Time prolific songwriter and star of music hall world was recognised
A short biography of Fred Godfrey (Llewellyn Williams from Swansea) 1880-1953
FRED Godfrey was one of the greatest songwriters during the prolific Empire Theatre era of national entertainment.
Why would I write about a pop song composer on a brass band page? Well, I believe he will become known in the future as I am sure that many of his songs will soon start to be heard all over again as his very popular songs are now in the public domain and can be arranged for brass bands to play.
The songs were very popular during the end of the 19th century and first half of the 20th.
During the early days of his composing there was no such thing as copyright and songs would be sold by composers for as little as £3 to £10.
Fred composed more than 800 songs and, as he always seemed to be short of cash, sold many of them to other composers who would then put their own names to them.
Fred gave a list to his son of a number of songs that he had written and not all of them are now listed under his name.
Fred was born Llewellyn Williams at 62 New Oxford Street, Swansea, in 1880. His father Robert came from Holywell, North Wales, and had numerous occupations from selling fancy goods, a general dealer to finally an auctioneer, ending up as a bankrupt in 1892.
Very little is known about Fred’s early life.
He had no formal musical instruction, but in 1897 there is a comment about his piano playing in the Merthyr Times by mentioning, “Messrs R Williams and Son’s auction vans are a huge enjoyment nightly to the younger members of the community. Impromptu concerts, etc, are of nightly occurrence.”
Fred was a brilliant pianist and was heard playing in Cardiff in 1895 by the Prime Minister of Poland, Ignace Jan Paderewski, who offered to take him on as a pupil.
Fred’s father refused the offer as he believed “there was no money in music!”.
In 1901 Fred left home and married Bertha Lloyd, the daughter of a railway worker in Treherbert.
Fred and Bertha settled in London where from 1907 he teamed up with Harry Castling to produce many hits like I’ll Tell Tilly On The Telephone, Meet Me Jenny When The Sun Goes Down and It’s The Only Bit of English That We’ve Got, which Billy Williams recorded successfully.
Billy was a huge star and from 1911 to his death in 1915 almost every one of Billy’s large numbers of recordings was a Williams and Godfrey composition.
Throughout his career Fred had an extraordinary talent for composing songs to suit the singers.
He wrote songs for publishers
Francis, Day and Hunter and Bert Feldman and also Florrie Ford, Mark Sheridan, Dorothy Ward, Ella Retford and Vesta Victoria – all big stars of the time. During World War I Godfrey gained a reputation as a writer of war songs. Take Me Back To Dear Old Blighty was recorded by Dorothy Ward in 1916 and quickly became a hit song.
In January 1917 he was conscripted into the Royal Navy Air Service.
He was transferred to the Royal Air Force in 1918 and he was released from service to continue writing songs to keep up the spirits of the British people.
He wrote Down Texas Way when in the service and Bless ’Em All in 1917, which later was to be adopted by the RAF as their anthem, even if they did change some of the words.
In the 1930s he wrote songs for Irish tenor Tom Finglass and comic songs for George Formby and Radio’s Gert and Daisy and Max Miller’s 1938 film Everything Happens To Me which featured the title song and two others.
To see such a giant of the Entertainment industry and a man recognised by the government who asked him to leave the RAF and concentrate on keeping up the spirits of the British people not to be celebrated in any way in the city of his birth is absolutely criminal.
Swansea’s New Oxford Street is no longer in existence, but there should be some memorial to remember such a colossus of the Music Hall world.
Truth is a lot more interesting than fiction, at least when it comes to the story of the worst national football team on the planet.
American Samoa’s record-breaking 31-0 defeat to Australia in 2001 put them at the bottom of the rankings and on the radar of documentary film-makers Mike Brett and Steve Jamison.
Their delightful 2014 film of the same name followed hardline Dutch-American coach Thomas Rongen as he tried to turn a collection of wheezing misfits into a cohesive team ahead of a crunch World Cup qualifier against Tonga.
The usually reliable Taika Waititi seemed like the perfect director and co-writer for the inevitable Hollywood drama.
Sadly, while Brett and Jamison were spoiled by the number of interesting stories they unearthed, Waititi packs every scene with clunky, zany comedy.
Waititi himself appears in a mugging, irritating cameo as a local religious leader. Michael Fassbender plays Rongen as a grumpy Irish-American alcoholic. If you’ve seen The Killer, you’ll know he plays a great psycho.
Sadly, tickling funny bones and plucking heartstrings doesn’t appear to be in this actor’s skillset.
The players, so fascinating in the documentary, are largely anonymous, save Jaiyah (Kaimana), a defender who belongs to the Samoa’s long-accepted third gender, the fa’afafine. In this account, Jaiyah is the film’s star striker and the player who somehow forces Fassbender to confront a tragic backstory.
Even that feels tacked on in a chaotically structured drama which only becomes interesting when we reach the climactic clash with Tonga.
It seems watching decent people beat the odds is always cheering. The formula of the sports drama works, no matter how lazily it’s applied.
In cinemas from Boxing Day