SINGING TRAMP

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 May 1938, Page 10

SINGING TRAMP

VOICE TRAINED FROM CARUSO RECORDS . When his car was smashed, 28-year-old “Darkie” Scovell, sang in the streets to raise the price of another. Formerly he had tramped the roads of England, entertaining people in country inns by his golden tenor voice. This was the first time he had sung for money. Motoring from his home in Bognor Regis to Portmouth this week, to see a football match, he had a crash, and the car which he had bought from his savings as a foreman road builder was smashed to smithereens. Heart-broken, he returned to Bognor, where someone suggested that he should sing to get enough money to buy a new car.

Soon his voice attracted crowds. Pennies, shillings and half-crowns poured into his picturesque black hat.

“It seems funny to receive money for my voice which I have always looked upon as an attribute merely to please my friends,” said “Darkie” after his “concert.” When I was a lad I left my home in Guildford and started life as a tramp. In my travels I did odd jobs as a bricklayer, and all my savings were spent on buying gramophone records, especially those of Caruso, and, by listening to them I gradually trained my voice. “Then one day I had a letter from the 8.8. C. asking me to sing on the air. I started off to London, but spent too much time singing on the way and never arrived there.”