Henry Burr

Henry Burr (January 15, 1882 – April 6, 1941) was a Canadian singer, radio performer and producer. He was born Harry Haley McClaskey and used Henry Burr as one of his many pseudonyms, in addition to Irving Gillette, Henry Gillette, Alfred Alexander, Robert Rice, Carl Ely, Harry Barr, Frank Knapp, Al King, and Shamus McClaskey. He produced more than 12,000 recordings, by his own estimate, including "Just a Baby's Prayer at Twilight", "Till We Meet Again" with Albert Campbell, "The Song That Stole My Heart Away", "M-O-T-H-E-R", and "Beautiful Ohio".[4] A tenor, he performed as a soloist and in duets, trios and quartets.

Recording artist

Emboldened by Campanari's endorsement, McClaskey ventured to New York in 1902, where he began lessons and sang with the Grace Methodist Episcopal Church choir. He eventually rose to tenor soloist for the choir. His teachers included John Dennis Meehan (or Mehan) and Kate Stella Burr, from whom he would adopt his stage name

It was around 1902 that he started to make recordings with Columbia Records and he used the name Henry Burr at that time. He arrived at a particularly opportune time for Columbia, as their star tenor, George J. Gaskin, was in the final years of his career. Burr started recording for Edison Records in November 1904 under the name Irving Gillette. Disagreements with company executives resulted in his no longer recording for Edison after October 1914.He first recorded with Victor on January 4, 1905, and the recordings were released that March. On April 7, 1905 he recorded Egbert Van Alstyne's "In Campbell. the Shade of the Old Apple Tree" which proved to be popular. It was also

recorded by Billy Murray the same year. Burr proved to be a successful artist,
recording thousands of songs for various labels under various names. He would record with Leeds Talk-O-Phone and the American Record Company as well. His recordings also appear on International Record Company and department store labels such as Vim Records.

Collaborations

In 1906, Burr joined the Columbia Male Quartet, which was recording for the Columbia Record Company, as second tenor under the management of Frank C. Stanley.They were later renamed the Peerless Quartet when they moved to the Victor label. When Stanley died in 1910, Burr took over management of the group.It continued on as a popular recording and live group (with various personnel and name changes over the years) until 1928, when it disbanded. Burr was also a member of the Metropolitan Trio and the Manhattan Mixed Trio, both of which featured him with Frank C. Stanley and Elise Stevenson.  In 1921, he contributed music to a summertime review calledThe Broadway Whirl.

Burr recorded in a duo with Albert Campbell. The pair had a succession of hits between 1911 and 1925, including "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine" (1913); "Till We Meet Again" (1919); and "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" (1919).

As a businessman

By 1915, he was in a comfortable position financially, and he began to seek ways to invest his money. That year, he formed the Paroquette Record Manufacturing Company with Fred Van Eps, based in New York City. The Paroquette system used vertical cut records and featured his own recordings and those of several other performers. As a novel introduction in a highly competitive market, the Paroquette recording technique was an early failure, and the company was out of business by 1917. Burr also tried music publishing, and he also shared ownership in abanjo factory with Van Eps for a short while.

Early radio

By the late 1920s, Burr's recording career was over. Electrical recording technologies had encouraged the crooner style of tenor vocals, as in the singing of Gene Austin and Al Bowlly. The commercial potential of radio continued to interest Burr. He became involved in programming, forming Henry Burr, Inc. in 1928 as a producer.He produced numerous programs for commercial radio networks into the 1930s. He originated theCities Servicebroadcast, which he produced for two years. 

improvised from a wooden bowl with an inverted telephone transmitte.r The broadcast was heard as far west as San Francisco. Burr is also credited with making the first transcontinental 'broadcast' by singing into the telephone in New York and being heard by diners wearing headphones at a Rotary dinner in California. Also in 1920, he signed an exclusive contract with Victor that lasted seven years. A lucrative contract, it made him (for a time) a wealthy man. In October 1929, he reportedly lost a substantial portion of his wealth in the Wall Street

Crash of 1929. Within a month, however, he was appointed Director of the Artist's Bureau at CBS which had just been organized under the ownership ofWilliam S. Paley.

Around 1935, he returned to performing on the radio as a member of the WLS Chicago National Barn Dance troupe, which was broadcast over NBC on Saturday evenings. He soon became a featured performer on the show, which he stayed with for five years until shortly before his death.

Death

He suffered from throat cancer and died in Chicago, Illinois on April 6, 1941. Buried near his stepdaughter Marguarite in Mount Vernon, New York, where he had lived, he was survived by his wife, Cecilia. His widow died of a heart ailment in 1954 in Arlington Heights, Illinois.