Harry Champion

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Harry Champion
Background information
Birth name(s):	William Crump
Date of birth:	1866
Birth location:	Shoreditch, London
Date of death:	January 1942 (age 76)
Death location:	Tottenham, London
Other name(s):	Will Conray (to 1888)
Genre(s):	singer, composer

William Crump (1866 – January 14, 1942), better known by the stage name Harry Champion, was a famous British music hall composer and star. Born in Shoreditch, London, he first appeared in a music hall at the age of 15, at the Queens Hall, Poplar^[1]. In 1888 he changed his stage name from Will Conray, and with a wide repertoire of songs, many of them sung at breakneck speed and often about the joys of food^[2], he became one of music hall's most successful artists. His songs became some of the most famous cockney songs^[3].

Harry Champion continued working into his seventies. In January 1942 he died at Tottenham, aged 76, where he had lived for more than thirty years. He is buried in East Finchley Cemetery^[4].

[edit] Songs

• A Little Bit Of Cucumber (1915) [1]
• Any Old Iron
• End of my Old Cigar
• Cover it Over Quick
• Old Red Lion
• Best that Money Can Buy
• Boiled Beef and Carrots
• Cockney Bill of London Town
• I'm Henery the Eighth, I Am (1910) (signature tune/song)[2]
• I Want Meat
• My Old Iron Cross (1915) [3]
• My Wife's Sister's Pussy-Cat
• It's Cold Without My Trousers
• I'm proud of my old bald head
• I shan't mend your waistcoat any more
• Beaver (Here comes old Beaver)
• In my old white spats (For Pauline Munro)

[edit] References

Persondata
NAME	Champion, Harry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Crump, William
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Music hall, singer and composer
DATE OF BIRTH	1866
PLACE OF BIRTH	Shoreditch, London
DATE OF DEATH	January 1942
PLACE OF DEATH	Tottenham