Oley Speaks

Oley Speaks
Born June 28, 1874
Canal Winchester, Ohio, United States
Died August 7, 1948 (aged 74)
New York City, United States
Genres Art song, choral music
Occupation(s) Singer, composer
Instruments Voice
Years active 1898–1944

Oley Speaks (June 28, 1874 – August 7, 1948) was an accomplished composer and songwriter who was born in Canal Winchester, Franklin County, Ohio.[1] The Canal Winchester Area Historical Society Museum has exhibits about the life of Oley Speaks, including original sheet music written by him.[2]

Biography

Town sign in Canal Winchester, Ohio, honoring Oley Speaks

Speaks was born in Canal Winchester, Ohio, the son of a grain merchant and contractor.[3] He was ten when his father died, and his family moved to Columbus soon afterwards.[3] He learned the piano as a boy, and was praised for his baritone voice as early as 1891 by The Columbus Dispatch.[3] In the 1890s he began his career as a railroad clerk at a station in Columbus, Ohio,[4] until he decided to pursue his musical passions. He was developing a reputation as a fine baritone singer in churches in Columbus before he moved to New York City in 1898 and started taking lessons. One of his voice teachers was the American soprano Emma Thursby.[5] Speaks had a successful career as a singer, touring the US giving recitals[6] and also appearing in oratorios.

Speaks began to write songs, many with religious themes.[7] He studied composition with Will Macfarlane and Max Spicker.[5] In 1907, he wrote On the Road to Mandalay using the words of Rudyard Kipling's poem "Mandalay", which sold over one million copies.[1] The song was a popular parlour ballad, particularly in the United Kingdom and British territories worldwide, and was boosted by the recording by Frank Sinatra which was released on the Come Fly with Me album in 1958. However, after some resistance from the Kipling estate over the omission of several verses, this version of the song remained embargoed in the British Commonwealth until it appeared on the digitally-remastered release of the album many years later. Speaks had two further million-selling successes, Morning to a lyric by Frank Lebby Stanton in 1910 and Sylvia to a lyric by Clinton Scollard in 1914, but neither has been popular in the age of the gramophone, though his material turns up in anthologies;[8] the American baritone Robert Merrill and the Swedish tenor Jussi Bjorling both recorded Sylvia, and the Irish tenor John McCormack has recordings of all three famous titles available on CD. More recently, American baritone Thomas Hampson has also recorded On the Road to Mandalay.[9]

[Note: in spite of what is said above about Sylvia not being popular in the age of the gramophone, it was also recorded by a number of other prominent singers, including John Charles Thomas, Richard Tauber, Richard Crooks, Nelson Eddy, Eleanor Steber and Cesare Siepi, all of whom can be heard singing it on YouTube.]

Speaks was a prominent member of ASCAP, where he was elected Director 1924 – 1943.[1] He was also a National Patron of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity.[10]

In the movies

Speaks can be described as a "one-hit wonder", but his most famous work was included in the soundtrack of several films:

Musical Works

Over 250 songs,[17] originally published by G. Schirmer or The John Church Company,[18] including:

Sacred Anthems, including:

Choral Partsongs, including:

Footnotes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Oley Speaks at IMDb http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1672696/bio
  2. ↑ Franklin County at USGenWeb Ohio
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 Echols, New Grove American, v. IV, p. 280
  4. ↑ Oley Speaks
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Villamil, p. 347
  6. ↑ Mr Oley Speaks's Recital New York Times 3 May 1903
  7. ↑ In the End of the Sabbath
  8. ↑ Composer Oley Speaks Discography
  9. ↑ EMI CD 7-54051-2, Villamil, p. 347
  10. ↑ Delta Omicron
  11. ↑ Paul Tremaine and His Aristocrats soundtrack at IMDb
  12. ↑ Metro Movietone Revue soundtrack at IMDb
  13. ↑ Mandalay soundtrack at IMDb
  14. ↑ China Seas soundtrack at IMDb
  15. ↑ Metropolitan soundtrack at IMDb
  16. ↑ They Met in Bombay soundtrack at IMDb
  17. ↑ Echols, New Grove online
  18. ↑ https://urresearch.rochester.edu/viewContributorPage.action;jsessionid=642CF1ED2BB08653358692AC4720BE79?personNameId=2801

References

External links