Ruby Florence Murray was a Northern Irish singer and actress. One of the most popular singers in the British Isles in the 1950s, she scored ten hits in the UK Singles Chart between 1954 and 1959. She also made pop chart history in March 1955 by having five hits in the Top Twenty in a single week.
Child star
Ruby Florence Murray was born near the Donegall Road in south Belfast, Northern Ireland, the youngest child in a Protestant family. She had surgery at six weeks of age due to swollen glands, and as a result, had a very husky voice. She toured as a child singer and first appeared on television at the age of 12, having been spotted by producer Richard Afton. Owing to laws governing children performing, Murray had to delay her start in the entertainment industry. She returned to Belfast and full-time education until she was 14.
Chart success
After being again spotted by Afton, Murray was signed to Columbia and her first single, "Heartbeat", reached No. 3 in the UKSingles Chart in December 1954. Afton had offered her the position of resident singer on the BBC'sQuite Contrarytelevision show, to replace Joan Regan. "Softly, Softly", her second single, reached number one in early 1955. That same year Murray set a pop chart record by having five hits in the Top Twenty in one week, a feat unmatched for many years. In 2014, the Guinness Book of World Records issued three certificates confirming that at the date of issue, nobody had beaten this record, although it was shared with three other singers. The record by a female singer still stands at the date of 26 February 2019. The 1950s was a busy period for Murray, during which she had her own television show, starred at the London Palladium with Norman Wisdom, appeared in a Royal Command Performance, and toured the world. In a period of 52 weeks, starting on 3 December 1954 and lasting until the end of November 1955, Murray constantly had at least one single in the UKcharts – this at a time when only a Top 20 was listed. Murray appeared in her only film role, as Ruby, in A Touch of the Sun, a 1956 farce with Frankie Howerd and Dennis Price. A couple of hits followed later in the decade; "Goodbye Jimmy, Goodbye", a No. 10 hit in 1959, was her final appearance in the charts. EMI put together a compilation album of her hits on CD in 1989, including songs that regularly featured in her act; "Mr. Wonderful", "Scarlet Ribbons" and "It's the Irish in Me". They updated this with the release of EMI Presents The Magic of Ruby Murray in 1997 and a four CD album, Anthology – The Golden Anniversary Collection, in 2005, the 50th anniversary of her peak successes on the charts.
Legacy
Murray's popularity led to her name being adopted in Cockney rhyming slang as a rhyme for "curry". The phrase "have a ruby" appears in various episodes of the BBC TV comedy series Only Fools and Horses. A play about Murray's life, Ruby, written by the Belfast playwright Marie Jones, opened at the Group Theatre in Belfast in April 2000. A second play, by Michael Cameron, opened in Belfast on 13 February 2019 and was sold out at all performances.
Personal life
In 1957, while working in Blackpool, Murray met Bernie Burgess, a member of a successful television and recording vocal quartet, the Four Jones Boys. Shortly afterwards she left Northern Ireland to marry him and live with him in England. Burgess, contrary to press reports, did not become her manager, but rather his role was that of a supporting husband. The couple included a song-and-dance segment in Murray's act during the 1960s. Murray struggled with alcoholism for most of her life and this contributed to the breakdown of her marriage in 1974. The divorce was finalised in 1976 and Murray moved to Torquay to live with an old friend, Ray Lamar, a former stage dancer and theatre impresario, who was 18 years her senior. They married in 1991 and spent the evening with a small party of friends and family at an Italian restaurant in Babbacombe. Murray had two children from her marriage to Burgess, Julie and Tim. Tim died unexpectedly in July 2020, aged 55. Although her days as a major star were long over, Murray continued performing until close to the end of her life. Spending her last couple of years in Asprey's Nursing Home, she often delighted her carers with a song, and was visited by her friend Max Bygraves. She died of liver cancer on 17 December 1996, aged 61. Ray Lamar died on 3 August 2005 from complications of pneumonia, aged 87.
