Laurie London
Laurie London (born 19 January 1944) is an English singer, who achieved fame as a boy singer of the 1950s, for both his gospel and novelty songs recording in both English and German. He is best known for his hit single of the spiritual song "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands". Life and career. London was born in Bethnal Green, East London. At the age of thirteen, whilst a pupil at The Davenant Foundation Grammar School in Whitechapel Road, he made an up-tempo version of "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 1 on Billboard's Most Played by Jockeys" chart and remained there for four weeks, but it was to be his only hit record. It was the most successful record by a British male in the 1950s in the United States, topping the charts. It 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 "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands" in the Colin MacInnes novel, "Absolute Beginners". London has a credit as "singer" in the 1961 German movie "" and he also appeared in the 1958  Danish film "Soldaterkammerater", where he performed "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands". He originally retired from singing at the age of nineteen. Later cover versions of the Cliff Richard hit "Lucky Lips" (1963), and "The Bells of St. Mary" (CBS, 1966) went unnoticed. In the 1990s he ran a hotel, The Angel, in Petworth, West Sussex, but sold it in 2000, and later the Ship and Castle bar and restaurant on the Hard, in Portsmouth, Hampshire.