Commemorative plaque to mark life of top musician

The plaque is being placed on Ivy Benson’s childhood home, 59 Cemetery Road, Beeston.

The plaque will read: “IVY BENSON. Saxophonist, clarinettist and band leader lived here 1919-1922. For over four decades from 1940 she led her famous ‘all-girls’ dance band, performing in prestige venues at home and abroad.

“Her appointment as the BBC’s Resident Dance Band in 1943 confirmed her significant contribution to women’s equality 1913-1993.”

The plaque has been sponsored by Beeston and Holbeck Ward councillors, Adam Ogilvie, David Congreve and Angela Gabriel and Ivy Benson fans Veronica Lovell, Jenna Bailey and Doug Sandle.

Veronica Lovell, Leeds Civic Trust Plaques Group member, said: “Ivy Benson was a truly inspiring woman.

“Brought up in Leeds and greatly influenced by her father, a musician at the Empire Theatre, during the war years, with her ‘all girls’ dance band she became one of the most famous musicians in the country.

“She had style, glamour and tremendous talent. In a world dominated by male dance band leaders, she broke the mould.”

Ivy was born at the Malt Shovel, 26 Lowerhead Row, Leeds, a public house owned by her grandparents, on 11 November 1913.

She was the only daughter and third child of Douglas Rolland Benson, a musician, and his wife, Mary Jane Mead.

Ivy was a pupil at St. Luke’s School, Beeston, Leeds. She took piano lessons from the age of five, and at nine she made her first broadcast on the BBC’s Children’s Hour on 2LO, playing In a Persian Market.

A year later she won a talent contest at the Leeds Empire singing Yes, We Have No Bananas and was presented with a doll’s house by music hall star Florrie Forde.

She enjoyed a fascinating and varied professional life. Later she would recall how in the Sahara desert the girls had to be put under armed guard to protect them from the amorous advances of troops who had not seen women for many months.

Ivy Benson, a talented linguist who could speak several languages fluently, died on May 6, 1993 at Clacton-on-Sea.