly in need of a girl singer to put up against such formidable competition as Columbia's Dinah Shore, Capitol's Jo Stafford, Peggy Lee and Margaret Whiting, and Decca's Evelyn Knight. Beryl has the kind of soft, low-pitched voice that climbs into a listener's lap. Oberstein, who had built up Dinah until she ran off to Columbia last year, signed Beryl, and agreed to help coach her into the U.S. big time, a complicated and careful process that involves picking songs that are right for her, enveloping her in publicity and the right kind of clothes (sexy but decorous) and getting good nightclub and theater engagements for her.

At 23, Beryl is already an experienced trouper, and a trouper's daughter. She was born in a dressing room of a Plymouth theater. At three, she saved her father's vaudeville act. He had called for volunteer singers from the audience and got no response; in desperation he sent backstage for her, and she toddled out to sing Constantinople. By the time she was 14, father had a dance band and she became its featured singer. After the war, securely established as England's top singer of softly swung ballads, she got a key BBC show of her own, called "Beryl by Candlelight." Even by candlelight, Beryl could see that U.S. pastures were greener.

Last week, with her first U.S. record out (If My Heart Had a Window, I Want to Be Loved) and another due next week, Beryl faced the Broadway bobby-sox brigade, which decides a popular singer's fate* in the big and noisy Strand theater. To most soxers, she was a Shore dimly seen, but with a smooth timbre and phrasing of her own. Variety reported that "her click is unmistakable ... a definite new song personality." Sighed Beryl, who is a fresh, friendly but slightly reserved girl offstage: "I do hope they like me; I don't want to have to go back to England."

* According to Oberstein, 85% of all popular records are bought by youngsters between 12 and 19.

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