Tadpole Music

Simon Hall was born in 1987, and began taking violin lessons at age five and piano lessons at age six. He joined the Cambridgeshire Boys' Choir, directed by Nicholas Bergström-Allen, and shortly after was made a full member which was unusual at such a young age. When he was seven, he became third violin for the National Children's Orchestra. At age nine, Simon auditioned again for the NCO and won a place playing cello.

Simon sang with the Cambridgeshire Boys' Choir for six years, and it was Mr. Bergström-Allen who inspired Simon's interest in singing and prepared him during the early stages of this album. Felicity Cook, a professional singer and singing teacher, who works with Cambridge University and the National Youth Choir of Great Britain, taught Simon after he left the choir.

Simon has decided to explore an alternative and almost unknown repertoire in this recording: Century old songs and ballads sung in the Victorian parlour and Edwardian music halls. There are songs of unrequited love, including the soulful "Tatters" (one commentator affirmed that "horrible little boys everywhere were taught to sing it"), sentimental songs such as "Shall I be an Angel, Daddy?" together with jolly, humorous numbers which were also not devoid of sentimentality.

This recording reminds us of a very different era with a group of particularly poignant ballads that tell of the poverty, starvation and premature death (often around Christmas for added pathos) of young children. This was a Victorian way of acknowledging terrible social conditions Examples on this CD include "The Little Match Girl", "Ora Pro Nobis" and "The Little Crossing Sweeper".

There is a selection of nautical ballads, especially popular at the time, including "The Little Hero", "Alone on the Raft" and "Anchored". But perhaps even more famous was "Don't go down in the mine, Dad" a song in which a small boy has a premonition of a pit disaster and tries to persuade his father to stay away from work. Said to have been inspired by a major mining disaster at St Genard, South Wales, in 1907, it was published in 1910, the year of another major disaster at the Whitehaven pit. This perhaps helps to explain the eventual sale of over 1 million copies.