Born London, February 28, 1910.
Died London, April 22, aged 98.
Last of the women band-leaders of the 1940s-50s, Blanche Coleman won a scholarship at 15 to the Royal College of Music, where she played violin, clarinet and saxophone, and learned to orchestrate and arrange.
Daughter of a fishmonger near Paddington Station, she and her late sister attended Westbourne Park Middle-Class Ladies’ College. She met her late husband, Henry Soester, in the silent-film orchestra of the Grange Cinema, Kilburn, North West London.
Forming her own all-girl band, she got her break in 1942 when Covent Garden Theatre (now Royal Opera House) was converted into a dance hall for the Forces. Against strong competition, her 12-piece band won the contract.
With regular radio broadcasts, she was featured in Picture Post and The New York Times. Her band provided the musical background for Radio-Olympia 1947, an exhibition promoting the newly-revived BBC TV service.
They played seaside venues like Clacton (1946) and Sandown on the Isle of Wight (1947), followed by sell-out seasons in the Beach Ballroom, Aberdeen. The band was also booked for private parties at castles and stately homes, where ladies’ dance cards listed strathspeys, reels and The Lancers.
In 1952 Blanche took her girls to entertain the US army in Germany, with the temporary rank of major. Her request to bring Cleo Laine as vocalist was rejected in America’s racially divided society. But the US authorities saw no problem in putting the band up in Berlin at the Wannsee Villa, the notorious seat for the Nazi planning meeting of the Final Solution.
A member of Hampstead Synagogue, she spent her last years in Jewish Care homes. She is survived by her son, Jeffrey; a grandson who is a rabbi in Israel; and four great-granddaughters.
