Music of World War I

Music hall

In 1914, Music hall was by far the most popular form of popular song. It was listened to and sung along to in theatres which were getting ever larger (three thousand seaters were not uncommon)and in which the musical acts were gradually dominating all other acts (animal imitators, acrobats, human freaks, conjurors etc.) The industry was more and more dominated by chains of theatres like Moss, and my music publishers, since selling sheet music was very profitable indeed - a real hit could sell over a million copies.

The seats at the music hall could be very cheap, and attracted a largely working class audience, for whom a gramophone would generally too expensive. Although many ordinary people had heard gramophones in seaside resorts or in park concerts organized by local councils, many more would discover the gramophone while in the army, since gramophone manufacturers produced large numbers of portable gramophones "for our soldiers in France".

The repertoire of songs was dominated by the jauntily comic. The domineering wife or Mother in Law, the bourgeois, the foreigner, the Black man and the Jew were cheerfully mocked in an atmosphere where objections to sexism or racism in songs were practically unknown. Many more songs were made up of tonguetwisters or other comic elements. Sentimental love songs and dreams of an ideal land (Ireland or Dixie in particular) made up another major category.

The singers moved from town to town, many scraping a living togethe, but a few making a lot of money. The key stars at the time were people like Marie Lloyd, Vesta Tilley, George Formby senior, Harry Lauder, Gertie Gitana and Harry Champion.

Enthusiasm for the war

At the outbreak of war, many songs were produced which called for young men to join up. Examples included "We don't want to lose you, but we think you ought to go", "Now you've got the khaki on" or "Kitcheners' boys".