EXTRA ARTICLES

Ena Baga
a pianist who could trace her career back to the days of the silent cinema. We have only discovered one 78rpm record by her. Perhaps you can enlighten us if you have any others. The recordings were made in late 1934 for the Sterno Company towards the end of their existence. They were issued on Solex 101 and contain the popular number
Smoke gets in your Eyes - matrix S4129
with the reverse: White Heather - matrix S4130.

Later after Ena had been made famous by some pop group, she recreated her role as a Kinema pianist in one TV Upstairs Downstairs story in 1974, as well as playing as a pub accompanist in a 1980 episode of the popular TV series All Creatures Great and Small. She made one final appearance in 1992 in the film Chaplin, appropriately as a cinema pianist.

Thorpe Bates (born London 1883, died 1958)
He is best known today for his songs from A Maid of the Mountains recorded by Columbia in 1917. He went on to appear on Duophone (1927), British Phototone (1927) and Sterno (1930-2). Before the first war he had recorded firstly for the Gramophone Company, his recordings can be found on HMV and Zonophone Celebrity. He also made Pathe records. As well as recording light musical comedy numbers, he also appears in opera and oratorios. Wrote the Yorkshire Post of him, "his singing is always artistic."
Though he had been articled as a solicitor, he studied at the Guildhall School of Music and then the Royal Academy of Music. From a small beginning in concerts, he was given a break by a Mr Tillett who found him work with the Leeds Choral Society, the Liverpool Philharmonic, the Halle Concerts in Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh Choral Unions and the Sheffield Festival of 1911 and Birmingham Festival of 1912. In London he sang with the Queen's Hall Choral Society and in the Chappell Ballad Concerts.

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