STREET SINGER.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18725, 23 June 1926, Page 9

STREET SINGER.

ON THRESHOLD OF FAME. (trom our owh cobrmjootsxt.) SYDNEY, June, 17. For a long time passers-by in Sydney's crowded streets have been attracted by the remarkable singing of an itinerant canvasser, a partially blind youth, and an orphan, who can neither read nor write to any extent, and whose haunts have been the shadows of the recesses of shop doors. It looks now as though he stands a fair chance of scaling the Olympian heights. A leading musio teacher heard him in the street, brought him under the notice of other critics, who were equally impressed with hia beautiful, although entirely uncultured voice, and to his amazement he found himself a few nights ago, in one of the leading broadcasting studios, singing before a vast unseen audience, snatches of operatic airs, with the same facility that ho sang one or two English melodies, and afterwards made a faltering speech over the wireless. The question now is whether, with the assistance which has been promised him, he can concentrate on studies which will enable him to cultivate what is regarded in good quarters as a most promising voice. He has fostered his love of good music by saving' up for the best records, and. playing them on a borrowed gramophone, in a lodging house, in which he sorrowfully confesses he is not in the right environment. The fact that he brings home classic records running up to 10s and 12s is regarded by his fellow lodgers as a species of lunacy. - The story is also told of how he manages to gratify his musical tastes by attending, by hook or by crook, the best concerts. He has now been given a chance. It remains to be seen whether he can grasp it.