Harry Hopkinson (8 June 1902 – 4 March 1979) professionally also known as Austin Layton and Harry Torrani, was a British music hall performer, a soprano and songwriter who has been credited as one of the world's greatest

yodel Yodeling (also jodeling) is a form of singing which involves repeated and rapid changes of pitch between the low-pitch chest register (or "chest voice") and the high-pitch head register or falsetto. The English word ''yodel'' is derived from th ...

ers. He was billed as the "Yodeling Cowboy from Chesterfield".

Biography

He came from a family of miners in Manchester, England and started singing in the

North Wingfield North Wingfield is a large village and civil parish in the North East Derbyshire district in the county of Derbyshire, England. Located approximately 4½ miles south-east of Chesterfield, and 1 mile north-east of Clay Cross. The population of the ...

Church choir, and after a spell working in the local

colliery Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

, entered show business in a troupe of traveling entertainers. The yodelling part of Hopkinson's act was expanded, and it was here he adopted the more commercial and continental-sounding name Harry Torrani. Hopkinson recorded his first yodeling song on 27 August 1931 for the

Regal Zonophone Regal may refer to: Companies * Regal Beloit, usually referred to as Regal, an American manufacturer of electric motors * Regal Cinema (disambiguation), several cinemas of that name * Regal Cinemas, a major American theater chain * Regal Cinemas ...

label A label (as distinct from signage) is a piece of paper, plastic film, cloth, metal, or other material affixed to a container or product, on which is written or printed information or symbols about the product or item. Information printed dir ...

, "Honeymoon Yodel" coupled with "Happy and Free". His recording career continued until 1942, and he recorded 25

records A record, recording or records may refer to: An item or collection of data Computing * Record (computer science), a data structure ** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity ** Boot sector or boot record, ...

and 51 tracks. Some of his songs were "Yodel All Day", "Yodelers Dream Girl", "Honeymoon Yodel", "The Australian Yodel" (the

B-side The A-side and B-side are the two sides of phonograph records and cassettes; these terms have often been printed on the labels of two-sided music recordings. The A-side usually features a recording that its artist, producer, or record compan ...

was "The Highland Yodel"), "Mammy’s Yodel!" and "Mississippi Yodel!". Hopkinson was married to wife Joy and had a daughter Dawn, he retired from show business during the late 1940s. In his retirement he worked as a watch repairer, after entering a nursing home and having suffered a stroke he died on 4 March 1979 at the age of 75.

Sources

Country Music Stars of Yesteryear: Harry Torrani
1902 births 1979 deaths English male singers Yodelers 20th-century English singers People from North Wingfield 20th-century British male singers {{England-musician-stub