harry bluff

matt was looking for imformation on harry bluff. he was my great uncle

Harry Bluff was connected with Edison BELL from the 1890s till the 1920s and made 100s of recordings many of them what we would call cover versions, mainlt of popular entertaines on the stage of the music hall, most of the work of Dan Leno seem to has been reproduced in the studio by harry, he also announce most of the records of other people so must have been in the studio much of the time.
he also record under the name Bobby Naish on Edison cylinders I have a copy of " lets have a song about father " from this period and he appears on winner records in spoken word humour,
ther must be a fairly huge dicography to be done.

Interesting! I never knew he used the name Bobbie Naish for his Edison recordings. I have Snappy Stories. He only has 4 recordings on Edison blue amberols.
23295- Language
23308- Lets have a song about father
23322- Snappy stories
23350- Our hotel

There are also 2 Edison 4 minute wax amberols.
12460- Seaside swank
12433-We all went marching home again

And 2 Edison 2 minute wax.
14131- I should like a girl
14141- Paper bag cockery

I've also got the complete list of Edison Bell disc's, and the early brown wax series of cylinders, so as soon as I get a bit more time, I'll compile a list of what's in these two discographies, and post it here if your interested. There's actually 80 Harry Bluff titles in the brown wax series alone from 1896-1902.

The U of C cylinder site also has the sound file for "Bedalia"
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/searc ... linder7110

vulcan2 wrote:Harry Bluff was connected with Edison BELL from the 1890s till the 1920s and made 100s of recordings many of them what we would call cover versions, mainlt of popular entertaines on the stage of the music hall, most of the work of Dan Leno seem to has been reproduced in the studio by harry, he also announce most of the records of other people so must have been in the studio much of the time.
he also record under the name Bobby Naish on Edison cylinders I have a copy of " lets have a song about father " from this period and he appears on winner records in spoken word humour,
ther must be a fairly huge dicography to be done.

dear shane, very interesting imformation. harry bluff was my great uncle, i don't know too much about him, he died in 1942, my aunt never remarried. i knew he worked for edison bell, i don't know if he did anything other than sing, it seems you know more about him than me! i have one theatre bill of him , done during 14/18 war.i knew he sang with dan leno, i found an article they sang in devon at one point.i also have the origional bill for his funeral!his real name was charles leonce bluff, wonder why he called himself harry? i would be pleased if you have any more info

Hello Janet,
I have just come across your site and was interested to learn you are related to Harry Bluff, being a record researcher I was very interested and can give you a little more information. It is known he was making cylinders for Edison Bell in the 1890's and early in the 1900's he was their London representative. In 1912 he was interviewed by the Talking Machine News.It appears that when he was 16 he took part in a benefit concert probably in London, a number of the other artists did not turn up and he was asked to take their spot. It so happened in the audience was a musical hall artist by the name of Chirgwin the White-eyed Kaffir, who was so impressed by Harry's performance that he invited Harry to sing at a benefit concert he was organising. Because of this Chirgwin arranged for Harry Bluff to tour the halls. Soon he was to meet Mr J.E.Hough the director of Edison Bell record company and then spent most of his time making cylinder records probably until around 1904. Harry and his wife Theresa Grace Kellaway took the first cinematograph show to the West Indies, contributing the musical portion of the show. Other fields where his work is well known and liked apart from the Indian Continent were Lucerne and Paris and the English Colonies. He was well known for imitating Dan Leno. Harry was also a mason and in 1912 he was musical director of Favourite records. Did you know that his wife Theresa who was born in Newport Monmouth in 1874 was also a singer and circ 1903/04 made a few cylinders for the Edison Bell Company, no doubt arranged by her husband Harry. Up to 1916 he used many pseudonyms as shown below:-
Lyric ex Favorite = Fred Lynne and Will Denton
Philharmonic Ex Favotite = Len Morden
Grammovox = Gus Robeerts, Tom Wilkins, Tom Richards, Leonard Lee
Bell Disc = Arthur Elwood
Edison Bell Winner = Frank Webber
Favorite = Bobbie Naish, Morgan Wilder
Beka = Harry Hargreaves
Scala Ex Beka = Robert Nash, Bob Naish
Guardsman = Leonard morgan
Jumbo = James Hale
Coliseum ex Beka = Chris Bryan, Reggie Scott, James T. Spence, Maurice Cohen
Homophone = Arthur Grant
Polyphon?Pilot = Milton Raby
Pathe = Lem Moden
I expect there are others awaiting discovery, he probably did not know his records were issued under some of these names.
His last records were made for Edison Bell Winner in December 1927. By this time his style of singing was becoming out of date with the new crooners coming along.
You ask why he was called Harry Bluff, I think I know the answer, he was born in Shoreditch and was therefore a London Cockney and their slang for snuff was 'Harry Bluff' !! (He was a comedian)
A question for you, do you know when his wife died and did they have any children?
regards
Mike

Thats for the many replied. Thats very fascinating. I have been wondering for many years, and didn't know anyone with any info. I do have some edison bell pink indistructables of him, pathe (issued as harry bluff), nd a make called 'lryic' disc records.

nice to here from you jannet and everyone

If Matt or Janet could send me a PM with your email address, I can send you scans of the Edison Bell brown cylinder releases By Harry Bluff. There's a few too many to post here

I came across a Zonophone record by Harry with Billy Whitlock recorded in 1916. I've uploaded both sides on youtube if you'd like to have a listen.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=iCfyoRwd8J0

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=hX7jRqbwAJQ

And this is Snappy Stories by "Bobbie Naish" on Edison Blue Amberol no.23322. It's got a terrible click for part of the recording due to scratch on the cylinder, but it's a great comedy sketch.

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=is-dFGJdm4I

dear shane
good to hear from you my email janet.hagger1@ntlworld.com
this is all very interesting, i never realised uncl harry was so well known! janet :

Hi Janet
I have just joined this group and saw your message about your uncle. There is more about him by the recording manager Joe Batten which he wrote about in his memoirs. Here is one of several entries:
"It must be remembered the Harry Bluff and Hunting recorded before the days of duplication. Every record sold was actually made by the artiste, and this meant that if a company received an order for, say, fifty cylinders of a certain title, the artiste had to record it fifty times, the recognised fee being five shillings for each one made. On the occasion of Bluff’s two-thousandth record, which occurred in 1906, he celebrated by treating me to a lunch. Harry’s recording routine at that time would run something like this : Dan Leno’s “Huntsman” sung twenty-five times consecutively, followed by “Maggie Murphy’s Home” another twenty-five times, then, by way of variety, twenty-five declamations of a Minister’s speech in the House taken verbatim from The Times. This repetition of songs and speeches went on day after day ; one day he actually achieved the phenomenal number of sixty-eight cylinder recordings. The monotony of the day on which we lunched together had been lightened by a no means unusual mishap. Bluff had been recording a Leno number with a long string of running patter. During this the recorder, afraid of running over time, exclaimed, “Hurry up, Harry.” “All right,” replied Harry, cutting the patter and going on to the last chorus."
If you want to see more and have an Amazon Kindle you can find it at this URL :
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007Q1U4RA
It's a good read
Regards

Harry Bluff was connected with Edison BELL from the 1890s till the 1920s and made 100s of recordings many of them what we would call cover versions, mainlt of popular entertaines on the stage of the music hall, most of the work of Dan Leno seem to has been reproduced in the studio by harry, he also announce most of the records of other people so must have been in the studio much of the time.