Last week, this piece of music-hall sheet-music turned up on e-bay.
Some thirty years ago, when I was researching the life of Teddy Solomon, I got the impression that the then very young musician had something to do with this piece. Orchestrated? Conducted, perhaps? I ultimately came to the conclusion that the case had to rest 'unproven', but the song's title has stuck in my mind ever since.
I hav'n't managed to find the lyrics, but the gist is - the chappie is trying to find an oyster with perambulatory tendancies, because his girl will only marry him when he does. You know, one of those 'till all the seas run dry' poems. But, of course, comic, as our singer runs from policeman to mermaid to fishmonger in search of the whereabouts of the mythical creature.
So, if not Teddy, who? Well, the music cover gives us three names. In descending size of billing: Fred Roberts, Fred Gilbert and Lizzie Coote. The first singer, the writer, and the lass who made the piece a success. A success which made the title a catch word for thirty years. Rather longer than the song was sung. But that song was a fair success in its time, thanks to the three folk above and the man who organised them and it, music-hall agent Charles [Adolphe] ROBERTS (b France 12 May 1839; d in the street 6 July 1897). No relation, it seems, to the aforesaid Fred.
At the time of the 'invention' of the Oyster Song, Charles was a flourishing music-hall agent, with 300 acts on his books, at 5 York Road, Gilbert was one of his clerks who wrote songs on the side, Lizzie [COOTE, Elizabeth Phyllis] (b Dundee 9 October 1862; d Chorlton 18 February 1886) was just turned ten years of age, and Fred was a middle-of-the-bill comic singer at lesser music-halls in, mostly, the London suburbs. All, of course, represented by Charles, who had the privilege of supplying the whole bill to some such establishments.
Just as today, entertainment advertisements were not always quite honest. Here is one for the Watford Corn Exchange 17 December 1872, with Fred billed underneath top British opera contralto 'Lucy Franklein' (POWELL, Lucy Mary).
Curious. Firstly, it was not 'especially for', secondly it was not officially set by Roberts, thirdly .. why be 'of Cremorne Proms' when you could be 'of Sadler's Wells' or a handful of London Music Halls? Mostly, Fred's engagements were reported merely in the list of 'also sangs' with only rare mention of 'what he sang'. Up to now, his cover of Harry Sydney's 'It's just as well to take things in a quiet sort of way of way' had been the only notability. Until now.
I have found three occasions where Fred gave his 'Oyster' song prior to Watford, and there were doubtless more; 7 November at chairman F W Montague's Benefit at the Pavilion, 28 November at manager Robert Fort's Benefit at the Forester's Music Hall in Mile End, and 14 December at Conquest's Concert Hall for Edward Westbrook. It was not particularly noticed, except for its curious title. And on the last-named occasion the authorship was credited, in The London and Provincial Entr'acte, to Gilbert and small-time agent Frank Elton, along with a swatch of other titles.
Roberts sang 'his' song at the Bedford (one of Charles's 'dominions'), the Marylebone, at various country fetes under his boss's management, but not as a feature -- he now had other songs to deliver: 'Yachting around the coast', 'Although She Said Don't I Knew she meant Do', 'Newspapers', 'Old Clothes, Old Hats', 'Get Away, Come a Little it Closer', 'Take It Bob', 'Don't I Wish I had known it Before' , 'Etcetera'. But , whilst the country's amateur vocalists tried their skills, other folk picked up the piece. In a feminine version. The well-liked serio, Patti Goddard, at the Sun Music Hall and 'the perfect little lady', child performer Lizzie Coote, at the Marylebone, the Canterbury, the Cambridge. In 1876, she was still giving her version at the Pavilion.
Lizzie was a good performer, but her salient quality was her youth. By the time she died, at 23, with credits ranging from Oliver Twist at the Olympic, to pantomime at Covent Garden, to supporting Lydia Thompson and Willie Edouin, she was just another pretty soubrette of talent.
And, of course, not American at all! She and most of her musical siblings (that's another article!) were born in Dundee, Scotland. They had merely visited America for some months as part of the 'Miniature Minstrels'.
Another of the principals of our tale also had a sad end. But not before he had had his Big Moment. Frederick [Younge] GILBERT (b Strand, 2 March 1850; d Sandgate, Kent 12 April 1903) started out in the business in his teens as a singer of comic songs, but soon switched his attention to the agency side, workng briefly for Ambrose Maynard, and then for Charles Roberts. Like others of his ilk, he also turned his pen to writing and composing material for the agency's clients -- Arthur Lloyd ('The Royal Academy Beau') Nelly Melville, James Hillier ('Just a Tickle in the Tunnel', The Dorking Tunnel'), Kate Melbourne ('Epsom Downs') , Edith Murray ('Floating on the Tide'), the black-face comics Brothers Seward (Joe's Farewell), Fred Roberts -- and the 'Oyster' was an early success. There were to be many more songs: 'At Trinity Church I Met My Doom', Gus Elen's 'Down the Road went Polly' and its burlesque 'Up the road', 'Under the Maybush', Bessie Bellwood's 'Kensington Road', 'That's What the Girl Said to the Soldier' , 'Romano's, 'I'll Place it in the hands of my solicitor, 'Why is the World so Gay' , 'Bridget the Spanish Dancer', Tom Costello's 'She Comes Home Tight on Saturday Night', and, most enduringly, 'The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo', as Gilbert pursued a tidy career as a music-hall agent, latterly on his own account, at 7 York Rd, through nearly three decades, until struck down by consumption at 53.
Fred's personal life appears a lot more opaque than his professional one. The birth records of Britain have Frederick Younge Gilbert listed in 1850. The death records, Frederick Young Gilbert in 1903. I have found plain Frederick Gilbert fathering daughter Emma 1875 and Esther 1877, and a son Frederick Charles in 1879 (died 1880). The mother is listed as Emma Young. Apparently a concubine. I knew about the daughters, because 'The Man Who Broke the Bank' made a fortune, and the sisters had to go to court, years later, to get it. But I find no wife. Mother and daughters can be seen in Chelsea in 1881. ut no Fred. Oh, the family historians have turned up a different wife, and in the 1901 census he is accompanied by a Mrs Julia Haswell. I'm sure the answer to these seeming anomalies is simple, but I can't find it.
Another 'Oyster' man had a sad end too. Charles 'Gus' Roberts did not last at the top of the music-hall tree. His fortunes dwindled until he was employed as a charity clerk ... and one day he fell down dead in the street. Aged 58.
Which leaves us with Fred ROBERTS. Born St Pancras saith the 1871 cenus. 25. Unmarried. Professor of Music. I guess that is he. So apparently he is the Fred Roberts, 'piano and comic', claiming to be be of the RAM, who can be seen as accompanist in a very minor concert party with Charles Mackney ('brother of') and wife, a pair of blackfaced minstrels et the odd al, playing at Knowsley, Leeds' Hole in the Wall, Hyde, Mansfield, Lincoln et al in 1866, singing Harry Sydney's' 'It's just as well to take things in a quiet sort of way'. 'The provincial comic' found his way on to the middle reaches of a number of smaller London houses, including Edward Garcia's Regent Music Hall, the Raglan and Wilton's, and a number of the fêtes organised by Charles Roberts. And on 7 November 1872, he brought out the Oyster song at the Pavilion.
It went down all right. He sang it at the Bedford, the Marylebone, at Ipswich and Leicester, while moving on to other new songs -- 'Yachting Round the Coast', 'Floating with the Tide', 'Although she said don't, I knew she meant do', 'Although', 'Newspapers', 'Take it, Bob', 'Old clothes', 'Don't I wish I had known it before', 'Not Very Far from Regent Street', 'Get away, come a little bit closer', 'Nod your head when you mean yes', 'I don't care a fig what you say', 'I don't know how they do it, but they do' -- while others, mostly ladies, picked up the Oyster.
Roberts was a useful supporting act in the London minors, but at the end of the 1870s he moved up to be the manager of the Bedford Musical Hall, run by George Fredericks (BARBER, George Hearne) and his wife, 'Carrie Julian'. He would stay there until the owner's death, and the destruction of the Bedford.
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