Still Going Strong

New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 532, 2 September 1949, Page 19

Still Going Strong

OR the greater part of the last three years Peter Dawson, the famous Australian bass-baritone, has been on tour in England, and more recently, he completed a 10,000 miles’ trip through Australia had the ABC. Now he is back in New Zealand giving a series of public concerts, the first of which will be at the Civic Theatre, Christchurch, with Geoffrey Parsons at the piano. Part of this concert will be broadcast, and it will be followed by public concerts in other parts of New Zealand, with the Main National Stations concerned relaying sections of the programme, The price of everything seems to have risen since he was last in New Zealand, he told The Listener in an interview the other day. "Why, the only thing that has stayed put since I was here last is the £10 penalty for misuse of the emergency lever in a railway carriage." What impressed him most about England was the lovely appearance of the countryside with its intense cultivation and the comparative happiness of the people in all their trials. "When travelling," he said, "you carry your own soap and towels to the hotels, and you do miss bread. But the people in the shopping queues are remarkable. The women talk at the rate of knots and the conversation takes a brighter gurn as the salesman comes nearer in sight. I never heard a grumble. "Service in hotels and restaurants has changed. The old idea of the Englishman home from India snapping his fingers for a waiter has gone. The waiter’s not there to be chivvied. It’s almost a case of ‘Please, Mr. Waiter.’ At one place I stayed at in Leeds I put sixpence in the gas meter. Nothing happened, so I asked the proprietor about it. ‘That thing hasn’t been working for five years,’ he said, so I got my tanner

back. And the whisky situation is a bit grim in England, You are allowed a bottle a month for 22/-. If you want more the black market can supply it at £5. So you don’t drink much." Peter Dawson made several new recordings while in England, some of them with organ accompaniment in an old church with an audience of one-the verger. He also recalls singing to the largest audience he has ever faced. It was at Harringay where, at an openair function, he sang such old favourites as "Old Father Thames," "I Travel the Road," and "The.Road to Mandalay" to 83,000 people. While in Wellington Peter Dawson was interviewed by 2YA on his impressions of England as it is to-day. His talk was broadcast the other evening and repeated in the Week in Radio session last Sunday. ;