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Harold's Old Time Radio
Ragtime To Rock And Roll [BBC] 74xxxx 01 Dawn of A New Age 1900-1902
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Ragtime To Rock And Roll [BBC] 74xxxx 01 Dawn of A New Age 1900-1902
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Kenneth Moore
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The face of popular music is forever changing, and sometimes the factors that alter its expression go unnoticed at the time. For instance, if we trace the story of popular music in Britain and America since the start of the 20th century, we find that the most important single sound in the United States was not Stephen Foster or the Bell of New York or tear jerking ballads or rising marches, but the sound that wafted out of the windows of brothels from Chicago to New Orleans. That piano roll was made in 1902, and the hands manipulating it belonged to a negro called Scott Joplin, the father of ragtime. And being a comparatively well trained musician, Joplin might have seen something in the well disciplined measures of the sort of song the British were singing at the turn of the new century. Well, the queen in that song, of course, was Victoria. And to the British, as the 20th century began, it seemed as though she'd been sitting on that throne forever. For more than 60 years, she presided over the largest, richest, strongest empire in history, resolutely refusing to be amused. And now, amazingly, the new century found itself still a Victorian century, still asking that most Victorian of all questions and still giving the most Victorian of all answers. Have you brought your music? Of course I have. Well, what music would it be? And played on what instruments? In Britain in 1900, there were tens of thousands of pianos, to say nothing of the harmoniums, the organs, the flutes, the tambourines, the violins. And triangles, dare one say, eternal triangles. Out in the hall stands a harp, looming like a gloomy portent of the life to come. That is, until a timorous Miss Phipps can be persuaded to play it. You just try Stopping her. And surely Captain Blenkinsop, the one with the dundreary whiskers, might be tempted to sing one of the hilariously comic songs of the day. I'm a broken hearted milkman and in grief I may ride all through keeping of the company of a certain young mind what dipped on board wages the ass to keep clean in a fine gentleman's residence. A back of Paddington Green. She was beautiful as a butterfly and a brat as a queen Whilst pretty little Polly Perkins of Paddington Green. When I'd roll up in the mornings in shad milk below at the sound of me milk Came the fur face she'd show With a laugh upon her countenance and a smile in her eye. If I thought that she'd love me I'd lie down to die. She was beautiful as a butterfly and as bright as a queen Was pretty little Polly Perkins of Paddington Green. When I asked her for to marry me she says oh what stuff. And asked me to drop it Cause she'd had quite enough of me nonsense. At the same time I'd been very kind but from any age with a milkman she didn't feel inclined. She was beautiful as a butterfly and as proud as a queen Was pretty little Polly Perkins Paddington Green. Now in six months she was married this hard hearted girl. And it was not a baronite and it was not a ho, not even a vice cat. Twas a shadow to us was the bandy legged conductor of a tapenib walls baking to green, bless her little heart. And just to lend the gathering a little cultural weight as it were, One of those Wagnerian ladies whose breasts had long ago congealed into bosom would surely render that hero so beloved of our beloved queen, the dear departed Lord Tennyson. Come into the garden. For the black fat night has flown. Come into the garden, mud. I am here at the gate alone. I am here at the gate alone. And the Woodbine spices are wafted abroad. And the mask of the rose has blown for a breeze of morning moon and the planet of love is on high Beginning to faint in the light that she loves on the bed of daffodil sky to faint in the night of the sun she loves to faint in the night. Come, come, come into the garden of the black. That night has alone Come into the garden, mud. I am here at the gate alone. I am here at the gate alone. I am here at the gate alone. And then there were regional specialties, especially in the north of England. But suppose in 1900 you were tone deaf and voiceless well, if you had the price of a ticket, you might attend a concert or recital in one of those halls, which a young critic called Bernard Shaw described as being 185 degrees in the draft. Shaw was typically Victorian in that his entire family played musical instruments and sang, especially his Uncle William, who specialized in something called the offit lide. Alas, such abandoned music turned Uncle William's brain. And when he insisted on taking his boots off so that he could fly more easily to heaven, he had to be removed to the local asylum, where he perished of heart failure. But while anachronisms like Shaw's Uncle William and his office disappeared from British musical life, other ways of music making proved more durable. The sound of music awaited you everywhere, even in the streets, especially in the streets. And you can get some idea of how common that sound was from the fact that in 1895 there were 222 brass band competitions held in England alone. An even more common musical effect was the infinitely pathetic strain of something which a writer once described as the spirits of dead Londoners making music. But more popular even than brass bands or German bands or hurdy gurdys or barrel organs was the music you made yourself in the local pub. All you homeowners have unique needs. Some feel the need to paint their door a vibrant shade of blue. Others have the need to decorate their bathroom with fish anchors and other nautical items. And because each homeowner has unique needs, GEICO helps you get the right coverage for your home and what's in it. That way you get exactly what's right for you, even if your needs are unique. Get more with geico. Geico's motorcycle expertise means I'm covered by people who know bikes like I do. I'm happy as a clam. No conclusive scientific research has shown clams can experience happiness. I just meant that I feel really good about my coverage. I mean, even if you took the Klim out for the best day ever, visiting the zoo, taking a scenic ride, knowing you're insured by specialists, and sharing a strawberry ice cream cone together, the clam would not feel happy. And your strawberry cone would taste sort of clammy. Geico's motorcycle specialists who know bikes like you do assume no liability for clammy ice cream cones. GEICO expertise for your motorcycle, where a chap could join in and nobody ever noticed if he had a voice like a rusty fret saw Ra. Songs like that were part of the folklore of late Victorian England, just as today young folk carry transistors and cassettes so the shop girls and bank clerks of 75 years ago were never far away from a squeeze box or a banjo. Remember that moment in Three Men in a Boat when our heroes settle back after supper on the damp cushions of their little boat and endure the ordeal of George giving them a little song. She's my lady love she is my dove My baby love she's no girl for setting down to dream she's the only queen Laguna knows I know she likes me I know she likes me because she says so she is the lily of Laguna she is my lily and my rose she is my baby love she is my love my baby love she's no guide for September out a dream she's the only queen the moon arose I know she likes me I know she likes me because she says so she is the lily of Laguna she is my lily and my ro. The songwriter used to go to an artist and say, I've got an idea for a song, you see. And then you tell them the idea. And then he'd probably have one chorus written, and if it interested them, they'd say, oh, I like that. Yeah, finish it. They have to give them a few bob to finish the song and you bring it back. And then they take a right of it, you see. It might buy it outright. If he was a mug, they could buy it outright. But if he wasn't, they would have a right, a performing right of it, A sole performing rifle. And then, of course, the musical artists used to work these numbers, work and work them together, everything out of them. Then the publishers usually come in and publish the number, but they never published the number while it was still very popular. They waited till they worked it out and got known by it, and then the publisher would publish it. At the period that Stanley Holloway was talking of, the Music hall was at its zenith, wallowing in a golden age of incredible artistic richness. Music hall was the great working class art form, not only because the working classes supported it, but because the working classes also supplied the art. The stars, the writers, the composers, even the impresarios were sons and daughters of mean streets. So, not surprisingly, the songs of the Music hall dealt with the stings of everyday life. Well, what were those stings? Too many kids, for one thing. Don't have any more Mrs. Moore, Mrs. Moore, please don't have any more the more you have, the more you'll want they say enough is as good as a feast any day. If you have any more Mrs. More you'll have to take the house next door they're all right when they're here, but take my advice. Oh, dear. Don't have any more, Mrs. Moore. Another very serious problem was being poor but having expensive tastes. I'm fir perhaps you've heard of me fir you've had word of me Plodding along happy and strong Living on plates of fresh air up in fashion and when I am feeling depressed I shave from my cuff all the whiskers and fluff Stick my hat on and puddle up west I'm Burlington, 30 I rise at 1030 then saunter along like a paw I walk down the Strand with my gloves on my hands Then I walk down again with them all I'm all elves and graces Collect easy papers so long without food I forgot where my place is I'm burst first I haven't a shirt but my people are well off, you know. Nearly everyone knows me from Smithlog Road. I'm Burley One way out for a bloke like Bertie, of course would be to marry for money. Although the music hall always managed to include also a sly sexual double entendre. People say Susanna's got money a nice long stocking and it's right I know if George, he gets his hand on a stocking he never no, never let go. And if you never found a girl with a well filled stocking, you might well end up as one of the thousands of London's destitute sleeping in the streets. I live in Trafalgar Square with four lions to guard me Fountains and statues all over the place and the Metropolitan staring me right in the face I'll own It's a trifle drafty but I look at it this way, you see if it's good enough for Nelson, it's quite good enough for me. The beds ain't as soft as they might be still the temperature's never too high and it's nice to see swells who are passing look on you with envious eye and then when you wake in the morning just fancy how nice it must be to have a good walk for your breakfast and the same for your dinner and tea. There's many a swell up in Park Lane tonight who'd be glad if he only had my appetite. I live in Trafalgar Square with four lions to guard me Fountains and statues all over the place and the Metropole staring me right in the face. My alone it's a trifle drafty but I look at it this way, you see if it's good enough the Nelson it's quite good enough Even the grimmest reality of all, the workhouse was put to words and music by the music hall, although later generations often miss the illusion. The real point of this next song is that when a couple went to the workhouse, he had to go to one building and she had to go in a different one. The Victorian word for it was charity. I've got a pal She's a regular out and outer She's a good dear old gal and I'll tell you all about her it's many years since first we met her hair was then as black as jet it's whiter now but she don't fret, don't my old gal We've been together now for 40 years and it don't seem a die too much for the right Delighty living in the land as I'd swap for me dear old Dutch There I delighty living in the land as I'd swap for me dear old Dutch. Of course, not all the great songs of the music hall were socially conscious and even the most lugubrious of them had vitality. So that when you went to see a really great music hall artist, you never forgot it, especially if likes to come to Mackenzie, you never forgot anything. Mary Lloyd was wearing, and I can see it now, a sort of creamy golden dress with a cloud of silk amber underclothes. Besides singing, she was dancing. Tara Rabumdie was one of the first of the high kicking songs which became the rage. Although we were all rather inclined to be a little shocked about this high kicking. In fact it was considered a dazzling and daring thing to do. Though really in that cloud of amber underclothes there was hardly any leg distinguishable at all above the knee. Indeed, it was a highly respectable performance. Still, the fact remains that she was pulling up her skirt. And I, who had been brought up in her severe Victorian tradition, was rather shaken by the freedom with which she was kicking her legs about, particularly as my grim old nurse was present. So I turned round to Harry Payne, who was standing behind us in the shadows at the back of the box, and said, she's showing her drawers. Which really was a frightful thing even for a little girl of six to do today. It's anybody's joke, but even to the First World War, I couldn't have told that story in public. And every little moment has a meaning of its own. Every little movement tells a tale. When she walks in dainty hovel at the back around here there's a kind of wibble wobble and she glides like this Then But John is following her trail but when she turns her head like so Something's doing, don't you know Every little moment tells the sail down by the blue sea scooter she could be Maudie would go for her dip every day Maud and I for the boys oh my. And it happened that already was passing that way When Oredi saw her he's selling quite a plant he too was going bathing so he now held her dance with little smile, no frown and threw her pigmore down Then shyly shrugged her shoulders with a glance and every little movement has the meaning of its own Every little movement tells her into the ocean Freddy cat blows by for the no hurried of notion Because Mordy tried to swim oh, I'm she said already if you fail and in less than half a week Maudie deer commenced to think Every little moment tells a tale. If Mary Lloyd made sauciness an art form, than the great cockney artist Gus Elan made pessimism a science. One critic wrote of him, he too much resembles real life to be wholly pleasurable. An opinion endorsed by Sir Max Beerbohm, Although Sir Max wasn't complaining. Gus Elan, on the other hand, was always complaining. Gus Elan defied the conventions only by the extreme. The almost desperate glumness of his demeanor and the bitterness of what he had to say On a stage where cheeriness against all odds Was ever the resounding keynote. Immensely acrid was the spirit of his idunno werry Ah. And of his. Well, it's a great big shame I've lost my pal he's the best in all the towns but don't you think him dead because he ain't but since he's wed he has had to knuckle down it's enough to wet the temper of a saint He's a brewer's driving with a leg of mutton fist and as strong as a bullock or an horse yet in her hands he's like a little kid. Oh, I wish that I could get him a divorce well, it's a great big shame and if she belong to me I'd let her know Wounds you an aggie let a fellow what is 6 foot 3 and her only 5 foot 2 hadn't been married not a month nor more when underneath her thumb goes gym how isn't it a pity as the likes of her should pat upon the likes of him. Jim was Clark, Ethan sing a decent song. And at scrappin he had won some great renown well, it took two coppers for to make him move along and another six to hold the fellow done. But today when I axes would he come and have some beer to the doorstep on tiptoe he arrives. I daresin says he don't shut or sillier. I've got to clean the windows and the night well, it's a great big shame. And if she belonged to me I'd let her know. Won't you and Aggie let a fellow what is six foot three? A girl only four foot two hadn't been married not a month nor more when underneath her thumb goes dim. Oh, isn't it a pity as delight never shed part A pen the life curve Elan, of course, was a pessimist of genius who began his career on the wrong side of the footlight selling chocolates. And so as a schoolboy in Manchester did S. Neville Cardus they were called Bovril Chocolates. Penny a bar. And I saw Eugene Stratton in a pantomime. Robinson Crusoe or something. And he sang the I may be crazy but I love you escaped negro making love to his girl. And then he sang the Lily Laguna and dance to it. And his dancing was so light footed I'd never seen anything quite like it. Only once Sven Pavlova came to the Free Trade Hall, Manchester. And I always think that the light footedness on the stage Union Stratton and Pavlova. And now in these pantomimes they used to go twice daily, you know, two o'clock and seven. It was hard work for these people, these comedians and. And then there was a girl in this pantomime named Daisy Jerome. And I was about 16 or so and I fell in love with her. Never spoke to her of course, in my life. But in those days they used to have picture postcards. I got a picture postcard of Daisy's room. Oh, I could see every day on the stage. And I wore it always next to my heart. And one day I was in the theater rather before it matiny before it began. And through the dress circle came Eun Stratton with Daisy Jerome and said hello Sonny. And nothing in my life has ever filled me so much as Rudine Stretton in the company of this beautiful musical comedy star said hello Sonny. Listen to me tell curious Maluma I've gotta go so soon there's been some trouble and they mean to settle someone. Maluma that is. I know this cone I ain't got time to wait too long for you. Cause a lot of them are after me and they can shoot you see But I Can't go without some little conversation. Cause I risk so much in this ride to you that you might say just one little kind goodbye Nay, maybe crazy but I love you I'll write a dead wrong I'm not the tarot I may be shady But I love you so Won't you come right here and say goodbye? Occasional they not see me anymore. But all these songs about families that were too large and incomes that were too small, what was their place in the social scheme? The best answer was probably given by that full time dilettante, that Irishman who made a profession out of being an amateur, George Moore. He said the music hall is a protest against the wearily some stories concerning wills and mises. It's a protest against the immense drawing room sets, the rich hangings, the velvet sofas. It's a protest against the villa, the circulating library and the club. Well, where could you find all these libraries and villas and velvet sofas? The answer was in musical comedy. By 1900, the satire of Gilbert and Sullivan had been largely superseded by the saccharine of the more escapist world of the musical. Sullivan died as the century was born, but Gilbert remained very much alive, a source of inspiration to the younger school of lyric writers who revered him so much that sometimes they revered him too much, as PG Wodehouse testifies after taking a lunch at his place, Harrow Weald. And he was a great raconteur. And he started to tell this very long story. It was one of those stories where you make it as dull as possible up to the punchline when everybody collapses and roars with laughter and there was a pause before the punchline and I thought the story was over and I thought this seemed a bit funny to me, but I thought it must be funny because was Gilbert. And I roared with laughter, gave me the dirtiest look. I never saw anyone who looked so furious. Somebody else besides PG Woodhouse who was spoiling the joke for Gilbert was an impresario called George Edwards, who evolved the type of show we remember today as a kind of mad perfumed world of romantic melody, pink chiffon, small plots and large hats, and of course the hourglass figures of girls like Edward's famous leading lady, Ruby Miller. He was very big, very tall man, wide shoulders, blonde hair parted in the middle. They all wore it with waves on either side, a kitten and massage and very, very blue kindly eyes, but very, very keen. He saw through everything. He ran it perfectly. And he ran the vaudeville with Frau Adora and had that wonderful sextet. Tell me Pretty Maiden that was in it and all those musical comedies in both theatres. And Davies, he ran as well, but chiefly sort of semi operated. In fact. They were known as the Virgins and we were known as the Girls. That was the difference. We got all the meshes and stage your journeys. They filled the stones. We actually filled the stone. Nothing. Act of gaiety. I think Moonstruck was chiefly the favourite. That was the favourite of all of us. You see, they were lighter songs of Groceries. Delia and Epae Adi were lighter songs. But musically we loved Moonstruck. The world of Moonstruck and Lionel Moncton was essentially an escape world. But the odd thing about it is that sometimes reality is crazy enough to follow its hints. The musical comedy scene was one where Burke's English peerage hung around the stage door in the hope that some kind lady would offer them a slipperful of champagne. At least that's the way the legend goes. The funny thing is, sometimes the legend turned out to be true. In this case of the grandeur. It was a wonderful party or something you never see these days. A private room at a Manus and a fuel girl, about half a dozen. Then all these entenaires, which were all great people at the table and his white guards served us and they served meat on flaming swords. Most extraordinary. And the whole long table was set with pale blue satin covered in lace, real lace, and gold plate everywhere. And really he was the head waiter there. He said, Please, Ms. Miller, his imperial Highness would like the loan of one of your slippers. I thought, well, it won't fit him. I could have thought it was an old Russian custom or something. So fortunately they were new. Whenever we had anything special to go to, George Edwards always gave us a completely new regalt. I had a wonderful pale green dress made of Lucille, the great dressmaker. I had pale green shoes. We matched all accessories to our dresses. We never wore what we do today, half things, but they were green stockings, green satin shoes and gloves up here, dyed green, everything green perfect. And then I took the slipper off, gave it to Louisi and he took it to the Grand Duke. And the Grand Duke, I wonder what he was going to do, wanted some champagne. He brought me Magnum and he poured it in a sipper and he drank it from the back of the heel. When he finished, he sent it back to me and bowed with his nose. He said, thank you, madam, for the loan of your slipper. Well, he's a very charming gesture. I said to him, your Imperial Highness. But I said, you've Left my shoe a little damp. A few days later I went into my flat after lunch and wherever I looked there were shoeboxes. He sent me 60 pairs in every colour and every shape imaginable. And a little note saying, that was the best champagne I ever drank. Thank you so much for the little supper. Yip my Addie I A Yip my Addie I am I don't care what becomes of me when he plays me that sweet melody Yip I A D I A I A My heart wants to shout out Ramp Sing of joy, sing of bliss Home was never like this Lip by Annie I am There was a good old days when you can get half a quart of gin at tapas farting and two out Half a quart of whisky thrums half a quart of rum, tapas hapney and a pint of our cups. Give me a good old fashioned pearl no salutes for me I don't want to pay for pictures on the wall I want a decent drop of beer, that's all I don't want no compass on the floor Give me the value in the ground and the welcome coin you'll always find in a good old fashioned bounce. There in the contrast between the sugary harmonies of Ruritania and realities of Edwardian life, we can begin to see why so many people prefer the candors of the music hall. Why an intellectual like Ford Maddox. Ford actually did the editing of his literary magazine, the English Review, from a box at the Shepherd's bush empire. Why, G.K. chesterton observed in the Illustrated London News, we have reached so high and rarefied a condition of humbug that the most serious things we have left are the comic songs. And not even the music hall was above a bit of sentimentalizing. Those soldiers of the Queen that everyone sang about so proudly for getting a shilling a day. As for the typical George Edwards musical comedy where shop girls posed as duchesses and duchesses as shop girls, perhaps it all sounds a shade too naive to us. A world of sugary harmonies, a soft scented world of gaiety and certitude. Perhaps not so much of the gaiety and certitude if you are up in the gallery, but nevertheless a world so appealing to us that it still seems to beckon. I remember asking the barmaid at the end of the Empire promenade for some cigarettes and her saying to me, which do you want, dear Turks or virgins? Last day who would ask which you wanted? She would assume you wanted virgins. I think the show girls we got about 10 pounds a week because we were next to the principal. The chorus girls got about 35 bubbles. 25 bubbles, something like that. We all had to be individuals. We all had to have minds. We had to be witty. That's what the men paid. They wanted to hear us say wonderful things. Laugh their heads off at supper, you see, that was it. We had to have minds, not just bodies. Clearly, in the popular music world of the New Age, there were class distinctions in taste, in tickets, in theaters, even in interpretation. Sir Neville Cardis, with a precision that might have pleased Karl Marx, has defined the various boundaries. There was the upper class. There was the aristocracy of light music, which I think is Johann Strauss. Then you have Sullivan in the upper middle class. A wandering means. Well, I. A thing of shreds and patches of ballad songs and snatches and dreamy all of. And then you have Carol and Moncton in the middle class. And then you have Grading down to Souza, going right down at the. It seemed to be more graded than it is now. Ivan Carroll was the great composer of the Gaiety. He and Lungton, they had the very sensible practice in those days of having two composers. All those old ghetto shows had music by Ivan Carroll and Lionel Monkton. Ivan Carroll was an extraordinary chap. He used to buy up these French plays. They'd come over to America, see Ziegfeld or Charlie Dillingham and say he'd got this wonderful French play. He said, of course it'll be very expensive because the authors want so much. And he'd already bought the authors out. Sa well, Hardy, yourselves and me have drawn all kinds of historical, political and sociological parallels between the condition of England and the condition of English music. And certainly the clues are thick on the ground. So were they in America, where the situation musically was as different from our own as the Bowery was from the Old Kent Road. The American theater had no indigenous American music, which isn't surprising, as in those days it was very hard to find any indigenous Americans. But gradually, a recognizable American style was evolving. For instance, in 1899, the son of German immigrant parents living in Indiana wrote the big hit of the season. And it was an American hit, treating an American theme in an indefinably American way. The composer was a lad called Paul Dresser, whose kid brother Theo is said to have helped him with the lyric. Theo was destined to become Theodore Dreiser, the giant of emergent American modern literature. But Paul's words were on more people's lips. His song of 1899 was one of those haunting, almost Ghostly American ballads which seem to the modern city dweller to symbolize the wide open spaces of the American farm country. O, the moonlight's fair tonight along the Wabash from the fields there comes the breath of Newman Ha. Through the sick of wars the candlelights are gleaming on the banks of the waves Where I first received my lessons. Nature school. Nature school. But one thing there is missing in the picture. Without her face, it seems so incomplete. I long to see my mother in the doorway as she stood there years ago her boy to Greece. As the new century began, Americans were producing dozens of songs like that which glorified their country in a sentimental way, paying tribute to their own myths. Now, were those myths bogus? The Wild west, for instance. Exactly how wild was it? Bridled horses or unbridled homicidal lunatics? The answer is both. Mark Twain or Tin Panelli. You pays your money. It takes your choice. Well, when I was a young man studying for the gallows, I went west on the overland stage. The secret, my fortune in the silver land of the Nevada Territory. I eventually settled down in Virginia City, which was a good place for a man to lose his religion. We hadn't left by the time he got there. There were wide open gambling places, murders, street fights, riots, A Whiskey Mill. Every 16 steps, half a dozen jails, and some talk of building a church. There's no place for a Presbyterian, and I did not remain one very long. The name of that rugged masterpiece is, of course, Ragtime Cowboy Joe, written in 1902 and almost the first time that the word ragtime enters our scene. Pioneers like Scott Joplin had been composing rags long before the end of the 19th century. But only very slowly did the ragtime form become commercially viable. In the meantime, American popular music remained very much dependent on imports from the Spice Islands of Europe. From Austria, Hungary, Germany, Belgium, France. Harry Warren, a composer, destined one day to help change all that by writing songs like Home in Pasadena. And the More I See you recalls his childhood impressions. Some of the cafes and saloons, for instance, where I used to play. In some back rooms of saloons that I had a job playing on Saturday nights, we had singing waiters. They had a great repertoire. They sang those kind of songs. The heart of the City that has no heart or by the Sea, you know. And seaweed, it was a very funny song. Gag at the end was as soon as I touched me seaweed, I knew it was going to be wet. And we had one fellow named Skinny McCann that used to sing a lot of English comedy songs. All Double entendre too. I don't know in those days. And I just grew up with all that stuff and loved it. Still love it. Some time ago I had a fright right in the dead of night the pissy says jump up, you fool, the house is all alight I quickly tumbled out the pain so I could hide the seaweed hung upon the wall I grabbed it with me hand and rushed up on the roof the drop to take me close the fireman down below was grunting with his hose he hit me where I stood right off the parapet and as soon as I touched me seaweed I knew it was going to be wet. All he needed the ICR he did the ICI. The American musical world in 1900 lacked one ingredient that was suddenly flung into the pot with an enormous splash. In Britain that very year, this new factor was patriotism. For the first time in 50 years, the British became involved in a war with other white men. And if the music hall was a microcosm of larger events that people said it was, well, then naturally it soon began to reflect the events of the moment and the turbulent emotions surrounding them. Soon Dolly came on stage, flourishing a Union Jack in each hand. And this was almost too much for us. She sang Soldiers of the Queen while the chorus in Kake stood stern and unblinking to attention. Even when the flags were waved in their faces Britons always loyally declaim about the way we rule the waves Every Britain song is just the same when singing of a soldier's brave all the world has heard it wonders why we sing and some have learned the reason why we're not forgetting it we're not letting it Fade away or gradually die Fade away or gradually die it's the soldiers of the Queen Pilot in the might for England glory Last of its worldwide glory Let us sing and when we say we always won and when they ask us how it's done we'll proudly point to everyone but suppose there was some boy sitting up in the gallery who didn't approve of the Boer War. What then? Punch ups? Most likely rowdyism and a very disturbing night out indeed. Suddenly a discordant cry shocked us. Down with Joe Chamberlain. Eager advice was cried Wring his neck the offender was propelled through the riot. Inside the theater, a hurtling bottle brought down the plate glass of the theatre bar in a shocking avalanche. The torrent brawled down a corridor and shot me outside into the night. And so in the front parlors of Britain, at social gatherings and parties and saloon bars and street corners, in theatres and clubs, at recitals and conversaziones, people began to forsake the hearts and flowers of Victorian balladry for a little harmless bellicosity. The very song titles evoke the distant tinkle of long forgotten sabre rattling England's bitter bunting. Good news from the war, A mother's gift to her country. Break the news to mother, bury her picture with me. Who'll care for the children while I'm away? And that masterpiece of sentimental tear jerking child exploitation the Boers have got my daddy. Our boys in South Africa might occasionally die of enteric fever or march across a strange continent with no maps. They might even be led by blimpish officers to snatch defeat out of the very jaws of victory. But at least if you were a songwriter, as the 20th century opened, you were in for the seven fat years. The gramophone, the telephone, the microphone, the wireless receiver were all still in transitional stages. But music itself was about to become big business. The new age broke with a proud march of the soldiers of the Queen and who cared if all unknowing they were marching backwards into a glorious pastor Glam's glory Let all its world final glory let us sing and when we say we've always won and when they ask us how it's done we're proudly march to everyone of England Soldiers of the ragtime to rock and Roll was narrated by Kenneth Moore. The program was written by Benny Green and the research was by Bill Sullivan. The producer was Steve Allen and the executive producer Mark White. Next week's program, entitled Let the Good Times Roll Edwardian Style, continues the story of the development of popular music during the first decade of Something Tell Me I Am Needed Rain.