Edmund Hockridge
| Edmund Hockridge | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Edmund James Arthur Hockridge |
| Born |
9 August 1919 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
| Died | 15 March 2009 (aged 89) Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, England, UK |
| Genres |
Light opera, Easy listening Traditional popular music |
| Occupation(s) | Singer, actor |
| Instruments | Vocals |
| Years active | 1946–1996 |
| Labels | Decca, HMV, Parlophone, Pye Nixa |
Edmund James Arthur Hockridge (9 August 1919 – 15 March 2009) was a Canadian baritone and actor who had an active performance career in musicals, operas, concerts, plays and on radio. According to his obituary in The Guardian, his life could have provided the storyline for one of the musicals he starred in.
Edmund Hockridge grew up on a farm in the Vancouver area of British Columbia. His mother was a pianist and his father and three brothers - all older than he was - loved to sing. At 17, a Vancouver music club organised an audition with New York Metropolitan Opera star, John Charles Thomas, who encouraged him to look to music as a career. Going overseas during World War II with the Royal Canadian Air Force led to Hockridge being "loaned" to the BBC, in a unit supplying news and entertainment to the troops in Europe, working with the Glenn Miller Orchestra and the Canadian Band of the Allied Expeditionary Force led by Robert Farnon. Hockridge learned much of his craft as an entertainer at the radio (mike), singing and producing 400 shows for the BBC Forces Network and, as the war ended, he was snapped up for appearances with the big names in British popular music, Gerald Bright (better known as Geraldo) and George Melachrino among them. Whilst serving in Britain he met a Wren, Eileen Elliott, who worked in Lord Louis Mountbatten's office. They married and had a son, but Hockridge believed that they had fallen into marriage rather than love, and by the time he returned to Canada it was clear that the relationship was doomed.
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