Solo Men

Laddie Cliff   1891-1937

How he became a singer is still a mystery to Laddie Cliff. All he can tell you is that his parents were amateur entertainers in Bristol. When he was five years of age they joined a professional concert party, and were immediately bundled off to Lerwick, in the Shetland Isles, and it was there he began.

His curious "monkey-on-the-string antics as an eccentric dancer were well known on the halls long before he joined " The Bing Girls" at the Albambra.To everybody’s surprise be suddenly became famous as a singer in "JigSaw" at the London Hippodrome in 1920, with "Swannee".

Shortly after the idea of the Co-Optimists had been born, and before it had got much farther, he was idling one morning in the flat he had rented from Phyllis Bedells near Baker Street, when Ivy St. Helier came down from the flat above with an inspiration. "I’ve hit on the music of a song like Swannee," she said. "Can you give me some words?" While searching for inspiration, he'd looked at the coalscuttle and "Coal-Black Mammy" was the result. The song was finished that morning and published the next day. Ivy St. Helier and Marie Blanche sang it as a duet at the Coliseum, and a fortnight later Laddie Cliff sang it at the Royalty on the very first night of the Co-Optimists. It became a 'song that will never die'. Stanley Holloway sang it as Jack Hulbert would sing it and Gilbert Childs as Harry Champion would sing. Laddie Cliff sang "Too Much Coal-Black Mammy." Phyllis Monkman brought in the head of Coal-Black Mammy on a charger. "That’s killed it" said Laddie Cliff. But he was wrong.

From Romance of the Music Hall by M.Wilson Disher