Can anyone tell me anything about light music composer Tolchard Evans - 1930's?

Question

I think he wrote a lot of very popular light music songs around the 1930's to 1950's but there is no information about his life anywhere that I can find on the internet. Many thanks.

Answer 1

www.naxos.com/composerinfo/3504.htm
Here is his biography

Answer 2

i think of according to danger it is because of the fact basic minds take a seem at each little thing that has ever been written...and therefor think of that one and all the forged techniques have been taken up already, or that it truly is only too annoying to come returned up with some thing new, yet comparable....hence they think of they should come returned up with some thing completely off the wall to make it unique. which would be partly actual, yet there's a line between 'unique' and rubbish. Schoenberg and Messiaen have been the masters of coming up new, present day styles of music, and did so tastefully, besides the incontrovertible fact that i think of a pair of you, including Duchess, would disagree on the latter section. i'm continuously open minded while it includes new music. i'm going to decide impartial. Boy ask your self EDIT: Malcolm, you point out Prokofiev because of the fact the only wherein whose music became the tip of the line so some distance as atonal/serialism taken heavily into music, and that something extra is "unmusic". Ugh. I actual have a extra liberal view of music. i think of any sounds in any respect composed for the sake of paintings is music. that would not only inevitably advise you are able to throw jointly a collection of pitches, write it down and make contact with it music, only such as you cant throw a collection of random words or letters on paper and make contact with it a narrative. i'm having a annoying time attempting to define what "music" is. it sort of feels to be a subjective factor. on a similar time as a truth seeker and truth seeker jointly with myself, i can't seem to be sure what one topic ALL music has in user-friendly, that makes it "music". the wonderful i will do is to define it this type: that slightly music is actual music no remember if it truly is correct interior itself, and has a user-friendly topic interior itself. Boy ask your self returned.

Answer 3

he was working up until his death in 1978. Have a look at http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0263265/, good basic information which covers all his works and can lead you towards more research.

cheers,
sue

Answer 4

From Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (my library subscribes)

Evans, (Sydney Edmund) Tolchard (1901–1978), popular song composer, was born on 20 September 1901 at 238 Portnall Road, West Kilburn, London, the son of (Edmund) George Evans, a commercial clerk and later an engineer, and his wife, Maud Mary, née Tolchard. While he was still a boy the family moved to nearby Willesden, and he lived in the area for the rest of his life. He grew up in a musical family, his father playing several instruments and his sister becoming an orchestral violinist. He took his first piano lessons at six and quickly displayed a musical ear and a talent for extemporization. He studied orchestration and conducting and had an early ambition to be a serious composer, but in 1919 he joined the Lawrence Wright popular music publishing company as office boy, gaining valuable contacts in the popular music industry and seeing his first songs in print.

In 1924 Evans left to work as pianist for silent films and dance bands, and by 1925 he had his own band at the Queen's Hotel, Westcliff-on-Sea. He later moved to the Palace Hotel, Southend, where he remained for most of the 1930s. Also in 1925 he enjoyed modest success as a songwriter when ‘Every Step towards Killarney’ was performed by the Savoy Havana Band. His first international hit came in 1926 with ‘Barcelona’, which built on the popularity of the continental hit song ‘Valencia’. About this time he and his regular lyricists Stanley J. Damerell and Robert Hargreaves formed the Cecil Lennox Music Company to publish their songs. These included ‘Dreamy Devon’ in 1930, and ‘Lights of Paris’ and ‘Life's Desire’ in 1931, in which year they also achieved their greatest success with another Spanish-flavoured number, ‘Lady of Spain’. Because of its unfamiliar paso doble rhythm, it was turned down by several bands before being launched by Jack Payne. It went on to achieve international success and ultimate classic status in Spain itself.

On Christmas day 1931 Evans married Phyllis Elizabeth Mayhead (b. 1906/7); they had two sons. In the following year he enjoyed another major British song success with an old-time comedy chorus number, ‘Let's All Sing like the Birdies Sing’, that rapidly caught on when broadcast by Henry Hall. In 1934 came a series of songs with one-word titles—‘Faith’, ‘If’, and ‘Unless’—and in 1935 he produced ‘The Song of the Trees’ and ‘There's a Lovely Lake in London’. At one time four of Evans's songs were being used by major London dance bands as signature tunes, while another was similarly used by the commercial radio station Radio Normandy. He continued to turn out popular dance numbers during the 1940s, among them ‘I Hear Your Voice’ (1942) and ‘Sailor, who are You Dreaming of Tonight?’ (1944). As bandleader he was featured on BBC radio, notably with his Tuneful Twenties series in 1949 and John Bull's Band in 1951.

Also in 1951 Evans's songwriting career enjoyed a boost when a recording of ‘If’ by Perry Como sold over a million copies. On the back of it, Evans spent three months in the USA in 1952, a year which saw another million-seller in Eddie Fisher's recording of ‘Lady of Spain’. Back in Britain the song ‘Ev'rywhere’ won an Ivor Novello award in 1955, as did ‘My September Love’ and ‘I'll Find You’ in 1957. Both the latter went into the hit charts in recordings by David Whitfield, the former reaching number three and the latter being featured in the film The Sea Wife starring Richard Burton. After recovering from a nervous breakdown, Evans enjoyed his final song success with his own recording of ‘The Singing Piano’ in 1959.

Besides writing background music for other films and television, Evans also appeared on such television shows as The Black and White Minstrel Show and The Billy Cotton Band Show. A popular, sometimes outspoken person, known as Tolch, he was ever willing to turn out a song in response to a telephone call, and his total output supposedly exceeded 1000 songs. Increasingly unfashionable, however, these began to accumulate unpublished in a trunk in the garage of his home at 53 Hardinge Road, Kensal Rise. In 1973–4 he won an Ivor Novello award for outstanding services to British music and in 1976 was featured on the radio programme Desert Island Discs. As luxury item he chose a pile of manuscript paper to write non-commercial music, and his selected book was the works of Voltaire, whose sense of humour he claimed to share. He died at the Central Middlesex Hospital, Park Royal, London, on 12 March 1978, and was survived by his wife.

Andrew Lamb
Sources E. Rogers and M. Henessy, Tin Pan Alley (1964) · M. White, You must remember this … (1983) · Desert island discs, 28/30 April 1976 [BBC Radio 4] · P. Gammond, The Oxford companion to popular music (1991) · b. cert. · m. cert. · d. cert. · CGPLA Eng. & Wales (1978)

Archives

SOUND BL NSA, performance recordings


Likenesses photograph, repro. in P. Cliffe, Fascinating rhythm (1990), 68

Wealth at death £44,969: probate, 7 July 1978, CGPLA Eng. & Wales


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Andrew Lamb, ‘Evans, (Sydney Edmund) Tolchard (1901–1978)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/66776, accessed 21 Aug 2007]

(Sydney Edmund) Tolchard Evans (1901–1978): doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/66776