Gene Greene

Eugene Delbert Greene (June 9, 1881 – April 5, 1930), better known as Gene Greene was an American entertainer, singer and composer, nicknamed "The Ragtime King". He was a vaudeville star and made some of the earliest sound recordings of scat singing in 1911 for Columbia Records and Victor Records and was a popular ragtime performer.

Greene was born in Aurora, Illinois and moved to Chicago as a young child. He began his professional career in the late 1890s with his future wife Blanche Werner. They performed in vaudeville first as Manjonita and Eugene and then as Greene & Werner. Greene began performing as a solo act around 1909. He toured England in 1912 and 1913 and Australia in 1913 and 1914. His pianist was on these tours was Charley Straight. Greene continued to be a popular vaudeville performer in the United States and Canada until his death backstage immediately after a vaudeville performance at the Grand Opera House in New York City in 1930.

Greene was closely associated with the song "I Didn't Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier" by Alfred Bryan and Al Piantadosi. This song was one of the extremely few anti-war music-hall songs during the First World War, most music-hall songs being fiercely pro-war. This reflected the views of Chicago's large German population at the time, but the song was also well-known, and controversial, in Britain.

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