Debroy Somers & His Band

Multi-instrumentalist and bandleader William Henry Somers was born in Dublin, Ireland, on April 11, 1890. The son of a band sergeant in the First Gloucestershire Regiment, he learned music at the Chelsea Military Academy and studied piano with Michele Esposito at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in 1904. Somers moved to London in 1910; the following year he enlisted in the Royal Irish Rifles, Second Battalion, and specialized on the oboe at the Royal Military School of Music. After surviving the Great War, Somers withdrew from military service, returned to London, and became...