"The Minute Gun at Sea"

During my years wandering in the Victorian age and making the acquaintance of its music-makers, I've come upon a number of songs which obviously come from pre-Victorian years, but which remained popular, and sung all round the country, right through the great queen's reign. One of these was the intriguingly-titled 'The Minute Gun at Sea'. I had a picture in my mind of a teensy-weensy rifle floating through the waves .. Well, of course, it wasn't my-newt, it was minnit, and the minute gun was a gun fired off, at one-minute intervals, to guide ships in distress. Odd subject, I thought, for a soprano/tenor duet. They usually sang about roses and moonlight and fairies. So ...

Well, just my luck! It's a show tune. From an 1809 musical ('comic opera') entitled Up All Night, or the Smuggler's Cave, mounted at the newly-licensed English Opera House, Lyceum, as its opening piece. Text by the manager, Samuel Arnold, music by Matthew P King.

The story was the usual old stuff. Get the heroine in and out of male disguise, give the chief comic plenty of clownish moments, let the young lover sing tenoriously ... but it was enlivened by a group of smugglers ... well, here's how the contemporary press tells it:  

The score, as befits a soi-disant comic opera was quite substantial.  The book of words (price 1/-) gives us the following breakdown:

1.1 Chorus of Smugglers

1.2 Comic song (Admiral) 'When first time began'

1.3 Air (Meddle) 'He who feels a lover's anguish'

1.4 Duet (Admiral/Meddle) 'When a Man a Fair Maid would Obtain'

1.5 Air (Flora) 'In vain I strive with aspect gay'

1.6 Duet (Flora/Mr Heartwell) 'Nature no proud distinction knows'

1.7 Ballad (Young Heartwell) 'Tom Steady'

1.8 Trio (Young Heartwell, Harry Blunt, Peter) 'In every heart where feeling dwells'

1.9 Air (Juliana) 'Oh! Roses are sweet (on the beds where they grow)'

1.10 Duet (Admiral/Juliana) 'When first a man marries a wife'

1.11 Airs and septet 'Oh! ask the inexperienced heart'

1.12 Glee (Juliana, Flora, Young Heartwell, Harry Blunt) 'Cold the link'

I've managed to find music for two of the first-act pieces: no7, sung by Philipps and no 9 sung by Mrs Mountain

And no 3, sung by the novice Charles Horn, who tells the story of his nervous first first night amusingly in his memoirs, is there but I can't get my hands on it.

As for no 4, well I haven't heard the melody, but the lyric is amazingly close to W S Gilbert's Yeomen of the Guard song 'A man who would woo a fair maid'.

Act the second

2.1 Duet (Juliana, Flora) 'As when the moon in silent night'

2.2 Ditty (Juliana) 'A maiden once who lov'd in vain'

2.3 Song (Peter) 'On board the Termagant we sailed'

2.4 Duet (Peter/Madge) 'A damsel once so truly lov'd'

2.5 Rondo (Young Heartwell) 'Sigh not for love'

2.6 Glee (Juliana, Flora, Young Heartwell, Harry Blunt) 'Tis at fair beauty's shrine' 

2.7 Song (Harry Blunt) 'The Parent Oak' 

2.8 Song (Admiral) 'Some poets sing of nought but wine'

2.9 Air (Meddle) 'The Soldier's Bride'

2.10 Finale 'Hark! tis the Nightingale'

Act the third

3.1 Quartet (Juliana and solo smugglers) 'Softly, comrade'

3.2 Air and chorus (Young Heartwell and solo smugglers) 'Away no more time let us waste'

3.3 Song (interpolated, by James Smith) (Admiral) 'Old Flam'

3.4 Duet (Juliana, Young Heartwell) 'The minute gun at sea'

3.5 Ballad (Flora) 'Dear home'

3.6 Air (Meddle) 'I love to rise at early morn'

3.7 Finale

Well, the songs -- both the lovey ones and the nautical ones -- are eminently extractable. And extracted they were, and published as singles. But what impresses me is that, whereas often a third act merely, in the old days, dribbled musically away into reprises and a finale, Arnold and King's third part contains not only the hit of the show, but also two other popular numbers.

And here it, the song or rather duet in question

I can't sight-read music, but it seems to me to be just another of those melodramatic numbers about shipwrecks -- 'Asleep in the Deep', 'Launch the Lifeboat' -- but it clearly had something that clicked, for it was to become a concert classic for more than a century, sung in theatres, music-halls, concerts -- it even made the Boosey Ballad Concerts more than once (Ann Banks/Henrik Nordblom) -- at penny readings, charity concerts, usually sung by sop/tenor, but sometime by two tenors. One one occasion the 'female tenor' Florence Wreghitt took the top line at the Foresters' Music Hall. The Eistedfodd at Llanwit Vardre used it as its test piece for duet singers. And eventually it was got hold of by performers such as the Sisters Claribell, who came on in dinky sailorboy cossies ...

There were nautical plays produced, using the phrase as title or subtitle -- The Press Gang, or the minute gun at sea -- or the drama by C Zachary Barnett ...

The actual piece had a good run, too. It was played at the Lyceum for three consecutive seasons, with Dowton, Philipps and Mrs Mountain in their original roles ... which I have neglected to list: Admiral Blunt (William Dowton), Harry Blunt (Mr Doyle, from Bath/W Miller/James Smith), Heartwell (T Marshall), Young Heartwell (Tom Philipps), Meddle (Charles E Horn), Peter (George Smith), Juliana (Mrs Mountain), Flora (Mrs Bishop), Madge (Mrs Orger), solo smugglers (C Fisher, W Miller/James Smith/Mr Lee, William S Chatterley) with Messrs Caulfield, Cooke, Danby, Wilson, Meade, Jones, Dibble, Whinshurst, Mathews, Saunders, Tarrier, Heath, Gusset, Second &c.  No ladies chorus? It ran, in its original season, from 26 June till 22 July when another opera The Russian Impostor or the Siege of Smolensko was produced with fair success. 

Up all Night was revived in 1819 ... by which time, it seems, a number of extraneous songs had been ladled into the proceedings

However, it was the song that lasted for a century and more, while the comic opera which had birthed it gave way to a multitude of others ...

I mustn't get in too deep here, and there is no reason to dilate on folk like the celebrated Dowton and Rosemond Mountain, or on Charles E Horn who wrote his own story. Nor Tom Philipps (b 1777), who died on a railway track 27 October 1841 .,.

I see that poor William Chatterl[e]y died aged 33. Mr Doyle, I imagine, is Mr Doyle the Bath oratorio, concert and glee-singer, and the Mr Doyle playing at Liverpool in Lock and Key in 1822; George Smith was apparently a bass church singer and Thomas Marshall seems to have ended up in America ..

Mrs Bishop, the wife of Sir Henry (Sarah Elizabeth Lyon b London 4 July 1787; d London 10 June 1831) left the theatre in about 1820, and suffered ill health before a premature death. 

Enough. One can dig deeper and forever. I found what I wanted to find. And now I know what a 'minute gun' is. Not a pistolette.

Adolf Philipp: the German godfather of the American musical comedy

In the early 1990s, I wrote an article about Adolf Philipp for my Encyclopaedia of the Musical Theatre. I don't think anyone had much bothered about him before that. Writing that piece, I became slightly aware of what an important place he held in the development of the American musical theatre. It is arguable (and I now thus argue) that he effectively introduced the book-based 'musical comedy' -- in English, it had been around for years in German and French -- into the mainstream of American Theatre with his Alma, Where Do You Live?. But putting aside considerations of 'first', in any case, he and his career clearly deserved serious study. It got that study in 2009, when John Kögel published his book Music in German Immigrant Theater; New York City 1840-1940. I wrote, of it, one of the most enthusiastic and appreciative book reviews I have ever penned. And my thoughts were confirmed. Well, I didn't need to research Adolf any more. John Kögel had done it diligently. And, anyway, I was deep, deep, deep into my Victorian Vocalists.

In 2016, Kevin Clarke of the Operetta Research Centre, who had originally sent me the book to review, got in touch for an article. I was hectically busy, with Vic Voc getting into pre-publication, and I thought it was time Adolf got a fresh boost, so I took my Encyclopaedia article, freshened it, borrowed some pictures from Kögel's book, and it got a new run on the famous ORC site.

But then, today, I came upon a delicious photo of one of Adolf's Berlin shows. So I went looking, to see if there were more. Well, there are. But they're displayed by an institution which seems to be on the site of his one-time Berlin Deutsche-Amerikanische Theater, one of those institutions which pretends to promote history but actually just says 'yah! look what I'VE got' and stamps a big watermark over the picture. Never mind. We can do without the quasi-historians! But it is a shame.

Kogel and Gänzl have supplied the (slightly incomplete) facts, and I'm delighted to see that we've both been 'used' by writers since, unquestioning of our hard-work (pre the Internet!) say-so. In these days of 'studies' of 'ethnicity and transnationalism', Adolf is sneaking back into fashion because of us!

Kögel's book is still in print, though I haven't seen a copy in circulation for a decade. If you do, grab it. It's a classic.

In the meanwhile, try the short version. My slight re-titivation (with more pictures) of the revised article that got all this going ...

Adolf Philipp (b Lübeck, 29 January 1864; d New York, 30 July 1936) was the eclectic leading light of the German-language stage in turn-of-the-century America. And maybe something more.

The young Adolf Philipp ran away from home at the age of 17 (when he remembered, he said it was 14), joined a German provincial stock company, and went on to make himself a career as a performer in both straight and musical theatre (‘sometimes as a tenor singer, sometimes as a heavy tragedian, but mostly in light comedy’). This career led him first to Graz (1884, 'eine hübsche und kraftige Stimme'), Vienna, then to Hamburg and, in the 1891-2 season, to New York for an engagement as principal tenor at Gustav Amberg’s German-language theatre (Duncan in Adolf von Neuendorff’s original operetta Der Minstrel, 18 May 1892 etc). Following Amberg’s collapse, he went on to star in other German pieces at the Terrace Garten and the chunky young tenor quickly became a local star in rôles such as Vandergold in Der arme Jonathan, the hero of Zeller’s Der Vagabund, Simon in Der Bettelstudent, Georg in Der Waffenschmied, in Nanon, Der Feldprediger, Apajune der Wassermann, the title-rôle of Le Postillon de Lonjumeau, his own Die Royalisten and Der verwunschene Prinz.

A roof top ‘garden theater’ at Madison Square Garden at the turn of the 20th century.

In September 1893, he took on the management of the Germania Theater and there he embarked on a memorable career as manager, star and author, writing and appearing in the large central rôles of a series of often long-running German-Jewish comedies (‘written in a queer composite of English slang and true German’), each and all equipped with plenty of songs for their leading man. This series gained him in some quarters the nickname of `the German Harrigan’ (‘His stage productions put one in mind of a Harrigan play with the locale transferred…’) and his The Corner Grocer of Avenue A (Hein Snut, 750 performances) and A New York Brewer (Hein Lemkuhl, 856 performances) became classics of the German-American stage.

Philipp gained his first mainstream Broadway credit, when the hugely popular The Corner Grocer was anglicized, stuck full of variety acts, and ‘music selected and arranged by Alexander Haig’, and mounted by Russell’s Comedians at the Casino Theater under the title About Town. Jacques Kruger starred in the author’s rôle for the three weeks of the run. In 1896, he was again represented on the Broadway stage by an English adaptation of his Mein New York (Herald Square Theater 14 April) and won considerable praise for his ‘beautifully conceived’ piece. ‘By adroit handling of his characters the author gives us something of the same impression of largeness and reality which Harrigan’s genius used to contrive … as a study of familiar American types, Mr Philipp’s play cannot be too highly praised… there is a scene in a fast-house which the author treats with the skill and hardihood of a Zola’.

Adolf Philipp as Hein Snut in Der Corner Grocer aus der Avenue A  

In 1897 he staged a season (w Leo von Raven) at the Terrace-Garten, appearing in the title-rôle in Fra Diavolo, in a German version of Herbert’s The Wizard of the Nile (19 May 1897) and in Die Royalisten and in 1899 he built a new Arch Street Theater in Philadelphia, which eventually fell into other hands.

The ball scene from New York bei Nacht. 

In 1900 (23 April), having – after a barney with theatre-owner Amberg which resulted in his being arrested – purchased the Germania on the proceeds of his successes, he produced a set of original musical comedies for which acted as producer, director, overwhelming star, author, and co-composer. Geheimnisse von New York (in which he played Jochen Kluckhuhn) ran for 102 performances, Der Millionen-Schwab for 104 and the musical comedy called Der Kartoffelkönig which, half a century before The King and I, used a play-within-a-play Uncle Tom’s Cabin to make a point, equalled their records, records which – in spite of the obviously limited audience pool on which Philipp had to draw – compared well with on-Broadway’s productions. The advised press kept an appreciative eye on what was going on at the Germania, and regularly put their appreciation into print. Philipp’s comic abilities won high praise as being ‘above the usual Broadway horseplay’ and his music was noticed as ‘uncommonly good, often excellent’ but, for the moment, his original and idiosyncratic productions did not flow into the Broadway mainstream.

Max Lube as Isaak Rosenstein in Der Pawnbroker von der East Side. From: John Koegel: Music in German Immigrant Theater; New York City 1840-1940.

Scene from Der Pawnbroker von der East Side with Adolf Philipp and Eugenie Schmitz.

The Germania was closed and knocked down in April 1902, to allow for the extension of the underground railway and the building of Wanamaker’s department store, and Philipp – having bankrupted himself attempting to tour – then returned temporarily to Germany. There, with his brother Paul Philipp (d New York, 21 May 1923) as administrator, himself as artistic director and Oberregisseur and one Ludwig Stein providing the necessary, he opened the 1,000-seater Deutsch-Amerikanische Theater in Berlin (29 August 1903). There, between 1903-7, he staged and starred in a variety of pieces depicting the lives of German immigrants in America, nearly all with more (usually) or less music involved, and including his own New York in Wort und Bild, Im wilden Westen (in which he appeared as a Crocodile-Dundeeish cowboy ventureing to Berlin), Der Teufel ist los (as Heinrich Dabelstein), Im Lande der Freiheit, Aber, Herr Herzog! (Lied des schwarzen Katze) and Er und ich. 

His recipe was ‘a pot pourri of fun with touches of pathos sandwiched in’, not to forget the inevitable healthy ration of songs. In February 1906, with some small fanfare, he fêted his 25 years on the stage. In mid-1907, however, after a rather iffy season with their troupe at the Carl-Schultze Theater in Hamburg, the brothers threw in their hand and returned to America where they again attempted a Deutsch-Amerikanische Theater, this time in collaboration with the finances of a certain Herr Adolf Geller, manager of the ‘Zum schwarzen Adler’ music hall on East 86th and 3rd Avenue.

Philipp mounted an English-langauge production of his New York in Wort und Bild, already played not only in Berlin, where it topped four hundred nights, but also in a Viennese version as Über’n grossen Teich (Theater an der Wien 2 September 1906, mus: Ziegler), under the title From Across the Big Pond (w Mortimer Theise, Circle Theater 7 September 1907, and in a revised version Two Islands 14 October) with himself starred as Louis Strumkohl alongside Anna Boyd, and without luck, but he scored a genuine hit at Geller’s ‘zum schwarzen Adler’ (now converted into a 900-seater and dubbed the ‘Wintergarten’) when, after a long-running revival of Der Corner Grocer, he wrote produced the slightly scandalous musical comedy Alma, wo wohnst du? (1909, credited ‘w Paul Hervé and Jean Briquet’).

This piece gave him a long run as author and star, got him hauled up on a delightfully publicity-worthy morals charge, and was subsequently translated into English and produced with further success on the regular Broadway stage (Weber’s Theater, New York, 26 September 1910, 232 performances).

However, if he got away with his ‘naughtinesses’ this time, when he subsequently produced Hetty macht alles, the guardians of New York’s morality decided he had gone too far, the proprietor and star were hauled off to the police courts and the merry musical farce was closed down.

They got him for selling drink in the auditorium, too. Hetty was anglicised by Leon da Costa in 1915 as That’s the Limit, and apparently she was the limit, for I can find no record of her having found her saucy way back to the New York stage. Still, she got to the Grand, Pennsylvania, to the Lyceum, Rochester, and elsewhere (April 1911) where limits and drinking rules were apparently different.

New York bei Nacht: Bernhard Rank as Thusnelda Mohrrübchen (= Miss Carrot). 

The success of Alma, however, widened Philipp’s horizons, and his new piece Therese sei nicht bös (daintily translated as Therese, Be Mine) was actually put into rehearsal shortly before Alma’s Broadway opening, in both German and English versions. The ubiquitous Adolf, of course, directed both companies, and starred in the German one. And, while Therese opened up at New York’s Wintergarten, Theresa set out from Toledo, Ohio, to install herself at the Chicago Opera House (27 September 1910). She didn’t prove as successful as Alma had, but Philipp persisted, and whilst Alma still ran on on Broadway he brought out Hetty. Her fate didn’t deter him either and, in 1912, Philipp established himself as The Adolf Philipp Company, headquartered at the newly built 500-seater 57th Street Theater (later to be better known as the Bandbox), and carried on turning out more musical plays in the Alma vein, both in German and for the more competitive English field. His first production at his new house, the musical Auction Pinochle, with its author starring as Harry Schlesinger, played for 150 nights before being sent out west in an anglicised version (Burbank Theater, Los Angeles 5 April 1914), and it was followed by Das Mitternachtsmädel, another piece which was written, like the first, in collaboration with composer ‘Jean Briquet’ and original author ‘Paul Hervé’. Both these gentlemen may have existed – perhaps minor figures on the Paris and Berlin theatre scene – but their names served here only to mask the fact that the producer-author-star had written and composed his shows single-handed. He kept his triple identity secret for some five years before being discovered, and going confessionally into print, at the end of 1915.

1920s movie version of The Midnight Girl.

As Alma had done, The Midnight Girl shifted to Broadway and there, under the management of the Shubert brothers and with George Macfarlane starred, it notched up a splendid run of 104 performances (44th Street Theater, 23 February 1914) before going on to the rest of the country.

Philipp mounted and starred in a German-language revival of Alma (17 April 1913), followed up with another local-comic musical, Two Lots in the Bronx, which proved good for 100 nights in German and more in English, and which served the author-producer for his debut in the English-speaking and singing theatre, and then — without a previous German production – brought out what he again tried to fool public and press was ‘a French operetta’ (again Adolf-made with the English aid of the usefully hacking Edward Paulton), called Adele, at the Longacre. Adele set Broadway aghast – it had no girlie chorus! But the girls clearly weren’t missed, for Adele, praised thoroughly for its ‘beautiful music’, not only ran 196 performances on Broadway before going to the country for a good number of tours, it even crossed the Atlantic and was given a brief production at London’s famed Gaiety Theatre. London, however, hadn’t yet learned to cope with the small-scale book-based musical, especially without chorus girls. Especially at the Gaiety. Adele was a short-lived West End failure.

 

At home, however, Philipp’s style of show, genuine small-theatre musical comedies in the German ‘Posse’ vein, without spectacle or (mostly) chorus girls, and the attention firmly fixed on the action, the comedy and the songs, had proven itself undeniably popular, and it was no coincidence that it was soon after followed by a locally brewed attempt in a similar vein (but with chorus girls) in a popular handful of shows at Broadway’s little Princess Theater.

Philipp subsequently joined Saul Rechmann in running the Yorkville Theater as a home for German-language plays and musicals (Wie einst im Mai, Die Schöne vom Strande etc) and, with the coming of the First World War, authored (under an umpteenth pseudonym, ‘F Schumacher’) and mounted a typically outspoken play called Zabern, which provoked the German ambassador in New York to demand its closure as being insulting to the Kaiser. He also authored, produced and starred in a patriotic American comedy-drama called Tell it to the Marines, whilst continuing with his run of allegedly adapted musicals. The Girl Who Smiles topped the 100-performance mark, but Two Is Company was a 29-performance failure. 

Mimi, yet another piece built on the lines of Alma, and produced at Washington with the equally fake-French Chapine (real name: Helen Benedeck) starred, failed to make it to town in its original production, but Philipp’s play was adapted and remusicked by another specialist of the book-based comedy musical, composer Ivan Caryll, and George Hobart, and the result was later produced in New York as Kissing Time (Lyric Theater, 11 October 1920).

Although he thereafter went quiet on the musical front, Philipp did not remain inactive.

The intriguingly titled play Tin Pajamas (w Paulton) closed on the road but, having insulted the Kaiser in the First World War, in 1933, this up-front Jewish author turned out as his last Broadway effort, a very early anti-Hitler play, Kultur. Then he finally went into retirement. He died in New York at the age of 72.

4

An accurate list of Philipp’s early German credits is hard to establish, as a second, older Adolf Philipp was operating as a dramaturg out of Hamburg around the same time as the semi-American one was authoring his earliest Operetten. However, his claim of ‘hundreds of performances’ in Germany make it likely – even allowing for his penchant for fibbing about his identity and fictionalising his curriculum vitae – that he was the author of the musical shows listed below, in their various versions. As opposed to ‘Kleopatra by Adolf A Philipp’ et al.

His theatre songs and scores were published in Germany and in America (I once owned a caseful, bought from an elderly Jewish music dealer in a New York hotel), and recorded by many artists ... I see one German list of 77 sides on the internet, and around 20 American ones ... but he seems to have been forgotten in recent decades, and his key place in the history of the American musical comedy given instead to those who followed him and way.

1885 Die Brieftaube (Karl Stix) Klagenfurt 21 January
1888 Die Royalisten (Josef Manas) Braunschweig 19 July, Terrace-Garten, New York 8 June 1893
1889 Der Abenteuerer (Stix/w Emil Sondermann) Carl-Schultze Theater, Hamburg 14 September
1892 Der arme Edelmann (Aurel Donndorf/w Sondermann) Carl-Schultze Theater, Hamburg 29 November
1893 Der Corner Grocer von [aus der] Avenue A (Karl von Wegern) Germania Theater 19 October
1893 About Town Chicago Opera House 25 December; Casino Theater 26 February 1894
1894 Der Pawnbroker von der East Side (von Wegern) Germania Theater 1 March
1894 Doktor Darkhorst Germania Theater 30 April
1895 Der New Yorker Brauer und seine Familie Germania Theater 15 September
1896 Der Butcher aus der erste Avenue Germania Theater 17 April
1896 [Greater/Gross] New York bei Nacht Germania Theater
1897 Klein Deutschland Germania Theater 10 February
1897 The Gypsy Bride (von Wegern) Terrace Garten ?June
1897 Dollars and Cents Germania Theater 29 September
1897 Die Reise nach Amerika
1898 A Day in Manila Germania Theater (von Wegern) 6 October
1900 Geheimnisse von New York Germania Theater 15 September
1900 Der Millionen-Schwab Germania Theater 25 December
1901 Der Kartoffelkönig (w Edward A Weber) Germania Theater 19 April
1901 Im Lande der Freiheit Germania Theater 21 September
1901 Der Teufel ist los (w Edward A Weber) Germania Theater 31 December
1902 New York in Wort und Bild (Mein New York) Germania Theater
1903 U[e]ber’n grossen Teich (Der New York Brauer) Deutsch-Amerikanische Theater, Berlin 29 August
1904 New York Deutsch-Amerikanische Theater, Berlin 22 November
1905 Aber, Herr Herzog! Deutsch-Amerikanische Theater, Berlin 2 September
1906 Im wilden Westen Deutsch-Amerikanische Theater, Berlin 23 October
1906 Der Sorgenbrecher Deutsch-Amerikanische Theater, Berlin 22 December
1909 Alma, wo wohnst du? Wintergarten 'zum schwarzen Adler’ 25 October
1910 Therese, sei nicht böse Wintergarten ‘zum schwarzen Adler’ 1 September
1911 Hetty macht alles Wintergarten ‘zum schwarzen Adler’ 14 January
1912 Auction Pinochle Adolf Philipp’s 57th Street Theater 12 November
1912 Das Mitternachtsmädel Adolf Philipp’s 57th Street Theater 1 September
1913 Adele (Edward Paulton/w Paulton) Longacre Theater 28 August
1913 Two Lots in the Bronx (Paulton/w Paulton) Adolf Philipp’s 57th Street Theater 27 November
1914 The Midnight Girl English version w Paulton 44th Street Theater 23 February
1915 The Girl Who Smiles (Paulton/w Paulton) Lyric Theatre 9 August
1915 Two is Company (Paulton/w Paulton) Lyric Theater 22 September
1917 The Landlady Yorkville Theater 12 September
1918 Oh Emilie! Yorkville Theater 9 March
1920 Mimi (w Frank E Tours/Paulton/w Paulton) Shubert Belasco Theater, Washington 13 March

PS What's the betting that my photos turn up on the thieveing Alamy and Getty and so forth sites, as so many have done before ... fishermen of the internet .. scoop up what the likes of me would share gratis, and make people pay. Disgrace, anyway, to the name of Getty.  

PPS and now my illustrations have been wiped!

By the seaside: from the concert-parties of England came forth ...

 

One can't know everything. So I rarely venture outside my area of 'expertise' and into the twentieth century. But the Excelsior Opera Singers tempted me, this week, and while I was there, amongst the seaside entertainments of the 1900s and 1910s, I saw this card ...

Carrie Tubb? At the seaside? But Carrie Tubb was a splendid soprano in opera and oratorio. So I looked. A nice biographical interview with Herman Klein. One of eight children, no money, Guildhall School of Music, School Prize 1900, debut in the first British Elektra at Covent Garden in 1910, and on we go. 

There is the Tubb family, father, mother, six at-home children in 1901, at 81 Claverton Street, Westminster. Poor? But father is 'living on his own means', two of the boys are legal clerks, another works for an organ-builder, another for an ironmonger ... So, back a decade before John Tubb started living on his own means. Ah. 'Club porter', and 14 year-old Caroline Elizabeth (b 17 May 1876) is a dressmaker's apprentice. That's right, she said that. John must have risen, I see that by 1911 he has a civil service pension.

Guildhall, yes. Prize, yes. But then a gap of ten years before Covent Garden when she appeared as 'fifth maid' behind the Elektra of Edyth Walker. What was she doing?  The first mention I see is in December 1899 and 1900 singing 'patriotic music' for the Primrose League at Westminster Town Hall. Then 

Well, we all have to start small, but this is really small. 'The Dominos' on Southend's Clarence Pier. The Pier usually used the not-quite-good-enough and the clapped-out of the singing world. I have no idea what became of Dominos 1, 3 and 5 from this team. Just that Greenop's name seems to have been Samuel Norton Greenop (d Leigh on Sea, 27 December 1930) and he had a music shop in Battersea. But number four, musician Alexander E Oliveira, married Carrie.

Most of her next credits seem to be at Bath. Sixpenny concerts in 1901, and in 1902 we see that she sang Goring Thomas's 'A Summer Night', 'Il Bacio', Mattei's 'Dear Heart', Goetz's 'Melisande in the Wood', Clutsam's 'Folk Song' and ... Elsa's Dream.

It seems that she did indeed, for a decade, gravitate between piers and pump rooms and the like. So, when was she part of this particular group. It seems to have been 1909, for I spot this team (Mr Oliver and Miss Stuart were, alternately, the pianists of the affair) at Croydon 10 November 1909... and yes, 13 December was a Monday ... but what is this? Here is the same team in Shields 'The Randall Jackson Comedy Concert Co' in April 1908, already ... and he and she singing together in Tottenham in November 1908 .. they're at Margate for summer season ..

So I guess we now know what Carrie did after school. I see her singing with Hayden Coffin at the Empire Southend, and then she's up at His Majesty's Theatre singing Rosalinde in Fledermaus for Beecham ('her exceptional powers of song were coupled with a rare ability to act a trying part'), giving 'Ocean, thou mighty monster' in concert, and Wagner at the Queen's Hall. But she kept in her repertoire Herbert Oliver's 'Queen of the Roses', which she had sung with the Concert Party. And when she mounted a London concert of her own, Oliver was the accompanist and Philip Ritte sang.

Well, of course, I couldn't help myself. I had to find out who the other folk in my original photo were. Mr Ritte (tenor), Mr Jackson (baritone), Mr Wright (humorist), Mr Wildon (musical comedian) and Mr Oliver (pianist).

I had actually encountered Mr Ritte before. For he was a scion of the D'Oyly Carte company at the Savoy. Philip RITTE (Philip RITTENBERG) (b Edinburgh 8 January 1871; d 136 Brondesbury Villas 14 December 1954), born of a Jewish Russian family in Scotland, father: Bernhard Rittenberg (minister/watch importer), mother Bertha Wasserzug. I don't know what happened, but he can be seen aged 10 in the Levi Hospital and Orphan Asylum in Norwood. He wasn't an orphan, so I guess it was hospital. He first appears to me as a vocalist in 1899, a member of the Savoy chorus, before he joined fellow Savoyards Iago Lewys, Alfred Gater and Arthur Boielle in a group named the Thuringian Part Singers. I see him in Paul Mills's Olympian Entertainers ('a pleasantly modulated tenor voice'), at the Nottingham Glee Club, and in 1907 featured as Walther in the Cheltenham Philharmonic Society's concert Tannhäuser. In 1904 he had a supporting role in The Cherry Girl ('When the stars are shining').

Records vary as to when he first sang in the Boosey Ballad concerts. I have lists and lists of the composition of those concerts (which were in decline from their St James's Hall heyday) and I can't find him once. Yet it is said he appeared anually for some years and in 1909, when he took part in small Essex concert he was referred to as 'of the Boosey...'. I'll wait till I find a programme.

What no-one can deny is that he recorded a number of ballads around this time ('Because', 'Take a Pair of Sparkling Eyes', 'Alice Where Art Thou', 'Come into the Garden, Maud', 'Kathleen Mavourneen', 'I think', 'Love's Old Sweet Song', 'Killarney', 'The Meeting of the Waters', 'Oft in the Stilly Night', 'The Bay of Biscay', 'The Holy City', 'The Wearing of the Green') some of which can be heard on youtube. With the odd odd vowel!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0ghvscGG0M

During a long career, he appeared on many a pier, on radio, on film, even once in The Messiah with 'Elsa Stralia', but his main occupation, however, was as a concert party tenor and, latterly, promotor: and a decidedly successful one .. latterly with his daughter, Sheila

Ritte married Henrietta Helena Latte in his Savoy days and fathered four children.  I wonder if this little lovely is one of them

A very illusive photo. This is not the famous St James's Hall, London's one-time celebrated concert venue, and the birthplace of the Ballad Concerts and the Pops, with Philip in big letters and the rest carefully hidden. It was left to its doom when Philip was at the Savoy, and demolished when he was an Olympian Entertainer. I would say this photo is from the 1920s, and the St James's Hall is one of the many of that name from Islington or Great Portland Street to Newcastle and Bridlington. And I'll bet the hidden part of the bill says Philip Ritte[s Entertainers] or [Revellers].

Oddly, the man behind the Jackson group caused me a lot of sweat. Randell JACKSON. Was it his real name? No, it wasn't. But I got him in the end. Henry William Jackson (b Evelyn St, Deptford 27 May 1874; d Sea Lane, Rustington 3 February 1951) was the son of a shipwright, William Henry Jackson and his wife Anna the widow Kern (m 1873), who had just time to bear him two sons, to add to her previous two, before he died. Young Henry duly became a clerk to a builder, married the resoundingly name Katherine Amy Wordsworth Saunderson. The marriage would be blessed in 1902 with a daughter, Ellaline Margaret Anna (Mrs Robert David Rae).

By this stage, though still sticking to his day job, young Henry had begun singing, en amateur, in the suburban concerts, underhis new named. I see him first in 1897, and then 1898 playing Pippo in a performance of La Mascotte. His voice was an attractive baritone, of medium weight, and he delivered a range of songs dentimental and heroic, from 'Who's that calling', 'Thy Sentinel Am I', 'Nita Gitana', 'I saw thee weep', 'The Old Brigade' to 'The Young Friar', 'If Love were all' and 'O, dry those tears' in 'a voice of exceptional sweetness' at venues such as St John's Wood, Dulwich, Reigate, Croydon, Norwood, Islington, the small London rooms, at a Portman Rooms charity bazaar, and the concerts directed by James Turle Lee, sharing sometimes a stage with such denizens of a slightly higher ecehelon as Whitworth Mytton, Herbert Grover, Robert Radford, Dalgety Henderson, Musgrove Tufnell, Franklin Clive, Frederick Ranalow or Ernest Pike, and sometimes several times a week.

He seems to have ventured to the south coast in 1901, singing with a Blue Viennese Band (which was, doubtless, neither) at Folkestone, and in May 1902 he took part in a season at the Beach Concert Pavilion, Hastings, with a group yclept 'The Olympian Pierrots'. Folkestone, Bognor, back to Hastings for another season ...his diary was shared between the seaside and the suburbs. I see him in 1903 in a concert with Paula Stuart, already. And in 1905 he formed his own troupe. 

Florence Madeleine Venning Southgate (Mrs Fox, for the moment b Tooting 7 August 1866; d Bath 26 May 1950) and Ada Sarah Tunks (b Islington 31 August 1880; d Barnstaple 23 November 1956) were the lady vocalists, Paula Stuart already was the pianist , Walter Clyde (né Davies b Llanelly, Camarthenshire 1874; d Battersea) had been several years a tenor with the Mohawk/Moore & Burgess Minstrels and more recently on the halls in the Manchester area, Walter Walters was the 'humourist', last seen humouring the High Wycombe Conservative Club ('It was Bessie's Idea, Not Mine', 'What's the use?').

Walter Clyde

In 1906, Henry entered another arena: the recording world. I see him putting down versions of 'The Trumpeter', 'Come, be a Soldier' and Three for Jack'.  

I'm sure he put out more concert parties. I have several undated photos under his name. But I don't see him again until the 1908-9 one with Carrie. Summer at Margate, I think. Then there is this photo from 1911 

Ritte again, Oliver again (now a well-known songwriter) instead of the mysterious Paula on piano. And, surprise! Kenna Lawson! William Kenna Lawson (b Glasgow 8 June 1871; d Fulham 1919) had a neat career in the theatre after giving up being an accountant and stockbroker's agent. He played in the Ada Reeve musical Butterflies in London, toured in The Count of Luxenburg, The Girl in the Taxi, Oh! Be Careful, played in pantomime and in concert parties such as The Gems. So, if he's on team in 1911 (he lists hiself as 'society entertainer') this photo must be from not too far away ... and, of course, before 1919.

Paula's back, Philip, Henry and Lawson ... but we have two newbies. Lena Hutchings from Ilfracombe has been round a few years since she sang with the local Baptist Band of Hope in 1901. In 1912, I see her on tour with Pélissier's Follies. My last sighting of her is in 1919 at the Hull Palace. So when did she do a stint with Henry? Emil [Francis] Clare [Wright, Emil Francis] (b Upper Holloway, 19 April 1885; d St Leonard's 29 December 1960) 'singer and raconteur' can be seen doing his act in Great Bardfield in 1921. Latterly he became a grocer in Orpington.

Here's the 1912 team:

The three 'backbones', new ladies again, and Rex Harold 'comedian' [Hewlings, Reginald Harold] (b London 2 November 1880; d Croydon Rd, Anerley 6 April 1970). Mr Harold can be seen in smoking concerts from 1904 ('Japanese Faces', Queer Questions', 'The Last Straw', 'Peculiar Circumstances', 'It Must be Me', 'I'm so shy') in Ealing, Norwood, Penge, Anerley et al. He was a member of Arthur Randal's 'Middies and Maids' troupe in 1910 and promoting concerts with Tom Sutton. In 1915, he toured with Pelissier's Follies, in 1930 with Murray Ashford's Entertainers and at the London Palladium, now advertised as 'Tubby', in 1934 as 'the new BBC comedian', in 1936 'of the Queen's Hall', and in 1938 at 95 Croydon Rd. He was still to be seen entertaining in his home fief of Penge and Anerley therough the 1940s. A long career as a 'full-time professional'. Which one would not say about Miss Edris Owen Coombs (b Stamford Hill, 19 October 1891; d 10 January 1972) from Hackney.  I see her at the Ardwick Empire in a revue entitled Splash Me! in 1914 ('a sweet soprano'), then a revue Go Ahead ('Miss Coombs studied under Geraldine Ulmar') before evolving an 'artistical musical act', the Edris Coombs Trio, with a violiniste and a pianiste. I guess this picture is before she became a trio? I see her still in 1926 playing in The Melody Box Revue. And Winnie Harbor? Well, she was principal girl in the Aberdeen panto of 1906 ...   I think the vocal values of the group may now have been a bit sacrificed to the funnies. But this was 1912, and folks were keener on ragtime than Lohengrin.

1913. Three stalwarts and three whom I don't know ...

1914. Oh dear ... just Philip and Henry ... I wonder who these other folk are. The photo is taken in Margate, so I guess that's where they are

Herbert Winter can be spotted singing at Poplar with Edith Serpell in 1912, on the bill at the Chelsea Palace in 1913, as 'humorist' with 'The Entertainers' at Bristol and 'The Quaints', and billed as 'the greatest living pierrot' in 1917 at Rock Ferry. Herbert Winter and Bunny in 'comedy cameos'. Presumably a performer, not a rabbit? At the Coliseum for Charlot .. his sister 'Peggy Wynne' (WHICH Peggy Wynne?) ..

Oh! New Zealand! 'Mr Herbert Winter the comedian of the Randell Jackson Concert Co, has decided not to return to England with the company ... That needs investigating. Yes! There they are! 1914 at the Tivoli, 1915 in New Zealand .. Jackson, George Nash,Winter, Florence West and May Windsor.

He's in Australia again, with Bunny, in 1924 ('original Quick change interlude') ..

And one more photo. Date? But Paula is back. With one of Carrie's hats. Or ...

Well, there the photos stop. But Henry/Rendall/Randell didn't. He went on tour with the D'Oyly Carte's Elsie Spain in 1917-8 with success .... 

Well, I'm not sure when the last Jackson concert party went out, but I see him with - yes - Philip Ritte's Concert Party ('the famous London baritone') in 1921 -- on a  bill with Elsie and Doris Waters in 1926 ... and still singing on the radio in 1932 ...

He died in 1951, and his wife just twelve days later ..

Dammit, what happened to Paula?

But back we go. To the original photo. Ritte and Jackson had long and successful professional careers, and a third member of our team rendered them nothing in either longevity and popularity. Fred Wildon was born 2 June 1880 in Dulwich, Bermondsey, or Peckham (the say-so varied), as Frederick George Ling, son of a newspaper clerk from Debenham, and spent his earliest working life as a manual training pupil teacher in Lewisham. However, he soon began to appear in concerts, featuring a cominal act with a one-stringed fiddle, round Norwood, Croydon, Kennington, Deptford, Fulham and South London. By 1904 he had joined a group named the IDK Minstrels giving humorous songs and the fiddle act, and joining in such finales as 'The Bogey' and 'The Mummies'. He expanded his horizons with a performance of 'The Living Marionettes' and then 'The Gollywogs', developed the fiddle act into a one entitled 'Phonofiddleoddities', played sketches (Stage Struck), did his act at the Queen's Hall Sundays and as far afield, now, as Scotland and even visited the phonograph recording studios, as he worked himself up into a very original and popular performer.

On the way, he met musician Jessie Louise Pitman, and 21 October 1908 they were married. Jessie continued to make music and she and her ladies' quartet featured at seaside resorts and in variety for many years.

Fred at the Queen's Hall 1928

Fred continued his upward swing, and in 1909 he was featured at the London Pavilion. The Hippodrome, the Alhambra, the Tivoli followed, and I see him sharing a bill with Wilkie Bard, Fred Emney and Sidney Fairbrother and Violet Loraine in 1911. He was put under contact by Moss's Empires and made a nationwide tour of Hippodromes sharing, in London, with a Leoncavallo operetta, the American Ragtime Eight and Woodward's Seals.  And in between, he went back to the summer seaside with 'All the girls are lovely by the seaside', 'Beauty and the Guards' and his instrument, which on one occasion he used to accompany Nora Bayes in song.

In 1916 he toured with Fred Karno, and so it continued, taking in records, radio, television ... in the 1950s he was still running seaside seasons at Margate and Herne Bay, and concert seasons at Croydon ... and he was yet performing occasionally right up to his death 2 March 1954.  Jessie had predeceased him (4 April 1953).

 

Next up. Hugh Wright. Didn't really click that this is Hugh E Wright. Hugh Esterel Wright (b Cannes 13 April 1879; d Windsor 12 February 1940) the actor in twenty years of British films. But, like Carrie Tubb he started off as a 'pierrot'. And just plain 'Hugh Wright'. 

I see him in 1907 singing with Randell Jackson, in 1908 giving 'My Country Cousin' with Wildonm at the Mansion House, then as 'humourist' with our concert party. He moved on to Pélissier's Follies, West End revue, radio and the screen ...

And the pianist. Herbert [James] Oliver (b St Giles 20 October 1883; d Paddington Hospital 4 October 1950) was the son of a London maker of upholsterer's trimmings, and initially worked in the family business in Mornington Crescent. He began working in music as an accompanist in the London suburbs, and at the same time began publishing music, first for piano and then songs. Those songs, over more than thirty years, would become legion. The first which I spot are 'Go to sleep, curly head' and 'Love Divine' in 1908. A website

https://voxturturis.wordpress.com/2015/10/28/herbert-oliver-composer-pianist-accompanist-conductor-teacher/  

has had a go at compiling a list of his songs. I will limit myself to the most successful. It was his suite of five songs 'Songs of old London' and in particular 'Come to Vauxhall' that gave him real lift off, a revuette 'The Passing Show' proved popular in concert and radio, the more intense 'Yonder' was taken up and largely featured by Clara Butt, and the waltz song 'The Dancing Lesson' was promoted by old friend Carrie and all proved popular. He provided music for Harry Day's revue Rockets, joined Teschemaker for a 'Cries of London' suite, composed a radio operetta, The Vauxhall Belles, Peter Dawson recorded his 'Gog and Magog' and his melodies often played or accompanied by himself poured forth from national radio regularly.

His concert party activities became lesser as his popularity as a songwriter grew, but he was liable to pop up in all sorts of places and piers, tickling the ivories for an old friend.

Latterly, he became musical director for the Clacton Amateur Operatic Society. 

So, that's our photo. Every single one of that seaside-postcard troupe made good. Like repertory theatres, the concert parties were fine teachers of the actor's and musician's trades. I've enjoyed this little wander through that world and those times ... it was all but utterly vanished by the time I entered showbusiness, though there were traces remaining. The stout Edinburgh landlady who proudly brought out her old playbills. I met a few like her. But, alas, who goes to the seaside now to watch the pierrots ...?  Imagine a pierrot with a microphone  ... 

And, please, what became of Paula?

I see her in 1903 with Jackson, in 1904 at Margate with Will Edwardes, in 1905, 1907-8, 1912-3 back with Jackson ... and then ..?

Postscriptum. 

Chris Zwarg has come up with 78rpm recordings of many of our artists

Steve Bray has pretty certainly identified St James's Hall with the house of that name in Worthing, where Philip's company appeared between 1916-9.  Thursday 24th July ... 1919. Yay!