Olly Oakley (1877–1943) (also known as Joseph or James Sharpe) was a British banjo player and composer. He was considered a prominent zither-banjo player in England.
His music made up a part of early banjo recordings on the
phonograph
A phonograph, later called a gramophone, and since the 1940s a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogue reproduction of sound. The sound vibration Waveform, waveforms are recorded as correspond ...
, and during his life, he became "the most widely recorded English banjoist".
Other than his performing name of Olly Oakley, he alternately recorded under the
pseudonym
A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true meaning ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individual's o ...
s Fred Turner, Signor Cetra, Jack Sherwood, Mr F Curtis, Frank Forrester, and Tim Holes.
Life and career
Joseph Sharpe was born in
Birmingham, England
Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands, within the wider West Midlands region, in England. It is the largest local authority district in England by population and the second-largest cit ...
in 1877.
He started to play the banjo around age 12 after hearing the
Bohee Brothers' music.
Sharpe's music was influenced by
minstrel
A minstrel was an entertainer, initially in medieval Europe. The term originally described any type of entertainer such as a musician, juggler, acrobat, singer or fool; later, from the sixteenth century, it came to mean a specialist enter ...
songs, with a style of playing that was similar to the Bohee Brothers'.
He played ragtime music,
sentimental songs and original pieces.
From the late 1890s to the 1930s, Sharpe made hundreds of recordings
on various labels and performed at British music halls. During the 1910s, his compositions for banjo were played at various concert programs in England.
In 1915, he toured South Africa, performing on the banjo.
He made recordings including with Pathé and was filmed on
Phonofilm
Phonofilm is an optical sound-on-film system developed by inventors Lee de Forest and Theodore Case in the early 1920s.
In 1919 and 1920, de Forest, inventor of the audion tube, filed his first patents on a sound-on-film process, DeForest Phonofi ...
.
In 1922, Sharpe published a statement in the London Gazette stating that he had applied and intended to legally change his name to Olly Oakley.
Sharpe died in 1943.
Partial Discography
* "Rugby Parade March" G & T (1901)
* "Oakley Quickstep", Edison
* "Poppies and Wheat"
* "Sweet Jessamine" No.2046 on The Winner label (Poppies & Wheat is on the other side)
* "Whistling Rufus"
* "The College Rag"
* "Queen of the Burlesque" (1912) – phonograph, music by A. Tilley
See also
*
Coon song
Coon songs were a genre of music that presented a stereotype of black people. They were popular in the United States and Australia from around 1880 to 1920, though the earliest such songs date from minstrel shows as far back as 1848, when they we ...
*
Minstrel show
The minstrel show, also called minstrelsy, was an American form of theater developed in the early 19th century. The shows were performed by mostly white actors wearing blackface makeup for the purpose of portraying racial stereotypes of Afr ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Oakley, Olly
British banjoists
20th-century British musicians
1877 births
1943 deaths