Background
London was born in Bethnal Green, East London.
London was born in Bethnal Green, East London.
He was best known of for his hit single of the spiritual song. 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 number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and remained there for four weeks, but was to be his only hit record.
lieutenant was the most successful record by a British male in the 1950s in the United States, topping the charts.
lieutenant sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc by the RIAA in 1958. 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".
London is mentioned along with his hit song in the Colin MacInnes novel, Absolute Beginners. London has a cr as "singer" in the 1961 German movie Und Du, mein Schatz, bleibst hier.
He originally retired from singing at the age of nineteen.
Later cover versions of the Cliff Richard hit (1963), and "The Bells of Saint Mary" (Columbia Broadcasting System, 1966) went unnoticed. This seemed to have a negative impact on London, as his private life spiraled out of control. 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 public in Portsmouth called The Ship and Castle, voted worst public in Portsmouth 2015 in a recent poll.
