Information AboutMorton Harvey |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT MORTON HARVEY | |
| american blues singers | |
| american male singers | |
| vaudeville performers | |
| entertainers | |
| 1886 births | |
| 1961 deaths | |
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Morton Harvey ( 1886 - 1961 ) was an American Vaudeville performer and singer who had a moderately successful recording career during the 1910s. Harvey was born in Omaha, Nebraska . His family wanted him to become a minister, but he had theatrical ambitions, and was able to secure a position in a traveling show while on a trip to Chicago, Illinois . He eventually gained a recording contract, just a few years after records began to become popular. Though most of his recordings were not best sellers, he is notable for being the first singer to record a Blues song, the "Memphis Blues" by W.C. Handy in 1914 . He is also notable for recording the antiwar Protest Song ''I Did Not Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier'' in 1915 , which became popular with people who wished for America to stay out of World War I . Soon after America did intervene in the war in 1917 , Harvey stopped recording , as the sentiments of that song were no longer popular and were considered unpatriotic. Many documentaries about World War I contain the song, however, and it is still on this song that Harvey's voice is heard by the most people. There is some dispute as to whether he was a Baritone or Tenor . Harvey remained a vaudeville performer through the mid-1920s, often as half of a duet. He performed with his new wife, Betty, also, from time-to-time. After his retirement from show business, he moved to Oklahoma where he managed a radio station . In 1941 after the outbreak of World War II , he moved to San Francisco, California , where he served as director of job relations at the War Manpower Commission, and then as personnel director of an army hospital. In 1946 he opened a photography studio in Los Gatos, California where he died. Even after he moved onto other careers, he still continued to sing and write songs in his spare time. EXTERNAL LINKS
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