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LOCATING
ARTISTES
Revised September 2020 The first step when
searching for information is, of course, to surf the
net. The second is to put your wanted artiste's
name into Spotify - you never know - while YouTube may
enable you to both see and hear your quarry, giving
you a blast of immediacy which will more than
compensate for these sites' lack of facts and
figures. Genealogy sites are not listed below.
Local Libraries The catalogues of
local libraries, including reference holdings, should
be scoured for books on Music Hall and Variety (Dewey
Classification 792.7); their indexes will offer a
useful starting point for uncovering your
subject. My own books Sing Us One of the Old
Songs (OUP 1999) and Grace, Beauty & Banjos
(Oberon 1999), for instance, give birth and
death years for hundreds of performers; these can lead
you to obituaries in local and national newspapers,
and especially in trade papers such as The Era
(1838-1939), The Stage (1880-) and The Performer
(1906-1957). If you live within easy reach of London
full runs of these publications (not The Era
1911-1912) are kept on microfilm at Westminster
Reference Library, 35 St
Martin's Street, Leicester Square, London W1.
Gale Historical Newspapers This website
consists of forty-nine digitised British newspapers up
to 1900, though only two of these, The Graphic and The
Penny Illustrated Paper, permit free downloading. All
the others require payment of a fee for full access to
citations. Gale's run of The Times from
1785-1985 may also be accessible at your local
reference library; if you intend to use the facility
regularly you can sign up at the library which will
give you free access from your home computer. If your
local library is not a subscriber you can register via
Westminster Reference Library.
The Era The Era from 1838 to
1900 together with dozens of local newspapers (many
running from the 18th until well into the 20th
centuries) may be searched free of charge through The
British Newspapers Archive www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk
British Library Full runs of these
and all other national and provincial newspapers are
also viewable at the British Library, 96 Euston Road,
London NW1 2DV. Ring 0330 333 1144 for
information on obtaining a reader's ticket.
The Stage Archive A run of this
invaluable source from 1880 to 2007 is now
administered by the British Library. You may
search the site for headings free of charge but
payment is required to open citations fully. For
direct access search: 'The Stage in British Newspaper
Archive'.
The Theatre Museum Collections from the
defunct Theatre Museum are located in the Victoria
& Albert Museum's study centre at Blythe House, 23
Blythe Road, London W14 0QX. The content is strongest
on theatre, opera and ballet, though there is a
substantial amount of Music Hall/Variety including
posters and songsheets. Appointments must be made in
advance, so email the Enquiries service (Mon-Fri
10-5): tmenquiries@vam.ac.uk or ring 020
7942 2697 to check whether the collection has any
material likely to be significant for your purposes
and book an appointment. The Study Room is open
Tuesday-Friday only. Visit the Music Hall &
Variety Theatre web pages at
www.vam.ac.uk/page/m/music-hall for more
information about the Collections.
The Raymond Mander & Joe Mitchenson Theatre Collection This magnificent
archive contains a significant amount of Music Hall
and musical comedy material and is now housed in the
University of Bristol. For queries ring 0117 331
5086 or email: theatre-collection@bristol.ac.uk.
Family Records Centres The Family Records
Centre registers of births, marriages and deaths are
now on microfiche and may be searched at centres in
Birmingham, Bridgend, Manchester, Newcastle, Plymouth,
Westminster, London Metropolitan Archives and at the
British Library. For details ring 0300 123
1837. Registers may also be searched at www.freebmd.org.uk.
The entries date from 1837 and certificates may be
ordered online from the General Register Office on
www.gro.gov.uk. The postal address is General Register
Office, PO Box 2, Southport, Merseyside PR8 2JD.
A difficulty which very often arises when searching is
that the registers only contain artistes' legal names,
not their professional ones. A further complication is
that married women were (and usually still are)
registered at death under their husbands' surnames.
Colin Charman's Music Hall This database covers
the years 1838-1944, though the great majority of
entries is for 1911 to 1918. The archive
includes local press advertisements, previews and
reviews from The Era, The Stage, and The Music Hall
and Theatre Review, plus rehearsal calls from The Era
and The Stage. It is not online so email your
queries to charmancolin@hotmail.com.
The London Music Hall Database Jacky Bratton is
custodian of a database which includes all London
Music Hall advertisements in The Era for the first
week of each month of every fifth year from 1865 to
1890. Some data for 1866/7 are also included. Details
of artistes by name and type, also managers,
prices, times, and practices of one hundred and
twenty-three Halls are included. Drawbacks are that
only London venues are covered, and that 'the
five-yearly snapshot must miss many short-lived but
possibly significant performances, and does not offer
enough information about the trajectories of either
acts or halls in a volatile and rapidly changing
industry'. Nevertheless Prof Bratton tells me
that one query in three makes a hit. Visit www.rhul.ac.uk/drama/music-hall
or email: j.bratton@rhul.ac.uk.
The British Music Hall Society NB:
These two addresses are currently not available.
Arthur Lloyd An attractive and comprehensive site which takes queries is at www.arthurlloyd.co.uk An appeal for
information in Call Boy, the quarterly journal of the
British Music Hall Society, may be made via the
editor, Geoff Bowden, at geoff.bowden1@btinternet.com
Sibmas
The International Directory of Performing Arts Collections is at www.sibmas.org British Pathè Many vintage artistes can be seen performing at www.britishpathe.com from which DVD purchases made be made. Some clips may be downloaded free. NOTE: If you are seeking information
by post it is always
advisable to enclose a stamped addressed envelope, or, if you are writing from outside the UK, an International Reply Coupon. Do not send unsolicited photographs or original documents without prior agreement. Useful Books British Library shelfmarks are given in brackets. BROWN, JAMES D. & STRATTON, STEPHEN S. British Musical Biographies (10804 k 23) BRYAN, GEORGE D. Stage Deaths 1850-1990 2 vols (on open shelves 791.0922) " " Stage Lives 1985 " " BOASE, FREDERICK Modern English Biography (on open shelves 920.041) BUSBY, ROY British Music Hall: An Illustrated Who's Who from 1850 to the Present Day (792.7/028/0922) ERA ALMANAC and ANNUAL, THE From 1868 includes an annual necrology (on open shelves 791.0922) GAMMOND, PETER The Oxford Companion to Popular Music 1991 (YM 1991 b186 - on open shelves 781.63) GRAY, ANDREW Illustrated Who's Who in Variety (British Year Books) 1947 (011795 aa 75) HERBERT, S. & McKERNAN, L. (eds.) Who's Who of Victorian Cinema 1996 (YC 1996 b 4504) PERRY, JEB H. Variety Obits 1980 (X809/47928) PRATT, ALFRED T. CAMDEN People of the Period 1897 (010608 m 25) VARIETY OBITUARIES Eds. Chuck Bartelt & Barbara Bergeron (ZC 9D 365) WEARING, J. P. American and British Theatrical Biography (792/.092/2) If you find any
of the above to be out-of-date please let me know on
michael@kilgarriff.org.uk |
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LOCATING SONGS When asked where
copies of Music Hall songs may be found my first
answer is always the same: try Google. Titles
are often available
online, sometimes downloadable without charge. Also try YouTube
and Spotify for possible recordings.
NODA has a collection of
Music Hall songs, pantomime songs, musical comedy
songs, and sheet music of all kinds. The postal
copying service is service currently suspended.
Further
Recommended Sources
A site with
access to over 72,000 titles is www.sheetmusicwarehouse.co.uk
www.musicroom.com offers instrumental arrangements as well as free vocal sheet music. A similar service is also offered by sheetmusicdirect.com located at 14-15 Berners Street, London W1T 3LJ. Another vast song collection (lyrics only) is viewable on www.lyricsplayground.com/alpha. Dinosaur
Discs has an immense collection of old 78s and will
send you copies or make up a compilation on CD. See www.78rpm.co.uk
or phone 01692 631 540.
A very useful book which should be available in your local Reference Library is The Oxford Companion to Popular Music (1991) by Peter Gammond. My own Sing Us One of the Old Songs (OUP 1998) cross-catalogues some 18,000 popular song titles, writers, composers, and singers from 1850-1920. Over 1,100 comic poems and monologues for men and women may be found on monologues.co.uk, an extremely useful website assembled by Paul Wilkinson under the title Make ‘Em Laugh!!! (not to be confused with books with the same title by Eric Midwinter and myself). All the favourites are there from the repertoires of Albert Chevalier, Marriott Edgar, Stanley Holloway, Billy Bennett, Joyce Grenfell, Gracie Fields, Elsie & Doris Waters, etc., etc. Hundreds more monologues from the classic literary repertoire (Chekhov, Shakespeare, etc) are accessible on www.monologuearchive.co.uk An American website boasting over 300,000 songs may be may be downloaded in audio from www.parloursongs.com. Another enormous collection of US songs from the eighteenth century to the 1960s from which sheet music (including covers) may be accessed at levysheetmusic.mse.jhu.edu. A US site uniquely offering a choice of keys for its downloadable song sheets is www.musicnotes.com/sheetmusic. Finally, an interesting site with over 3,000 titles is Historic American Sheet Music 1850-1920 on library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/hasm michael@kilgarriff.org.uk
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