Richard Fotheringham’s research on entertainer Jenny Howard leads him to the idea of ‘echoic biography’.

Two years ago, the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) asked me to research and write an entry for the British-Australian popular singer/comedian Jenny Howard (1902–1996). It proved to be a fascinating assignment that resulted in two spin-offs as well as the ADB entry itself.

I found that, although she was a great star, Howard was also an incorrigible liar. Not a malicious one; just a relentless self-publicist. One detail I tracked down was her claim that the great Australian comedian and songwriter George Wallace Senior wrote for her, his best remembered number ‘A Brown Slouch Hat’. Dating to 1942, it is still the only Australian tune you are likely to hear brass bands playing on Anzac Day.

In fact, George Wallace wrote it for another vaudeville singer: ‘Bubby’ Allan. It was popularised on radio by a third (the child star Joy Nichols), and two others recorded it on disc during the war years (another child star, Myree Parker, and the well-known adult soprano Joan Blake). Howard did sing it later many times on stage, including at army camps, so she has an honourable place in the story of its survival and popularity. But it is hardly a unique one.

I had initially been led astray by a 2011 account in the Theatre Heritage Australia online magazine On Stage (a wonderful resource, if you don’t know it). I wrote to them offering to correct the record and they happily agreed. My article (completed with assistance from Professor of Music Liam Viney at the University of Queensland), ‘A Brown Slouch Hat – 80 Years On’ was published in March 2023. My full-length article about Jenny, ‘Autobiography as Publicity’, appeared later the same year in the Australian Journal of Biography and History. 

What was particularly exciting about the short On Stage article was that, as it appears online only, the editors were able to include links to three recordings of the song: Parker’s, Blake’s, and – recorded 40 years later at a live concert with the Duntroon Military Band – Howard’s. (Unfortunately, as reports at the time thought it was the best, I’ve not been able to locate Nichols’ version, sung on The Youth Show on radio 2GB and elsewhere). Readers can hear each of the surviving versions for themselves while reading the article.

Methods for Echoic Biography

I have become intrigued by the idea that this could lead to what we could call ‘echoic biography’. By this I mean a total digital experience that allows the user to read about a notable person – such as a politician, entertainer or other notable person, good or bad, whose life and actions can be glimpsed through sound and/or video recordings – and listen to or watch moments from their life at the same time.

The ADB itself has started adding such links – the first instance was for their entry for Dame Nellie Melba, and sound has been added to Howard’s entry too – and so has Wikipedia, which is linking to both out-of-copyright sound and video material. One such example is with their entry for Charlie Chaplin, where you can watch his early silent films.

According to the British publisher Abbie Headon, who advised me on current format options, some are simply pdf copies of printed texts, but “The majority of ebook purchases are in epub format, where the text is not laid out in fixed pages but flows according to the size of the screen being used, and where the text can be made bigger or smaller, or changed to different font options.”

At a time when reading books is in serious decline, offering a multi-media experience through online books could be a significant plus. Two books I’ve recently read: Charlie Tavener’s Street Food: Hawkers and the History of London (2022), which has a whole chapter devoted to ‘London street cries’, including Orlando Gibbons’ well-known madrigal with that title, and Graeme Turner’s Whispering Jack (2022), seem particularly suited to this opportunity.

Whispering Jack is an in-depth study of how ‘Australia’s finest [popular] singer’, John Farnham, (known until the 1980s as ‘Johnny’ and principally for an early 1967 novelty hit “Sadie (The Cleaning Lady)” which rendered him ‘uncool’), was able to return to the limelight in 1986 as ‘John’ with a spectacularly successful new album including ‘Australia’s unofficial national anthem’ – ‘You’re the Voice’.

Whispering Jack appeared in the ‘33 1/3 Global’ series: ‘short, music-based books’ which are also available as eBooks (I read Turner’s on an iPad) but all are text-only. Turner, a former professional musician himself, provides detailed authoritative comments on changing rock musical styles, the various arrangements of Farnham’s songs both before and after his comeback album and, in particular, the creation, reception of, and cover modifications to ‘You’re the Voice’.

Adding web links to the eBook version of Whispering Jack would be straightforward and it is unlikely that there would be copyright issues, since a simple Google search directs you to Farnham’s own ‘official video’ of ‘You’re the Voice’ on YouTube (though you do have to endure a sponsor’s advertisement first). A 2009 National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) exhibition commemorating his 60th birthday also offers a ‘curated collections of rare TV footage, interviews, live performances and other highlights from his lengthy and extraordinary career’, which is still freely available on the NFSA website.

A fully realised eBook could even include links to videos of Farnham’s live performances, allowing the reader/listener/viewer to witness what another study cited by Turner acclaimed: ‘No other artist I’ve seen has the connection, the two-way flow of affection and respect between artist and audience’. The ‘You’re the Voice’ recording uses footage of Australian soldiers in war and of a domestic argument witnessed by a distressed child, although the lyrics only hint at the first and the second is not mentioned. Words alone, even Farnham’s words, fail the challenge.

Richard Fotheringham is Emeritus Professor of Theatre History at the University of Queensland and the author of numerous short biographical profiles including for the Australian Dictionary of Biography, and the monograph In Search of Steele Rudd (UQ Press, 1995).

He is currently working on a full-length study of the expatriate Australian popular singer and comedian Joy Nichols, jointly with the subject’s daughter Roberta Hamond. Joy Nichols was famed for her remarkable contralto singing, and dozens of her sound discs survive which Richard hopes to embed in the e-version of their book.   

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