SONGS & RECITATIONS BY THE GREAT MUSIC HALL COMEDIAN

Years before Monty Python, a red-nosed comedian in disreputable tails and an improbable moustache created a world all his own. With his spoofs of well-loved poems, raucous street-corner singing and surreal narratives of life in the saveloy-and-gin class, Billy Bennett brought a spirit of daring and rebellion to English music hall and variety stages in the 1920s and ’30s.

“Billy Bennett will live in the annals of the music-hall. Nobody who saw him is likely to forget that rubicund, unaesthetic countenance, that black, plastered moustache, that dreadful dinner jacket, that well-used dickey and seedy collar, the too-short trousers, the hobnailed boots, the continual perspiration which was the outward and visible sign of a mind struggling for expression – these things will not be forgotten… Let it be said of Billy Bennett that he raised every night in the week to the level of Saturday night.” from James Agate’s Sunday Times obituary

Billy Bennett can now be seen as a street-wise surrealist and his remarkable humour shines as bright today as it did then. The CD is remastered to the highest standard from the best condition original 78-rpm discs.

1  Nell
2  My Mother Doesn’t Know I’m on the Stage
3  Mandalay
4  I’ll Be Thinking of You
5  Ogul Mogul – A Kanakanese Love Lyric
6  No Power on Earth
7  She was Poor But She was Honest
8  She was Happier When She Was Poor
9  The Miser
10  The Only Girl I Ever Loved
11  The Charge of the Tight Brigade
12  Don’t Send My Boy to Prison
13  Family Secrets
14  Please Let Me Sleep on Your Doorstep Tonight
15  Christmas Day in the Cookhouse
16  The Club Raid
17  She’s Mine
18  Mottoes
19  The Green Tie On The Little Yellow Dog

Available now from:
TOPIC SHOP, AMAZON, ITUNES and on SPOTIFY