On this day in 1912 at the Grand Theatre in Stalybridge, Cheshire, Jack Judge performed “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” for the first time. It would become the definitive song of the Great War and made Tipperary famous across the world.
Judge, born in Oldbury in 1872, was a music hall legend in Britain and was the son of an iron-worker from Co. Mayo. According to Turtle Bunbury, Judge maintained that he wrote ‘Tipperary’ one night in January 1912, while staying in Stalybridge, Cheshire, and that he performed it in the town’s Grand Theatre the following night. It was written, he said, in response to a 5-shilling bet wagered by Jack Newbury and Arthur Peel, who reckoned he couldn’t write a new song overnight. Jack replied: “Well, if I head for my digs I might have time to knock something up for tomorrow”.
Jack was something of a scoundrel on this front, frequently pretending to have just written songs which he had long had on his repertoire. Indeed, many inhabitants of Oldbury, his own family included, claimed they had heard ‘Tipperary’ before January 1912. It seems likely that he just tinkered with an older number called “It’s a Long Way to Connemara” that he had co-written in 1909 with his fried Harry Williams. It is though that he swapped Connemara for Tipperary because that’s where his grandparents came from. In any case, when he performed ‘Tipperary’ at Stalybridge’s Grand Theatre on 31st January 1912, it went down a storm with the audience.
By Christmas 1912, the song was available as a record, sung by Ted Yorke. The following year, Florrie Forde, one of Britain’s best-loved music hall performers, sang it on the Isle of Man, propelling the song to best-selling status. Jack was performing at the Tivoli in Dublin when word came back from the Western Front that it had become the army’s most popular song.
In August 1914, Daily Mail correspondent George Curnock watched the Connaught Rangers belting out the song as they marched. By the time his report was published three days later, the song had spread like wildfire through the rank and file. By 27th August, the New York Times was hailing ‘Tipperary’ as the marching song of the British Army. Indeed, it wasn’t just popular with the British. The song’s melody was taken up and translated by the Germans in the opposite trenches. “Tipperary” became a symbolic home for frightened young men of all nationalities.
The song was particularly striking as unlike most which soldiers sang as they marched to war, this did not talk of the great and glorious havoc they were about to wreak upon their enemy but instead reflected a rather more touching yearning for home. By the close of 1914, ‘Tipperary’ had sold 1.5 million records in the UK and sales were fast approaching the 3 million mark across the Atlantic in the neutral USA. John McCormack, the famous Irish tenor, recorded the song in 1914.
Jack Judge died on 25 July 1938 and is buried in Oldbury. Following his death, The Times (London) reckoned ‘Tipperary’ was a song which could ‘still recall more immediately than anything else the spirit and excitement of the early days of the War.’ It is one of the oldest songs still bringing in royalties. There is a statue to commemorate Judge in Stalybridge where he first performed the song on 31 January 1912.
Sources:
https://turtlebunbury.com/document/jack-judge/
“How It’s a Long Way to Tipperary became the hit of the first world war”, Helen Brown writing in the Financial Times, 29 May 2017.
