Harry Clifton (singer)

Harry Clifton
Birth name Henry Robert Clifton
Born 1832 (1832)
Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, England
Died (1872-07-15)July 15, 1872 (aged 40)
Shepherd's Bush, London, England
Genres Music hall
Occupation(s) Singer, songwriter
Years active 1850s–1872

Harry Clifton (born Henry Robert Clifton, 1832 – 15 July 1872) was a British music hall singer, songwriter and entertainer. A prolific songwriter, his most successful song was "Pretty Polly Perkins of Paddington Green".

Biography

Clifton was born in Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, the son of a carpenter, and was baptised on 20 May 1832. He was orphaned as a child, and little is known of his early adulthood, but by the early 1860s he had become well known as a singer and songwriter in the song and supper rooms and early music halls of London. Nicknamed "Handsome Harry Clifton" during his career,[1] his repertoire included comic songs, Irish songs, and "motto songs", with an improving moral message, such as "Paddle Your Own Canoe" (1864).[2]

Clifton's songs were described as "equally popular and acceptable in the drawing-rooms of the rich as in the cottages of the poor".[2][3] Many taught a moral lesson; for example, "Pretty Polly Perkins", published in 1863, was about the pitfalls of pride and vanity.[4] He wrote his own lyrics. Although some of his songs relied on tunes by such composers as Charles Coote,[2] most adapted their tunes from old folk songs.[5] His other songs included "The Dark Girl Dress'd In Blue", "There's Nothing Succeeds Like Success", "It's Better to Laugh Than to Cry", and "Work, Boys, Work, and Be Contented!".[6]

A list of songs for sale held at the British Library names fifteen songs by Harry Clifton, described as "without exception, the best comic songs of the day".[7] Lithographs of several of his other songs are also held in the British Library online archive, including "The Dark Girl Dress'd In Blue" (which has a colour portrait of Clifton on the front page),[8] "Isabella, The Barber's Daughter"[9] and "The Railway Bell(e)".[10]

Clifton undertook a nationwide tour between 1865 and 1867, with his own Cosmopolitan Concert Company, and for some years lived in Glasgow.[6] He was married and had one child, Fanny Alice, who died aged six months.[1] He died aged 40 in July 1872, in Shepherd's Bush, London, and is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.[2]

One of his obituaries stated: "The popularity which his songs attained is best denoted by the fact that even now they are whistled by every street-boy, played by every barrel organ and sung in every town and hamlet in the United Kingdom."[2] The critic Peter Gammond describes Clifton as "one of the great pioneers of music-hall song."[6]

References

  1. 1 2 Monuments Restored, The Friends of Kensal Green Cemetery, retrieved 22 May 2014
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Baker, Richard Anthony (2014). British Music Hall: An Illustrated History. Barnsley: Pen & Sword. pp. 12–13. ISBN 978-1-78383-118-0.
  3. ↑ The Kathleen Barker Collection, University of Bristol Theatre Collection, by Christopher Robinson, Published in Scenes from Provincial Stages: Essays in Honour of Kathleen Barker ed. Richard Foulkes (The Society for Theatre Research, 1994)
  4. ↑ "Pretty Polly Perkins of Paddington Green" (1863), The Music Hall, The Victorian Web, retrieved 22 May 2014
  5. ↑ Let me make a nation's songs, and let who will make their laws, Roy Hudd, The Hiss and Boo Company, retrieved 19 May 2014
  6. 1 2 3 Gammond, Peter (1991). The Oxford Companion to Popular Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 120. ISBN 0-19-311323-6.
  7. ↑ Hopwood & Crew's Bulletin of New Music, Victorian popular music, Polly Perkins Of Paddington Green part 08, British Library online gallery, retrieved 22 May 2014
  8. ↑ The Dark Girl Dress'd In Blue part 01, British Library online gallery, retrieved 22 May 2014
  9. ↑ Isabella, The Barber's Daughter part 01, British Library online gallery, retrieved 22 May 2014
  10. ↑ The Railway Bell(e) part 01, British Library online gallery, retrieved 22 May 2014
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