The Cumbrian pit disaster that made a Leicester man the Daddy of Tin Pan Alley

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Denmark Street, Britain’s Tin Pan Alley, played a pivotal role in the music industry. Peter Watts takes us from through the street’s history including its 1960s heyday; with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Elton John and David Bowie frequenting it for guitars, meetings and recording. Despite its decline, it became the rehearsal space for the Sex Pistols and today remains a hub for music.

Denmark Street is the subject of the latest edition of The Strange Brew. This podcast, in its course, reveals that the street gained its role thanks to a Leicester man and a pit disaster in Cumberland.

Let's begin with the Wikipedia entry for Lawrence Wright:

Lawrence Wright was born in Leicester, where his father, Charles Wright, taught violin and ran a market stall selling instruments and sheet music. After leaving school aged 12, he worked for a printing company before joining a concert party in Eastbourne as a violinist and singer. 

He returned to Leicester and in 1906 set up his own market stall to sell music, including his own composition, "Down by the Stream", which became successful. In 1910, he heard a street singer perform "Don't Go Down the Mine, Daddy". 

He bought the rights to the song, which he published some weeks later following the Whitehaven mining disaster, in which 136 men were killed; the song reportedly sold a million copies.

The mining disaster was the Wellington Pit Explosion, which claimed the lives of 147 men and boys. That link will take you to a full account of it by the Northern Mine Research Society.

Folk Song and Music Hall tells the story of the song, beginning with this intriguing paragraph:

Don’t Go Down the Mine Dad was originally popularised by JH Greener, aka The Singing Pit Lad, who was performing it in the Halls between 1910 and 14 and then disappears…. I am investigating this person – at the moment all I know is that he sang this song in the Halls of Birmingham, London and Wales: perhaps a one-hit wonder, lost in the War? (speculation at present).

The song crossed the Atlantic. In the US it was known as The Dream of the Miner's Child, and it formed part of the early repertoire of Woody Guthrie.

Back to Lawrence Wright:

In 1911 Wright moved to London, hired a basement in Denmark Street from which to sell his music, and set up the Lawrence Wright Music Co.. He was one of the first music publishers to set up business in the street, which in time became known as London's Tin Pan Alley.

And in 1926 he founded the Melody Maker. 

Wright sometimes billed himself as The Daddy of Tin Pan Alley or The King of British Songwriters. When he died in 1964, his music publishing company was bought by Northern Songs, which had been set up the previous year to publish John Lennon and Paul McCartney's songs.