Ancestral Voices

[poliphilo]

Ailz and I both ate unwisely yesterday evening- though we ate different things- and were up at 3.00 in the morning feeling sorry for ourselves, drinking tea and listening to music hall artistes, courtesy of YouTube. I've been listening to lots of musical hall and variety artistes over the past 24 hours- Florrie Ford, Vesta Tilley, Harry Champion, Marie Lloyd. I've known their songs all my life; but in most cases I've never heard them do the singing. Isn't YouTube wonderful! 

Dan Leno was the greatest comedian of the late Victorian age- the doyenne of pantomime dames and the grandfather of contemporary stand-up. He died in 1904, aged 43. Here is one of his two surviving monologues. I'm not going to pretend it's great entertainment or anything other than the faintest echo of his genius, but it preserves his voice and gives some idea of his style. The extraordinary thing is that it exists at all. 

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

We saw a programme last night on bbc 4 about the history of music halls. It was presented by the man who used to be chairman of the bbc but I can't remember his name (Michael Grade). It was very interesting and had some lovely examples of interiors, photos, some recordings and fascinating stuff. I wonder if you could watch it again.
Jenny x

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, I caught some of that myself- and it's what started me looking at the recordings and little bits of film that remain. If I've got a criticism of Grade it's that he and his interviewees talked over too many of the songs.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

I am glad I live in an age where these things are public and not just for dusty scholastics

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Before the age of the Internet things like Leno's monologues would have been very hard to track down.

[all-unnecessary.livejournal.com]

An old friend of mine heads up the Cylinder Project at UCSB Davidson Library, which might be, uh, relevant to your interests.

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/browse.php

The vaudeville section has 320 recordings alone, and even one of Dan Leno: http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?queryType=@attr%201=1016%20&query=dan+leno&num=1&start=1&sortBy=&sortOrder=id

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

AW, brilliant! I'll have fun browsing through these.