A type of entertainment place which flourished in Britain during the late 19th century and early 20th, where drinking might be enjoyed together with musical acts and in particular popular songs. By extension the term is applied to the form of entertainment itself, and ‘music hall’ was the main source of popular song of its time. Similar forms of entertainment flourished in other countries, for example in the USA as ‘vaudeville’. The term ‘music hall’ entered the French language to describe such night spots as the Moulin Rouge and Casino de Paris which flourished from the end of the 19th century as successors to the cafés-chantants and cafés-concerts (see Cabaret).
Convivial drinking and music-making have long been associated, and the ancestry of music hall may be found in the catch clubs which flourished widely in England from the mid-17th century and particularly during the late 18th. During the 1830s and 40s, London taverns with a music licence (such as the Mogul, Drury Lane) offered the working classes an evening of communal singing while they drank; in more Bohemian, all-male song and supper rooms (such as the Coal Hole, Strand, or ‘Evans’s late Joy’s’, Covent Garden) supper could be enjoyed to the accompaniment of singing which ranged as the evening progressed from popular ballads to coarse songs. The proprietor acted as host and chairman, and the clientèle joined in the entertainment. In the expanding suburbs there were also taverns offering entertainment for the local working class, such as the Eagle or Grecian Rooms in the City Road immortalized in the song Pop goes the Weasel:
Up and down the City Road,
In and out the Eagle,
That’s the way the money goes …
With the taverns there grew up character singers who travelled from one to another giving their acts several times in an evening, and the public taste for the entertainment they provided steadily developed. The term ‘music hall’ seems to have been first used in 1848 when the Surrey Music Hall opened in Westminster Bridge Road; the following year Charles Morton (1819–1904), later dubbed ‘father of the halls’, took over the Canterbury Arms in Lambeth and built a hall large enough for 700 people with a platform at one end. In 1851 the Mogul Saloon itself was refurbished as the Middlesex Music Hall, and other halls opened, such as Wilton’s in Whitechapel, Collins’s in Islington and Weston’s in Holborn (see fig.1). In 1856 Morton further enlarged the Canterbury, and in 1861 he opened perhaps the most celebrated of music halls, the Oxford, in Oxford Street.
The entertainment at these halls contained a wide variety of musical items, including ballads and other popular songs, ‘nigger minstrel’ acts, selections from popular operas and also comic turns and monologues (dramatic performances were forbidden under the terms of the licence). The audience sat at tables in the body of the hall, where they were served with drinks, and the chairman presided at his own table below or to one side of the platform. The audience participated by joining in the choruses of the songs and in verbal interplay with the chairman, himself often a retired performer. Entertainment increasingly gained precedence over convivial drinking, and it is significant that the Alhambra in Leicester Square was converted in 1860 to have a proscenium arch. In 1878 the London County Council sought to exercise control over the music halls by requiring a proscenium arch and a fire curtain dividing the stage from the body of the hall and by confining liquor to bars at the back of the hall. Some famous haunts were unable to meet the requirements and were closed, for example Wilton’s (though the building survives) and the Winchester (formerly the Surrey).
The music-hall business continued to expand as syndicates built large ‘variety’ theatres throughout the country. In London several theatres were converted to music halls and others were built for the purpose. The intimate nature of the old halls was disappearing and the chairman was often replaced by an indicator board identifying each act by a number. Performers required stronger projection of their voices, and better material, but remained able to travel up and down the country giving their acts.
The turn of the century represents the ‘golden age’ of music hall as a source of popular song. By World War I it was on the decline. The respectability bestowed by the first Royal Command Performance at the Palace Theatre in 1912 and the bestowing of knighthoods for services to music hall were fundamental incongruities; but neither these nor the final banning of drinks from the back of the auditorium in 1914 were more than incidental factors. Music hall in its expanded form had run its course as a popular type of entertainment in the face of such new attractions as the cinema, revue and (later) radio. Variety theatres were converted to other uses or demolished. The successors to the original music halls are found in working-men’s clubs and night-club cabaret; relics of the style of entertainment appear in Christmas pantomimes with their chorus singing, ‘principal boys’ and ‘pantomime dames’.
In the later variety shows, the forms of entertainment included such non-musical acts as conjurors or acrobats. But the basic entertainment remained musical, as it had been in the older genuine music halls. The opening programme of the Oxford included among its artists Santley and Parepa, and it was at the Canterbury Hall that excerpts from Gounod’s Faust were first heard in England. Later the Alhambra and the Empire were famous for their ballets; they helped to revive a taste for the genre, then out of favour. At the Hippodrome in 1911 and 1912 Leoncavallo and Mascagni conducted their most famous operas, and Leoncavallo wrote his Zingari for that theatre, as did Leo Fall The Eternal Waltz and Emmerich Kálmán The Blue House (1912).
Popular songs, however, were the most typical product of the music halls. Dispersed throughout the country not only by the variety theatres themselves but also as sheet music, they mostly dealt with topical or everyday subjects. Neither verses nor music sought artistic merit; an appealing verbal phrase allied to a catchy musical one was quite enough, in the hands of a good artist, to make a successful music-hall song. The performer mattered as much as the song, and both were more important to devotees than the identity of the author of words or music. The music was at times obviously derivative, the words banal, the humour unsubtle. It did not matter, for example, that when Wilkie Bard sang ‘I want to sing in op’ra’ the tune quoted was not operatic but Arditi’s Il bacio. The singers, though each having his individuality, often fell into such categories as the Cockney or coster singer, the blackened-faced ‘coon’, or the male impersonator.
The early music-hall stars, up to about 1880, were mostly male. Without the benefit of gramophone records and the ubiquity that the variety theatres were to give music-hall artists their names remain little known: W.G. Ross, Sam Cowell (1820–64), Harry Clifton (1832–72), Sam Collins (1827–65), Arthur Lloyd (1839–1904), Vance (1838–88), George Leybourne (1842–84), Harry Rickards (1842–1911), Harry Liston (1843–1929) and G.H. Macdermott (1845–1933). A few of their songs have remained familiar, for example Clifton’s Polly Perkins of Paddington Green, Leybourne’s Champagne Charlie and The Flying Trapeze and Macdermott’s We don’t want to fight, but by Jingo if we do (which added the word ‘jingoism’ to the English language). When the music hall entered its ‘variety’ phase women gained more prominence, and Nelly Power (1853–87) first sang The boy I love is up in the gallery, later taken over by the greatest of all music-hall singers, Marie Lloyd (1870–1922). Dan Leno (1860–1904; see fig.2), who was also a celebrated pantomime dame, Little Tich (1868–1928; he gave the word ‘tich’ to the language) and George Robey (1869–1954) were stars of music hall who were primarily comedians, but the following, among the most celebrated of music-hall singers, may be cited along with the songs they sang: Charles Coborn (1852–1945: Two lovely black eyes; The man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo), Eugene Stratton (1861–1918: Little Dolly Daydream; The Lily of Laguna), Albert Chevalier (1861–1923: My old Dutch; Wot cher! or Knocked ’em in the Old Kent Road), Gus Elen (1863–1940: It’s a great big shame), Vesta Tilley (1864–1952: Jolly good luck to the girl who loves a soldier), Harry Champion (1866–1942: Any old iron; Boiled beef and carrots), Harry Lauder (1870–1950: I love a lassie; Roamin’ in the gloamin’; Keep right on to the end of the road), Vesta Victoria (1873–1951: Daddy wouldn’t buy me a bow-wow; Waiting at the church), Florrie Forde (1874–1941: Down at the old Bull and Bush; She’s a lassie from Lancashire), Hetty King (1883–1972: All the nice girls love a sailor), Will Fyffe (1885–1947: I belong to Glasgow) and Ella Shields (1879–1952: Burlington Bertie from Bow, itself a parody of another song, Burlington Bertie).
By comparison with the singers, the writers of the songs are rarely fêted, although some singers, such as Albert Chevalier and Harry Lauder, wrote their own material. However, certain composers may be singled out from the mass for the quality or in some cases the quantity of their contributions: Alfred Lee (Champagne Charlie; The Flying Trapeze), George Le Brunn (Oh, Mister Porter; It’s a great big shame), Leslie Stuart (Soldiers of the Queen; The Lily of Laguna; Little Dolly Daydream), Fred Gilbert (The man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo; At Trinity Church), Felix McGlennon (Comrades; Sons of the Sea), F.W. Leigh (Put on your tat-ta little girlie), Charles Collins (Any old iron; Boiled beef and carrots), C.W. Murphy (Has anybody here seen Kelly?; Hold your hand out, naughty boy), H.E. Darewski (I used to sigh for the silvery moon; In the twi-twi-twilight) and J.W. Tate (A broken doll; I was a good little girl).
C.D. Stuart and A.J.Park: The Variety Stage: a History of the Music Halls (London, 1895)
G.F. Scotson-Clark and G.Gamble: The ‘Halls’ (London, 1899)
H.C. Newton: Idols of the ‘Halls’ (London, 1928/R)
A. Haddon: The Story of the Music Hall (London, 1935)
M.W. Disher: Winkles and Champagne: Comedies and Tragedies of the Music Hall (London, 1938)
D. Gilbert: American Vaudeville: its Life and Times (New York, 1940/R)
S.T. Felstead: Stars who Made the Halls (London, 1946)
H. Scott: The Early Doors: Origins of the Music Hall (London, 1946)
W. Macqueen-Pope: The Melodies Linger on: the Story of Music Hall (London, 1950)
C. Pulling: They were Singing (London, 1952)
J. Feschotte: Histoire du Music-hall (Paris, 1965)
R. Mander and J.Mitchenson: British Music Hall (London, 1965, 2/1974)
C. MacInnes: Sweet Saturday Night (London, 1967, 2/1969)
D. Howard: London Theatres and Music Halls, 1850–1950 (London, 1970)
G.J. Mellor: The Northern Music Hall (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1970)
P. Davison, ed.: Songs of the British Music Hall (New York, 1971)
P. Gammond: Your own, your very own: a Music Hall Scrapbook (London, 1971) [with bibliography and discography]
P. Honri: Working the Halls (Farnborough, 1973)
D.F. Cheshire: Music Hall in Britain (Newton Abbot, 1974)
G. Speaight: Bawdy Songs of the Early Music Hall (Newton Abbot, 1975)
R. Busby: British Music Hall: an Illustrated Who’s Who from 1850 to the Present Day (London, 1976)
J.M. Garrett, ed.: Sixty Years of British Music Hall (London, 1976)
P. Leslie: A Hard Act to Follow (London, 1978)
B. Rust: British Music-Hall on Record (London, 1979)
L. Senelick, D.F.Cheshire and U. Schneider: British Music-Hall 1840–1923: a Bibliography and Guide to Sources (Hamden, CT, 1981)
P. Bailey, ed.: Music Hall: the Business of Pleasure (London, 1986)
J.S. Bratton, ed.: Music Hall: Performance and Style (London, 1986)
J. Nash: The Merriest Man Alive: Stories, Anecdotes, Adventures (London, 1891)
A. Chevalier and B. Daly: Albert Chevalier: a Record by Himself (London, 1896)
D. Leno: Dan Leno, hys Booke: a Volume of Frivolities (London, 1899)
A. Chevalier: Before I Forget (London, 1901)
W.H. Morton and H.C.Newton: Sixty Years’ Stage Service: being a Record of the Life of Charles Morton (London, 1905)
J.H. Wood: Dan Leno (London, 1905)
H. Lauder: Harry Lauder at Home and on Tour (London, 1907)
G. Robey: My Life up to Now: a Naughtibiography (London, 1908)
Little Tich [H. Relph]: Little Tich: a Book of Travels and Wanderings (London, 1911)
G. Chirgwin: Chirgwin’s Chirrup: being the Life and Reminiscences of George Chirgwin, the ‘White Eyed Musical Kaffir’ (London, 1912)
T.E. Dunville: The Autobiography of an Eccentric Comedian (London, 1912)
R.G. Knowles: A Modern Columbus (London, 1915)
H. Lauder: A Minstrel in France (London and New York, 1918)
A. Roberts: Fifty Years of Spoof (London, 1927)
C. Coborn: The Man who Broke the Bank (London, 1928)
H. Lauder: Roamin’ in the Gloamin’ (London, 1928)
H. Randall: Harry Randall, Old Time Comedian (London, 1930)
G. Robey: Looking Back on Life (London, 1933)
M.W. Disher, ed.: The Cowells in America: being the Diary of Mrs. Sam Cowell (London, 1934)
Lady de Frece [V. Tilley]: Recollections of Vesta Tilley (London, 1934)
N. Jacob: ‘Our Marie’ (Marie Lloyd) (London, 1936/R)
A.E. Wilson: Prime Minister of Mirth: the Biography of Sir George Robey (London, 1956)
W. Macqueen-Pope: Queen of the Music Halls: being the Dramatized Story of Marie Lloyd (London, 1957)
P. Cotes: George Robey (London, 1972)
D. Farson: Marie Lloyd & Music Hall (London, 1972)
R. Findlater and M.Powell: Little Tich (London, 1979)
G. Sudworth: The Great Little Tilley (Luton, 1984)
S. Maitland: Vesta Tilley (London, 1986)
R.A. Baker: Marie Lloyd: Queen of the Halls (London, 1990)
ANDREW LAMB