Dai Francis (23 February 1928 – 27 November 2003) was a Welsh singer, best known for his performances with the Black and White Minstrels. Francis was born in

Glynneath Glynneath ( cy, Glyn-nedd "valley of the River Neath"), also spelt ''Glyn-neath'' and ''Glyn Neath'', is a small town, community and electoral ward lying on the River Neath in the county borough of Neath Port Talbot, Wales. It was formerly in th ...

Glamorgan , HQ = Cardiff , Government = Glamorgan County Council (1889–1974) , Origin= , Code = GLA , CodeName = Chapman code , Replace = * West Glamorgan * Mid Glamorgan * South Glamorgan , Motto ...

, the son of a music hall entertainer. Dai himself began performing at the age of ten, "blacking up" to sing Dixieland-style numbers. He left school at fourteen to work for the

National Coal Board The National Coal Board (NCB) was the statutory corporation created to run the nationalised coal mining industry in the United Kingdom. Set up under the Coal Industry Nationalisation Act 1946, it took over the United Kingdom's collieries on "v ...

.Obituary: Dai Francis, ''The Stage'', 19 Jan 2004
Retrieved 24 December 2015 During National Service with the

RAF The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...

in 1946-49, where he served alongside

Barry Took Barry Took (19 June 192831 March 2002) was an English writer, television presenter and comedian. His decade-and-a-half writing partnership with Marty Feldman led to the television series ''Bootsie and Snudge'', the radio comedy ''Round the Horn ...

, Francis played in a forces band. He later began touring as an entertainer and married fellow performer Elsie Monks in 1952. They had one daughter. In 1954, Francis joined the George Mitchell Singers, and was one of the first soloists to appear in ''

The Black and White Minstrel Show ''The Black and White Minstrel Show'' was a British light entertainment show that ran for twenty years on BBC prime-time television. Running from 1958 to 1978, it was a weekly variety show that presented traditional American minstrel and count ...

'' when it made its television debut in 1958. Francis generally appeared at the beginning of the show to announce, "It's the Black and White Minstrel Show", in character as

Al Jolson Al Jolson (born Eizer Yoelson; June 9, 1886 – October 23, 1950) was a Lithuanian-American Jewish singer, comedian, actor, and vaudevillian. He was one of the United States' most famous and highest-paid stars of the 1920s, and was self-billed a ...

. Together with Tony Mercer and John Boulter, he fronted the troupe in most of the shows until it was taken off the air in 1978. He also appeared in most of their stage shows. He died 27 November 2003 in

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English C ...

aged 75.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Francis, Dai 1928 births 2003 deaths Blackface minstrel performers 20th-century Welsh male singers