Song Writers

Harry Castling 1865 - 1933

Writer of some of the best, most memorable songs of the era.
Many have stood the test of time.

Whilst trawling for Music Hall sites I was very pleased to find 'The Stage' on-line. Amongst its pages there is one devoted to 'Heydays' and a letters' page where people look for information about people from times gone by. On that page was a letter asking if anyone had picture of Harry Castling.

It was the wife of one of Harry Castling's g-great nephews who brought him back to public notice and has a list of 500 songs. Effectively it increases our knowledge of his output by some two hundred percent.

In 'Sing us One of the Old Songs' Michael Kilgarriff lists some thirty seven songs attributed to Harry. He notes that Harry Castling was also known as Nat Maceo and as S.V.Fordykern. Among the songs listed, Michael includes a sketch 'Our Laundry'

As a measure of the popularity of Harry Castlings work I can say that of the songs listed by MK, I have either heard sung or have sung myself within this last year at least half of them. FD

"The Melodies Linger On" by Walter Macqueen-Pope includes a short reference to put Harry Castling amongst the best of the writers of the time.