Harry S. Pepper

Harry Stephen Pepper (27 August 1891 – 26 June 1970), almost invariably credited as Harry S. Pepper, was a British pianist, songwriter, composer, actor, and BBC producer, whose career stretched from Edwardian era seaside entertainments to BBC television in the 1950s.

Born at Putney, Pepper was the son of Will C. Pepper, by his marriage to Annie Leaver. In the summer of 1899, his father founded a long-running concert party called the White Coons on Mumbles Pier. They later played the summer season at Felixtowe, first appearing there in 1906 and last in 1920. Harry S. Pepper had an older brother, Dick Pepper (1889–1962), who at that time was a banjo player. Pepper wrote in 1937, "When I wasn't selling programmes and issuing tickets, I used to act as accompanist in my father's seaside concert party, Will C. Pepper's White Coons."

Pepper worked many times with Stanley Holloway, whose stage career began in 1910 when he travelled to Walton-on-the-Naze to audition for the White Coons Show. Holloway went on to star with Harry S. Pepper in The Co-Optimists, a film musical of 1929.

Following his years with the White Coons, Pepper became an assistant to Jimmy Glover, musical director at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

Pepper and Mark Lubbock were recruited by the BBC in 1933, both being noted as "established composers of light music", and Pepper became a presenter in the early days of BBC Television, which had begun in 1932. In 1933 he presented a revue called Looking In with John Watt as co-presenter. Meanwhile, BBC Radio had a much greater audience, and there he produced and presented The Kentucky Minstrels, a blackface minstrel series broadcast from 1933, which was a forerunner of The Black and White Minstrel Show. According to Maurice Gorham, Pepper was "a great character, born and brought up to show business... He brought a pleasantly breezy atmosphere into the BBC." Gorham tells the story that when Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Carpendale interviewed Pepper for a job, he asked him "How old are you?" and got the reply "Forty-four, how old are you?"

...
Wikipedia