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Cliff Edwards
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
Cliff Edwards was born in Hannibal, Missouri, in 1895. He left school at fourteen and sang in saloons in St. Louis. Because the pianos there were bad or missing altogether, he taught himself to play the ukulele, the cheapest instrument in the shop. A waiter gave him the nickname Ukulele Ike. His breakthrough came in 1918 in Chicago with the song Ja-Da, after which he grew into a vaudeville star and appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies.
Music and breakthrough
In the 1920s Edwards was one of the most popular singers in America. He made his first records in 1919 and as early as 1922 made early examples of scat singing. He had hits with Paddlin' Madeleine Home, I Can't Give You Anything but Love and Singin' in the Rain, which he introduced in 1929. In 1924 he appeared alongside Fred and Adele Astaire in the first Broadway musical by George and Ira Gershwin, Lady Be Good. He played jazzy versions of popular songs and novelty numbers, and according to the sources he is more responsible than anyone else for the ukulele craze of those years.
Influence
After that he worked for MGM and in westerns, and on radio and television. His best-known role came in 1940: he voiced and sang Jiminy Cricket in Walt Disney's Pinocchio, and introduced When You Wish Upon a Star in it. That recording has been in the Grammy Hall of Fame since 2002. Edwards went bankrupt through squandering his money and died poor in 1971, but Disney paid for his gravestone. His voice became the sound of the Disney dream.
Listening
When You Wish Upon a Star · Cliff Edwards, 1940
Discography
Studio albums
- 1956Ukulele Ike Sings Again
- 2007I'm a Bear in a Lady's Boudoir
- 2017I’ll See You in My Dreams
- 2019Somebody Loves Me