Bessie Jones (1887 – November 1974) was a Welsh singer featured on some of the earliest recordings of songs from London musicals. Jones began a professional opera career soon after training at the Royal College of Music. From 1913 to 1926, she was a contract singer for HMV studios, recording numerous popular songs, Welsh folksongs and musical theatre songs, and appearing on recordings of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas and several other works. She also had an oratorio and concert career and sang in BBC radio broadcasts.
Jones was a contract singer for HMV studios from 1913 to 1926 recording popular numbers as well as Welsh folksongs in the original Welsh.[7] Among her notable recordings was the original 1918 recording of the song "Peter Pan", Noël Coward's first lyric for the London stage, from the revue Tails Up!.[8] This was Coward's first publicly performed song.[9] She was one of HMV's contract singers to use the pseudonym "Madame Deering."[10]
In the concert hall, Jones's repertoire included Berlioz' La damnation de Faust and Bach's St Matthew Passion.[15] She was a pioneer broadcaster, singing on BBC radio when the organisation was still a limited company.[16] In one performance from 1938 on a BBC radio programme in Wales, she was accompanied on the piano by her husband Edgar Jones.[17]
Notes
^"Flattering Reception of Miss Bessie Jones at Queens Hall London". The Rhondda Leader. William David Jones. 30 August 1913. hdl:10107/4613745.[dead link]
^"The Royal College of Music", The Times, 25 Match 1910, p. 6; and "Royal College of Music Exhibitions", The Times, 1 April 1912, p. 12
^"Royal College of Music Operatic Performance", The Times, 22 November 1911. p. 10
^"The Promenade Concerts", The Times, 22 August 1913, p. 6
^"The Covent Garden Season – Das Rheingold", The Manchester Guardian, 22 April 1914, p. 5
^"The London Promenade Concerts", The Manchester Guardian, 22 August 1913, p. 9
^The Gramophone – Volume 54 – 1976, p. 755. Obituary: "Jones [at HMV] recorded [a song] from the fertile brain of Sir Noel Coward, then aged eighteen. Bessie Jones was also a member of the chorus behind many Hayes recordings by stars of the London musical theatre during the thirteen years".
^Levin, Milton. Noël Coward (1989), p. 14: "[Coward's] oldest surviving work is a song, "Forbidden Fruit," written in 1915 but not publicly performed, apparently, until 1924".
^Hillandale News – Volume 221, p. 226 (1998): "A prolific recording artist in the Edwardian period was the soprano Eleanor Jones, who began with Welsh songs ... the pseudonym "Madame Deering" was also used for some of the recordings of another Welsh soprano, Bessie Jones."
^"The Gramophone Co., Ltd", The Times, 25 September 1918. p. 10
^Gramophone Notes", The Times, 31 October 1924, p. 10
^Rust, pp. 67 and 79; "New Gramophone Records", The Times, 3 August 1922, p. 11; "The Gramophone Company Ltd", The Times, 5 December 1922, p. 9; and "Gramophone Records for April", The Times, 5 April 1923, p. 7
^"Langham Choral Society, The Times, 11 November 1920, p. 12; and "The Eisteddfod", The Times, 9 August 1928, p. 12
Rollins, Cyril; R. John Witts (1962). The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in Gilbert and Sullivan Operas: A Record of Productions, 1875–1961. London: Michael Joseph. OCLC504581419.
Rust, Brian, ed. (1975). Gramophone Records of the First World War – An HMV Catalogue 1914–18. Newton Abbot: David and Charles. ISBN0-7153-6842-7.