Geoffrey O'Hara

Geoffrey O'Hara

Geoffrey O'Hara (born February 2, 1882 in Chatham , Ontario , † January 31, 1967 in Saint Petersburg , Florida ) was a Canadian - American singer and composer.

Life

O'Hara had piano lessons as a child and was a singer and organist at Chatham Anglican Church when he was twelve . At eighteen he was to enter the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ontario. This was made impossible by the death of his father, and he took a job at a bank. He later worked as an accountant in a piano shop.

In 1904 he joined the Lew Dockstader's Minstrels , a minstrel show that performed in the New York area. There he also sang baritone roles in operas at Daly's Theater and gave singing lessons. His first recordings were made around 1905 as a member of a vocal quartet with Edison.

In 1913 the American government appointed him an instructor in American Indian music . In this capacity, he recorded traditional Native American singers on wax cylinders, making him one of the first ethnomusicologists to use this technique. Later he sang even some recordings of songs of the Navajos for Victor Records and Edison.

Ragtime Colored Fireworks was written in 1905 as O'Hara's first composition . He had his breakthrough as a composer in 1913 with the song Your Eyes Have Told Me What I Did Not Know, which Enrico Caruso recorded on the Victor label. His first hit was Tennessee the following year , I Hear You Calling Me, a song that earned him plagiarism allegations because of alleged resemblance to Charles Marshalls and Harold Harford's I Hear You Calling Me .

His song KKK-Katy, which was composed in 1918 and became so popular with the Canadian, US and British armies that they sold the sheet music more than a million times, became famous . Billy Murray's recording of the song on Victor Records was also a success . The title was later used in more than a dozen films (including Tin Pan Alley ).

After the First World War, O'Hara worked primarily as a music teacher. He also taught songwriting, was an instructor at the Teachers' College of Columbia University and taught at Huron College and the University of South Dakota .

In the 1920s he made other recordings, including Gitz Rices , Burmah Moon and Doughboy Jack and Donut Jill, and O'Hara set poems by William Henry Drummond (The Wreck of the “Julie Plante”) to music. From the end of the 1920s he concentrated on his work as a composer. Around 500 songs were written, including patriotic songs, hymns and popular titles; O'Hara also composed twelve operettas by 1948. He also made a name for himself as a composer of barbershop music (The old songs) .

In 1941 O'Hara was elected to the board of directors of ASCAP , in 1945 he became president of the Composers-Authors Guild . As a member of the United Service Organization , he was also involved in the cultural care of the American troops. In 1947 the University of South Dakota awarded him an honorary doctorate.

Web links

• Geoffrey O'Hara, composer, singer and lecturer (Library and Archives Canada - The Virtual Gramophone)
• Geoffrey O'Hara (The Canadian Encyclopedia)
• Geoffrey O'Hara in the Internet Movie Database (English)