A mildly diverting trip down the Lea with Griff Rhys Jones, as part of his Rivers series. (Diamond Geezer's doing a more thorough job, walking the Lea Valley, for his local history month spot this year)
Coming down into the East End, past Hackney Marshes, he – Griff RJ that is – gives us a quick "if it wasn't for the 'ouses in between". Which made me wonder – who did that? Well, here's the original, recorded in 1899 (!) by music hall star Gus Elen, and put up on YouTube against a mixture of Gustave Doré London prints, and photos from the period:
Wiv a ladder and some glasses
You could see to 'ackney marshes
If it wasn't for the 'ouses in between
A bit scratchy, but you can make him out
And here he is in person. No clue as to the date though (he died in 1940, aged 77). The Twenties? Music hall generally doesn't date well, somehow, but he looks like he was a class act.
Update: some elaboration on that point about music hall not dating well. Search for Gus Elen on YouTube and one of the first hits is this - "'arf a pint of ale" – which sums up for me everything grim about music hall: that stupid walk, the false bonhomie, the coordinated audience participation, the sentimentality. I could go on. But as a commenter points out, this isn't Gus Elen; it's some bloke playing him in a later film. Which prompts the thought: is our idea of music hall fatally tainted by its late appropriation by its more genteel cousin Variety, and those awful TV shows like The Good Old Days, of – for me – unhappy childhood memory? Was music hall, in fact, a much better more vibrant working class entertainment than we give it credit for, and one that's largely hidden from us now by what it turned into, and by the patronising and sentimental way it's been portrayed since its late Victorian/Edwardian heyday?
On the yes side you've got the evidence here. The real, wonderful, Gus Elen doing that "Isn't it a pity" song, against the 'orrible "'arf a pint of ale". But then "'arf a pint of ale" was a Gus Elen song. It's probably six of one, 'arf a dozen of the other.
Update 2: purely by 'appenstance, here's Suggs ('im out of Madness) in today's Times, on the debt the nutty boys owe to music hall.
Mick Hartley 
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