Solo Men

Eugene Stratton 1861-1918

Born at Buffalo, near Niagara Falls, in 1861. Eugene Stratton’s parents had come from Alsace. His mother died in Leslie Stuart’s arms when he visited Buffalo.

Eugene Stratton first blacked up as a small boy in a saloon near his home. ...

"... there was nothing of the nigger minstrel or the real negro in the gentle coon he became when he sang Leslie Stuart’s songs. He blurted out the words so wistfully and warbled the whistling solos so tenderly that he was sheer romance. In his soft shoes he danced as noiselessly on the darkened stage as a wraith." For "Drum Major of the Band", he led a squad of military coons who were actually Guardsmen blacked up. "Later on he had the stage to himself except when singing "I May Be Crazy," for though the horsethief addressed his appeal to a closed window, a bearded cowboy came to arrest him at the end."

Condenced from Romance of the Music Hall by M.Wilson Disher

One of the most artistic of them all was Eugene Stratton, an American by birth who lived and worked here so long that he became one of ourselves. And his name must be linked with that of his song writer, an Englishman known as Leslie Stuart, for though each had made his name when they met for the first time the period when they worked together was their golden age.

Eugene Stratton came to London from America with Haverly's Minstrels, a famous troupe, stayed here when they returned home, joined the Moore and Burgess Minstrels at the old St. James's Hall, in Piccadilly (on the site of the Piccadilly Hotel) and married the daughter of "Pony" Moore, one of the proprietors of that famous black-faced company. Then tiring of minstrelsy and seeking fresh fields to conquer, Stratton ventured on the halls as a single turn and with a white face. The experiment was not a success, so he blacked up again and did better. Then he got a good song "The Dandy Coloured Coon" by Le Brun and Richard Morton; it was a fine song with a swinging melody and Stratton made a big hit with it; and when the same team, with the addition of J. P. Harrington to help with the lyrics, provided him with "The Idler," Stratton was a star.

Some may remember those songs; "The Dandy Coloured Coon" whose full name was John James Ebenezer Hezekiah Peter Henry Zachariah John James Brown. Didn't they know him? he asked. Well, they would very soon. As "The Idler," with a most appropriate melody Stratton, just insisting that he was an I-D-L-E-R letting the world go round did one of those soft-shoe dances in which he excelled. Then came his wonderful partnership with Leslie Stuart a church organist.

When the ex-organist met the ex-nigger minstrel to form a unique combination, the two men became the closest and firmest of friends. Eugene Stratton's mother, an old lady, died in Leslie Stuart's arms; while on a visit to America he had called to see her and she was delighted to see her son's friend and collaborator. It cheered her last moments.

Many were the songs which Stuart wrote and Stratton sang, many songs in many moods, and all of them gems. There was the song of the triumphant, successful lover, whose girl pined for him; her name was "Little Dolly Daydrearn," the Pride of Idaho. Everyone knows the tune and those who were lucky enough to have heard, and seen, Stratton sing it, know what a piece of consummate artistry it was. In another mood he sang "The Little Octoroon." The melody was beautiful, and throbbed with sadness., there was a phrase in the chorus which said that the wind in the pines had been humming out her name. Well, that was how Stratton sang it. After every song Stratton danced, and always his dance expressed the emotion of the song.

Perhaps the best known and best loved song of all is that true and spontaneous love song, that perfect gem of all time, "The Lily of Laguna." Though many years have passed since it was first sung, the moment the opening bars are played no audience anywhere can resist singing it, and they know the words too. An orchestra has but to creep into it and the oboe (Leslie Stuart's favourite instrument) take up the refrain, and it is enough. Stratton did not so much sing that song, as caress it. Of all the myriads who have sung it since, nobody ever got near his perfect rendering. There he was, a coon carried away in an ecstasy of love, discovered as the curtain rose, sitting on a gate, whittling away at a stick while the orchestra very softly played the introduction and then the verse.

But Stratton's thoughts seemed very far away from the music hall, they were with his Lily Girl. He whittled that stick by sheer force of habit, without knowing what he was doing, his mind fixed on his Lily and her sheep and cattle. And then, when the tension of watching that silent, dreaming figure could hardly be borne, was at breaking point, he would begin very softly, to speak his thoughts, intertwined with Stuart's wonderful melody. Then came the lovely strains of "The Shepherdess Call," one of the best things Stuart ever wrote, (and he wrote it for the oboe, of course). The words of the song, Stuart was his own lyric writer, were just spoken thoughts and that is how Stratton sang it.

The song over, he would slide into his soft-shoe dance and there is no such dancing today, the art of the Soft Shoe is a lost one. The last exponent was G. S. Melvin, but good as he was, he lacked the pitch of perfection attained by Eugene Stratton. For to 'Gene, it was not so much dancing as movement expressing the words he had just sung. He made no sound, he moved like a spirit of the air, with perfect grace and rhythm. Yet he had no set routine, he danced as he felt, and at every performance he would improvise. One might see that dance a hundred times, and many did, and always it would be fresh and different. There are no such artists today as 'Gene Stratton.

Besides love songs and brisk bright numbers like "That Little Gal of Johnson's" Stratton could also sing dramatically. Not that he was a vocalist in the accepted sense of the word, for his voice had little range or resonance and his technique was quiet, somewhat staccato and even jerky. But he knew all there was to know about how to sing a song, he acted the song rather than sang it, he lived the whole thing and was what the song represented him to be. Vocalists with fine voices cannot make those songs so real and so intensely human as did Stratton, for they were his songs, made for him by a master craftsman and they fitted him like his own skin.

Stratton as actor, and he was a very fine one, reached the heights in another glorious song by Stuart, a song of tragedy called "I May Be Crazy." This was about a negro horse thief, on the run for his life with the pursuers on his very heels, who yet must needs let his overwhelming love halt him to make a last desperate appeal to the girl whom he worshipped, but who spurned him. The whole song was drama, it had an urge, a breathlessness of words and music admirably suited to the situation. You could hear and understand the gasping prayer of the hard-pressed desperate man in every note and syllable. Stratton's very eyes were hunted, his figure tense and taut, as he stood before the cabin of his loved one and stammered out his plea.

He might be crazy, but he loved her, he gasped-he would do and dare anything-he might be shady, but he adored her -so would she not come come out and bid him "Good-bye" because-he might not-see her any more... The music matched the tensely gripping drama and the mad, violent, hopeless dance of abandon which followed was a very miracle, all the more grim for its silence. It ended with the posse, pistols in hand, dragging him away, as he wrenched himself round in their grasp to give one last despairing glance of dumb, stricken grief at the house of his loved one and throw out his arms in a mute appeal... Great actors have played scenes less skilfully and with less art than this music hall artist showed.

Stratton was a real star, earning £300 a week even before 1914 and now he is no more, he died in 1918 at the age of fifty seven. But that supreme combination of singer and composer had been broken before then. Like all things which should last, it came to an end long before its time and from a most trivial cause. Both Stuart and Stratton loved horse racing and attended many meetings together. And at one, they quarrelled over the merits of a horse running in a certain race. Not even an important horse or an important race, but they never spoke to each other again. Stratton would have made it up, but not Stuart. He was a proud and obstinate man, those were two of his failings; something about that quarrel cut him to the quick and the supreme combination was over...

Taken from The Melodies Linger On by W Macqueen-Pope