SONG-WRITER’S LIFE

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 124, 19 February 1938, Page 6 (Supplement)

SONG-WRITER’S LIFE

From Luxury To Poverty

Before a spluttering gas fire in one of London’s poorest suburbs sits a man writing finis to a life story of fame and luxury.

And a story of hard luck, too, for he once had a fortune.

That fortune was founded on the success of a song published years ago in the “Sunday Chronicle.”

The forgotten song-writer is Clifford Harris, the man who wrote lyrics that made stars overnight in the days of the old music-halls. One of his best-known songs was “Every Little While I Feel So Lonely.” it brought him £llOO. He wrote it in just the time he took to smoke one cigar.

With Jimmy Tate he wrote the lyrics “Gay Bachelor” and “Paradise for ’Two” for the “Maid of the Mountains.” Then came his smash hit. “You Left Behind a Broken Doll.” It sold 250,000 copies, brought in £3OOO. And now “Broken Doll” will be the title of his own life story—the story he is writing in his 10/- a week room in Kentish town. The song that made him famous haunts him in his poverty. Clifford Harris told me he is -penniless, said Andrew Kidd in the “Sunday Chronicle” recently. But at 62 he is no broken doll in spirit. He flicked over the pages of his manuscript as he talked to me. “It all goes back to that first lyric

I had published in 1901 in the ‘Sunday Chronicle.’ ” he said. “With it I won a competition for a song verse about that old English subject—the weather.” Here it is: “The. Clerk of the Weather am I; A jovial chap altogether. I’m thought inexcusable. Always abusable, Cranky old Clerk of the Weather.” Its publication brought Harris a request from Cuthbert Bose, Manchester entertainer, for more verses. “That is how I was put on the map as a song-writer. A year or two later I joined up with Jimmy Tate. “We wrote scores of songs together—nearly all successes. “I bad a big house by the sea, a luxury car, a motor-launch. . . Then came tragedy. “Jimmy Tate died from pneumonia in 1922. . . I could not get down to song-writing without him. “Jazz soon became the rage. I could have written jazz songs as others did. But it was a. thing I loathed. I preferred poverty.” Song-writers are sentimental folk, even in distress. “Yesterday,” Clifford Harris said, “I was passing a music shop when I noticed one of my first songs, ’The Bain Came Pitter-Patter Down,’ being offered for a penny. “I had just one penny in my pocket. But I decided to buy my old song.”