Music hall and variety Page 9

Yesterday (23 October) was the anniversary of the death in 1938 of Music Hall star Fred Barnes aged just 53. Here is the unveiling of a Blue Plaque by the British Music Hall Society and their president, Paul O'Grady on 18 October 2021 at 22 Clifton Villas, where he lived for five years, together with a brief chronological run-down of his palatial life and spectacular fall from grace (his autobiographical account of his life was entitled How Success Ruined my Life), courtesy of the British Music Hall Society:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cddpkZl3iWA

There is also further interesting information on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Barnes_(performer)

And finally here he sings both Give Me The Moonlight, which was to become Frankie Vaughan's signature tune and The Black Sheep of the Family, his own composition & signature tune, first sung 1n 1908:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFyRyZPwpbk

Quote: Billy Bunter @ 29th September 2023, 4:51 PM

1970s/80s singer Joe Jackson has announced a new album reviving the songs of early 20th-century English Music Hall artist Max Champion

Max Champion was one of the most fascinating of the later Music Hall performers. Little is known about him except that he was born in 1882 in London's East End and is thought to have been related to the great Victorian entertainer Harry Champion. As an up-and-coming performer he shared the stage with big stars such as Gus Ellen and Vesta Tilley but his career (much like the Music Hall era itself) was cut short by the First World War and his songs faded into obscurity. That is until 2014 when Max Champion sheet music started to surface, first in Malta, then in England, and, intriguingly, in Belgium, where Max probably met his end in the trenches.

By 2019 enough songs had been recovered for Joe Jackson to resurrect them with a 12-piece orchestra. The resulting album What A Racket! will be released on 24 November 24 as a CD-Digipak and Black Vinyl LP, download and streaming. presenting eleven of Max Champion's songs for the first time in more than a century.

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How interesting! Thanks Billy.

A live performance of Noel Coward with his take on Cole Porter's Let's Do It...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOVF3Pixf_o

And the lyrics if you want to sing along:

"Mr. Irving Berlin
Often emphasizes sin
In a charming way.
Mr. Coward we know
Wrote a song or two to show
Sex was here to stay.
Richard Rodgers it's true
Took a more romantic view
Of this sly biological urge.
But it really was Cole
Who contrived to make the whole
Thing merge.

He said the Belgians and Greeks do it
Nice young men who sell antiques do it,
Let's do it, let's fall in love.
Monkeys whenever you look do it,
Aly Khan and King Farouk do it,
Let's do it, let's fall in love.
Louella Parsons can't quite do it,
For she's so highly strung,
Marlene might do it,
But she looks far too young.
Each man out there shooting crap does it,
Davy Crockett in that dreadful cap does it,
Let's do it, let's fall in love.

All famous writers in swarms do it,
Somerset and all the Maughams do it,
Let's do it, let's fall in love.
The Brontes felt that they must do it,
Ernest Hemingway could-just-do it,
Let's do it, let's fall in love.
E. Allan Poe-ho! Ho! Ho!-did it,
But he did it in verse.
H. Beecher Stowe did it,
But she had to rehearse.
Tennessee Williams self-taught does it,
Kinsey with a deafening report does it.
Let's do it, let's fall in love.

In the Spring of the year
Inhibitions disappear
And our hearts beat high,
We had better face facts
Every gland that overacts
Has an alibi
For each bird and each bee,
Each slap-happy sappy tree,
Each temptation that lures us along
Is just Nature elle-meme
Merely singing us the same
Old song.

In Texas some of the men do it
Others drill a hole-and then do it,
Let's do it, let's fall in love
West Point cadets forming fours do it,
People say all those Gabors do it,
Let's do it, let's fall in love.
My kith and kin, more or less, do it,
Every uncle and aunt,
But I confess to it-
I've one cousin that can't.
Teenagers squeezed into jeans do it,
Probably we'll live to see machines do it,
Let's do it, let's fall in love.

Each baby bat after dark does it,
In the desert Wilbur Clark does it
Let's do it, let's fall in love.
We're told that every hormone does it,
Victor Borge all alone does it,
Let's do it, let's fall in love.
Each tiny clam you consume does it,
Even Liberace-we assume-does it,
Let's do it, let's fall in love!"

Sorry Billy, I should thank you more for all your posts on this topic.
I read them all and enjoy them.
I used to love the program 'The Good Old Days and these remind me of that.

Thanks, SG. Glad they're of interest. To be honest much of the info I post is new to me as well ( I'm not a walking encyclopedia!)

I hear interesting records on the wireless (mainly Angel Radio of Havant - but also accessible on-line) or read of anniversaries, etc courtesy of the British Music Hall Society and elsewhere and then do a bit of research to find out a bit more about the people/songs involved, both on-line and in various books that I have.

Having done so, I decided I can either keep the information I discovered to myself (and then quickly forget it) or post it here, both for my own benefit, for anyone else who may be interested and for posterity. So I opted for the latter course of action, hoping nobody would find it tiresome.

Of course anyone else who has information they wish to share is quite welcome to do so.

Wouldn't have minded seeing this production back in 1958:

Born 0n 13 March1884 star of the Edwardian stage, Florence Smithson, was a Welsh Soprano, actress & pantomimist.

She was raised in south Wales, where her father owned and ran the Theatre Royal, Merthyr Tydfil, and made her stage debut at the age of three in pantomime. In August 1905, she made her first appearance in the West End and was an immediate success. From then until the First World War she made occasional variety appearances and played in a series of musical comedies. In July 1914 she set off for a tour of Australia but the outbreak of war saw her return to Britain.

She had first married in Merthyr Tydfil in 1901 to a George Robinson but later married Herbert Taylor (stage name Dan Rolyat). Part of the Robert Courtneidge (father to Cicely} stable of actors and actresses, she starred with Rolyat on many occasions, making a huge impact at The Shaftesbury Theatre in "The Arcadians", an Edwardian musical comedy styled a "Fantastic Musical Play" in three acts, which ran for 809 performances. This is a recording of her singing Come Back to Arcady from that show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi7UE1GNZ_o

Here are three cuttings from publications of the day:

She has a voice of extraordinary compass, which fact she demonstrated recently at the Shaftesbury Theatre in "The Arcadians." She took a wonderful high note - F, four notes above the top C. Someone told her that Jenny Lind had soared four notes higher still, to what is known to the initiated as the A in Alt. This put Miss Smithson on her mettle, and one evening, in response to the inevitable encore, to the amazement of conductor, band, and audience, she, too, took the A in Alt. (From The Royal Magazine, London, October 1909}

Everybody will go into raptures over this sweetly pretty number as sung by this rapidly rising artiste... Miss Smithson's intonation is absolutely faultless... [She] will be remembered by the signal success she achieved in the "Arcadians," in connection with which play, it may be interesting to recount that Madame Patti [1843-1919] paid the former artiste a splendid compliment by throwing on the stage a tiny note which ran as follows: "I think you sing beautifully. - Adelina Patti. (From The Talking Machine News and Side Lines, London, September for October 1912)

A special concert for over-seas troops will be given to-night by Mr. Seymour Hicks at the Princes Theatre. Among the artists who will appear are Sir Johnston Forbes Robertson. Miss Ellaline Terriss, Mr. R. G. Knowles, Mr. Seymour Hicks and company, Miss Isobel Elsom Mr. Van Hoven, and Miss Florence Smithson. The Charlie Chaplin film, "The Property Master" will also be shown. All Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, South African, and other over-seas troops will be welcome (From Daily News, London, 11 March 1917)

Australian and South African tours followed in the 1920s and she returned to England in 1927. One of her last engagements was in a national tour of The Gipsy Princess. She died on 11 February 1936 in Cardiff following an operation. This photo of her is amongst the National Portrait Gallery collection ( www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw72009/Florence-Smithson ):

In the 1968 film Star! Julie Andrews, playing Gertrude Lawrence, sings a rousing rendition of Burlington Bertie from Bow:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3BtuxImlh0

This is s song written by Englishman William Hargreaves in 1915 for his American wife, Ella Shields. Ella, born in Baltimore on 27 September 1879, had done a "reverse Julie" - ie marrying an Englishman and performing on the British Music Hall stage.

Burlington Bertie from Bow was a comic ditty about a penniless Londoner who affects the manner of a well-heeled gentleman. It was a parody of an earlier song, simply called Burlington Bertie, written by Harry B. Norris and made famous by Vesta Tilley. Shields sang the song, dressed up in battered top hat and tails, in the role of Burlington Bertie "himself" and toured the world in this role, The persona of Bertie haunted the rest of her life and she was known as Bertie as much as Ella.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnY5GTHmnC8

She and Hargreaves separated in 1916 and they divorced in 1923. Julie Andrews and Ella Shields appeared on the same bill in the 1948 Royal Command Performance,

Her death was dramatic. On 2 August 1952, a septuagenarian Shields performed in Northern England, singing her trademark song in what would be her final show. Instead of the traditional opening line "I'm Burlington Bertie...", she began with "I was Burlington Bertie". After finishing the song she collapsed on stage and died three days later, without regaining consciousness, Her body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium and she shares a memorial plaque with music hall star Nellie Wallace in the crematorium garden.

Born on this day in 1927: Sir Ken Dodd. A performance from the Good Old Days in 1976: www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVun4x58yHI

And, here, An Audience With... from 1994 in front of a celebrity audience: www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjeEus0_rQ0

Immortalised at Lime Street station:

Max Miller sharing the London Palladium stage in 1937 with Max Wall & Larry Adler amongst others twice nightly with matineés on Wednesdays and Thursdays (Gracie Fields next week)...

...and headlining at Moss Empire's Brighton Hippodrome in 1952 with Harry Worth on the bill:

What I wouldn't give to be able to see either of those - especially the Brighton one to see what the Two Condoms were like.

Harry Champion (born William Henry Crump in Bethnal Green on 17 April 1865) was an English music hall composer, singer and Cockney comedian, who appealed chiefly to the working class communities of East London. His best-known recordings include Boiled Beef and Carrots, Any Old Iron and I'm Henery the Eighth, I Am (his signature song):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4GdWK_WoNs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mIMIUqAa3w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkbE4URVcKY

He made his stage debut at the age of 17 at the Royal Victoria Music Hall, Bethnal Green in July 1882. He initially appeared as Will Conray and went on to appear in small music halls within London's East End. In 1887 he changed his stage name to Harry Champion and started to perform in London's music halls beyond the East End and built up a wide repertoire of songs. He soon became known as one of music hall's most successful artists performing in his trademark style of a fast tempo and often sang about the joys of food.

After more than 4 decades on the stage, he briefly retired following the death of his wife in 1928 but returned to the stage as well as appearing on the wireless, gaining a new, much younger audience as a result, enjoying renewed popularity during the great depression of the 1930s.

By the early 1940s he was in ill health and died on 14 January 1942, just a month after he was admitted to a nursing home, and was buried with his wife in St Marylebone Cemetery, East Finchley

As a sideline to his performing career, Champion was also a proprietor of a successful business hiring out horse drawn Brougham carriages to fellow performers. The business evolved in the mid to late 1920s and was known as North London Coaches (WH Crump and sons), which later became a family business.
His songs have stood the test of time thanks to artists as diverse as Peter Sellers and Herman's Hermits while Chas & Dave recorded a song titled Harry was a Champion. On 18 November 2012, Champion's granddaughter appeared on the tv programme "Antiques Roadshow" from Falmouth, showing a selection of her grandfather's music hall memorabilia which was valued upwards of £5000.

2 O'clock on a Sunday afternoon. Jean Metcalfe having bid us all goodbye, the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, followed by apple pie and custard, duly consumed and mum & dad starting on the washing up. It's time for Billy Cotton and his Band:

"The Man who Comes Around" www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxO1ufkcAIw

"The Marrow Song" www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG8gUUeCpN4

Quote: Billy Bunter @ 19th November 2023, 2:06 PM

2 O'clock on a Sunday afternoon. Jean Metcalfe having bid us all goodbye, the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, followed by apple pie and custard, duly consumed and mum & dad starting on the washing up. It's time for Billy Cotton and his Band:

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WAKEY, WA.........KAY!! followed by, usually, "Somebody stole my gal"

Used to love that time, just after Sunday dinner (as we called the midday meal then), and loved the short jokes he made with the band & co after the programme had finished, as he put his coat on and went home 😄

Such wonderful memories of me and my Mum & Dad - now, so sadly long gone

Quote: Billy Bunter @ 10th November 2023, 8:16 PM

Max Miller sharing the London Palladium stage in 1937 with Max Wall & Larry Adler amongst others twice nightly with matineés on Wednesdays and Thursdays (Gracie Fields next week)...

...and headlining at Moss Empire's Brighton Hippodrome in 1952 with Harry Worth on the bill:

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I think that was a typo Herc.

Incidentally with the number of people on a bill I wonder how long their sets would be.

And Billy it would have been apple crumble for Billy Cotton at Sunday lunchtime.