As usual I have greatly enjoyed the latest THA Newsletter, and the piece by Richard Fotheringham on the song ‘A Brown Slouch Hat’ stirred a particular memory with me. Let me tell you about it:
As usual I have greatly enjoyed the latest THA Newsletter, and the piece by Richard Fotheringham on the song ‘A Brown Slouch Hat’ stirred a particular memory with me. Let me tell you about it:
I was born in Sydney in 1937, and back in the 1940s when I was a small child, my mother took me regularly to matinees at the Tivoli, where Jenny Howard was one of the performers that I particularly liked. I probably heard her sing ‘A Brown Slouch Hat’ and later at home we had a copy of the sheet music with her photograph on it.
In the 1970s and 80s in London, when I was playing piano for music hall shows with Aline Waites’s Aba Daba Music Hall Company at the Pindar of Wakefield Pub at King’s Cross, we occasionally did themed shows and one of those was a ‘Down Under’ show, with Australian and New Zealand artists doing songs from their native lands. Bob Hornery sang ‘Tie Me Kangaroo Down’, David Ryder Futcher sang ‘The Band Played Waltzing Matilda’, and the other performers were Davilia David, Elaine Holland, Terry Bayler and Valerie Bader. I think it was the only Aba Daba bill that Valerie did, but she was quite brilliant when, to close the show, she sang ‘A Brown Slouch Hat’in a way that was both sentimental and inspiring, and she was than joined by the rest of the company as a grand finale. I was playing from the original Sydney sheet copy and for the reprise of the chorus at the end, I slowed the tempo down, with the effect that the song became twice as powerful and practically lifted the roof of our little theatre room. I had no idea that the song could have such an effect but it remains one of the most memorable music hall shows I have ever played for. Bravo George Wallace!
