PE0196. MARIE LLOYD: A Little of What You Fancy, The Marie Lloyd Record: recorded 1903 - 1915, also incl. recording of Alice Lloyd, Live Performance, London Hippodrome, 1939,plus Marie Lloyd, Jr. 1930 Broadcasts. (England) Pearl 9097, incl. elaborate 24-page brochure featuring numerous photos & complete texts of Marie Lloyd songs. Long out-of-print, final copy! - 727031909729

CRITIC REVIEW:

“Matilda Alice Victoria Wood (12 February 1870 – 7 October 1922) was an English music hall singer, best known as Marie Lloyd. Her ability to add lewdness to the most innocent of lyrics led to frequent clashes with the guardians of morality. Her performances articulated the disappointments of life, especially for working-class women. Marie's first major success was ‘The Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery’, and she quickly became one of the most famous of English music hall singers. Despite her own success she supported other performers during the Music Hall War of 1907, when performers demonstrated outside theatres for better pay and conditions. During the First World War, in common with most other music hall artists, she enthusiastically supported recruitment into the army. She first appeared in the USA in 1897, but in 1913 was initially refused entry to that country for ‘moral turpitude’.

On 4 October 1922 Marie collapsed on stage as she was performing at the Empire Music Hall in Edmonton, London, and died three days later. Her funeral on 12 October was attended by more than 100,000 people.

Born in Hoxton, London, her early interest in the music hall was fostered by her father John, who worked part-time in the nearby Royal Eagle Tavern. Marie formed her sisters into a singing group called the Fairy Bells Minstrels, singing temperance songs in local missions and church halls, costumed by their mother Matilda Mary Caroline Wood. In her teens, the younger Matilda Wood adopted the name Marie Lloyd, the surname taken from Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper, and quickly became one of the most famous of English music hall singers and comediennes.

Lloyd's songs, although perfectly harmless by modern standards, began to gain a reputation for being ‘racy’ and filled with double entendre, (‘She'd never had her ticket punched before’ for example) largely thanks to the manner in which she sang them, adding winks and gestures, and creating a conspiratorial relationship with her audience. She became the target of Vigilance or ‘Watch’ committees and others opposing music-hall licences. She liked to claim that any immorality was in the minds of the complainants, and in front of these groups would sing her songs ‘straight’ to show their supposed innocence. In one famous incident, she was summoned before one of these committees and asked to sing her songs. She sang ‘Oh! Mr Porter’; and ‘A Little of What You Fancy’ in such a sweet innocent way that the committee had no reason to find anything amiss. She then rendered the drawing-room ballad ‘Come into the Garden Maud’ in such an obscene way that the committee was shocked into silence. She did herself no favours.

More than 100,000 people attended Marie's funeral at Hampstead on 12 October 1922. In the funeral procession there were twelve cars full of flowers, and on top of the hearse was the long ebony cane with the sparkling top hat that she had used in her act. Her daughter by Courtenay, Marie (1888–1967) took the stage name Marie Lloyd Jr., appeared in a short musical film in the DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film process made in 1926, and performed in music hall for many years. She died in 1967 and was buried with her mother.”

"They don't pay their sixpences and shillings at a music hall to hear the Salvation Army. If I was to try to sing highly moral songs, they would fire ginger beer bottles and beer mugs at me. I can't help it if people want to turn and twist my meanings."

—Marie Lloyd, New York Telegraph