Concert Artistes’ Journal, 1906-08

Just coming to our attention is a slim bound volume of the Concert Artistes’ Journal, from October 1906 to March 1908. I have a sneaking feeling this was the entirety of its run.

Concert Artistes’ Journal, incorporating the Concert Artistes’ Benevolent Association Gazette, was a monthly, available, we are told, through most newsagents and railway station outlets, for 2d. Entirely black and white, and almost entirely text, it started to great fanfare with a 32-pager, and was published, we learn, to supply ‘a long-felt want’. ‘We shall speak as we find’, the editor blustered, promising the new magazine would be no ‘mere dry as dust brochure, compiled by a coterie of fogeys for the delectation of a handful of fossils.’ And maybe that was the case, but it found few advertisers and struggled from the outset. The September 1907 issue failed to appear, and it reinvented itself thereafter on cheaper paper with fewer pages. Our final issue, March 1908, is a mere 12 pages, and surely the last.

It said it was intended to appeal to ‘professionals, the music trade, concert organisers, club secretaries and all engaged in entertaining’. It certainly joined a crowded marketplace, with the likes of the Stage and the Era better known now (and the former still with us). The Concert Artistes’ Journal certainly had a purpose, offering a resource of available rooms for performances, regional round-ups, gossip on where performers were going to appear and biographies (starting with the ‘clever child impersonator’ Harry May Hemsley [1877–1951]). There are small ads for the ‘Professional Advertisements and Artistes’ Register’, and occasional sheet music.

Yet, there were scant ads beyond the small ads. Music shops occasionally advertise, as shown here, but advertising income was otherwise entirely dependent on the small performer. These are almost all London-based but provide a good sense of how performers touted for business in those days. One curious ad is a recurring one for the Humorist magazine, seen here, apparently published by Tetley and Sons of Leeds. Curious because I didn’t think this magazine started until after the First World War. Can anyone advise?

The Concert Artistes’ Journal was another E.T. Heron publication who, it seemed, were prepared to back obscure and risky periodicals. In previous blogs we’ve seen some of their output, such as Bowling; Millinery Trades Journal; and Ballooning and Aeronautics. But in the Concert Artistes’ Journal we learn of another, through an ad for another of their monthlies, and almost certainly another no-hoper, the Optical Lantern and Kinematograph Journal. We’re grateful that E.T. Heron took risks!