This list of British music hall performers includes a related list of British Variety entertainers.
This list of British music hall performers includes a related list of British Variety entertainers.
Music Hall, Britain's first form of commercial mass entertainment, emerged, broadly speaking, in the mid-19th century, and ended (arguably) after the First World War, when the halls rebranded their entertainment as Variety. [1] Perceptions of a distinction in Britain between bold and scandalous Victorian Music Hall and subsequent, more respectable Variety may differ (in the US, Burlesque and Vaudeville have analogous connotations). [2]
Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment that was most popular from the early Victorian era, beginning around 1850, through the Great War. It faded away after 1918 as the halls rebranded their entertainment as variety. Perceptions of a distinction in Britain between bold and scandalous music hall entertainment and subsequent, more respectable variety entertainment differ. Music hall involved a mixture of popular songs, comedy, speciality acts, and variety entertainment. The term is derived from a type of theatre or venue in which such entertainment took place. In North America vaudeville was in some ways analogous to British music hall, featuring rousing songs and comic acts.
Joseph Tabrar was a prolific English writer of popular music hall songs. His song "Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow Wow" (1892) became Vesta Victoria's first major popular success.
Vesta Victoria was an English music hall singer and comedian. She was famous for her performances of songs such as "Waiting at the Church" and "Daddy Wouldn't Buy Me a Bow Wow", both of which were written specially for her. Vesta's comic laments delivered in deadpan style were even more popular in the USA: she was, at the beginning of the twentieth century, one of the most successful British entertainers in America.
William Holt Williams was an Australian-born British vaudeville and music hall singer and entertainer. His best known song was "When Father Papered the Parlour".
The German Reed Entertainments were founded in 1855 and operated by Thomas German Reed (1817–1888) together with his wife, Priscilla German Reed (1818–1895). At a time when the theatre in London was seen as a disreputable place, the German Reed family provided family-friendly entertainments for forty years, showing that respectable theatre could be popular.
Alexander Hurley was an English music hall singer, and Marie Lloyd's second husband.
Music hall songs were sung in the music halls by a variety of artistes. Most of them were comic in nature. There are a very large number of music hall songs, and most of them have been forgotten. In London, between 1900 and 1910, a single publishing company, Francis, Day and Hunter, published between forty and fifty songs a month.
Whittaker Cunliffe was an English comic singer. The historian and critic W. J. MacQueen-Pope described Cunliffe as a "great singer of great songs and the epitome of what made Music Hall."
Arthur Lennard was a British music hall singer, stage and silent film actor.
Talbot O'Farrell was an English music hall and variety show singer whose repertoire included both sentimental and comic songs. Early in his career he used the stage names WillMcIver.
Arthur Prince was an English music hall entertainer and ventriloquist.
Marie Loftus was a British music hall entertainer of the late Victorian era often billed as "The Sarah Bernhardt of the Music Halls" and "The Hibernian Hebe". She became one of the leading stars of music hall from the 1880s to World War I.
Rosina Vokes was a British music hall, pantomime and burlesque actress and dancer and a member of the Vokes Family troupe of entertainers before having a successful career in her own right in North America from 1885 to 1893.
William Frederick Bridgen, known professionally as Fred W. Leigh, was an English lyricist who co-wrote several popular music hall songs of the early twentieth century,
Charles William Collins was an English songwriter, who composed the music for several famous music hall songs of the early twentieth century.
Edward William Rogers was an English songwriter for music hall performers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Walter Augustus Pink was an English music hall performer, writer and theatre producer.
Marie Lloyd Jr. was a British entertainer, composer and actress notable for her performances impersonating her mother, the music hall performer Marie Lloyd.
Thomas William Barrett was an English music hall comedian and singer, most popular at the end of the nineteenth century.
William Joseph Lee Colverd, who used the stage name Arthur Reece, was an English comedian and singer who performed in music halls.
