In the early music halls, songs were central to the performance.
Singing was the heart of the music hall act and comic singers
its most famous stars. Many songs, and much of the comedy, were
a comment on social conditions. They reflected working class
life. Marie Lloyd’s hit ‘My Old Man Said Follow the Van, and
Don’t Dilly-Dally on the Way’, was about doing a moonlight flit
to avoid paying the rent and Gus Elen’s ‘If it Wasn’t for the
Houses in Between’ was about the overcrowded living conditions
in London’s East End.
Music hall songs and jokes were about day to day life: lodgers,
mothers-in-law, bailiffs, overdue rent, drink, debt, adversity,
unfaithful wives (and husbands), hen-pecked husbands (and wives).
Other songs were unashamedly patriotic or sentimental, about
true love, mother love, moon and June, idyllic villages, shady
trees and wandering streams.
Audiences would return again and again to hear the same song
and the same patter. Actors made their name with only one or
two songs – they needed very little material if they were
successful. There were no recordings or radio or television
so people could only hear the song if they went to the music
hall.
Character songs, where the performer portrayed an individual
or a character type, were interspersed with comic patter or
chat with the audience. This was rarely improvised. Other songs,
like those sung by the ‘swells’ George
Leybourne and The Great Vance, were wish fulfilment songs,
about the fashionable social world to which the vast majority
of the working class could only aspire.
Great comic singers included Dan
Leno, Gus Elen,
Marie Lloyd and
George Robey. Many great music hall singers went on to star in pantomime.
Lions Comiques
Aerial Acts
