The Vyponds
Max Erard and Zona Vevey
….& Co…
https://www.tumblr.com/footlightnotes/39830711458/husband-and-wife-max-erard-and-zona-vevey : ‘Husband and wife, Max Erard and Zona Vevey composer/entertainer at the piano and singer (photo: unknown, possibly Henderson & Co, Rochdale, circa 1912).’
In the first four decades of the 20th century, Frederick Coupe and his wife Maud Brennan, stage names Max Erard and Zona Vevey, evolved their stage act from the Victoria pier at Blackpool to the musical halls of London and the provinces. A spell across the Atlantic in 1910 in the USA meant that they could also be legitimately promoted as international stars on their return. Max was an accomplished musician on the piano, and then later, on a very large, bespoke cathedral organ unique to the stage. He accompanied the ‘dainty’ singing voice of Zona, composing and arranging her songs. Later still, composing and performing revues with Max’s touring company, though popular for a time, eventually began to drain the finances. Life as an entertainer is ever a precarious occupation and costs and health, family responsibilities, irrepressible dreams along with changing public tastes, might be considered as directly opposed to the enthusiasm and thrills that the two of them put into the musical expressions and entertainment of their careers. While by 1936, and in her fifties by now, Zona had opted out of her stage work, possibly due to illness, Max continued, beyond his bankruptcy in 1930, to lead a group of bandsmen in the local concert areas of the Fylde Coast and Morecambe in Lancashire, the home county of both he and Zona, while their two children, Clive and Vera, continued in their parents’ footsteps.
In the beginning, Max, as Frederick, was born in Leyland, Lancashire in 1881. He doesn’t appear to have had a musical heritage to inspire his career as his father is stated as a mechanic and separately as an india rubber manufacturer, though this doesn’t disqualify either father or son from being musical. A sister Millie was also working with india rubber, in 1901 in Leyland, while Fred was pursuing his acting dreams in Blackpool. A brother, Walter, who would join Fred on the stage is twelve years old and is still at home at Broad Bank in Water Street, Leyland. But from wherever Fred derived his musical influence, he became a capable musician by the time he was 18 years old, and in 1900 he was in Blackpool as Fred Vypond (sometimes written as Vipond), a member of a pierrot group on the Victoria Pier (now South Pier).
At the same time in Blackpool, an aspiring singer and entertainer, Maud Brennan, was staying at the digs that Frederick was sharing with friends, and it proved to be the introduction to a relationship for the two of them which blossomed into marriage the following year. Maud was born in Birkdale, Southport in 1881. She had made her first appearance on the stage at St Helens as a young girl in ‘Sinbad the Sailor,’ but her ambition was to come to Blackpool, a dream perhaps that was completely fulfilled as events turned out. Maud had been in Blackpool for some time, and was assumed to be a ‘Blackpool girl’ by the press. It is not recorded whether she was in work at the time, and it is possible that she was in the town with her much younger sister, Bessie, also an aspiring singer and actress, though Bessie would only be 13 years old at the time. Their father is a musician, though nothing is known about him, and it is reasonable to assume that that fact had an influence on both their professions. There is also a sister Elisabeth Anne, born in 1877 and married to James Lowe on 20th September 1902 at St Luke’s parish church in Southport and whose father is recorded as a ‘blind organist’.
Max must have been confident as well as competent, and in 1901 he was invited to take over the pierrot troupe on the pier, and it was inevitable that out of an association with Maud, as well as her own evident ability, that he brought her into the group and from there, their joint careers began, advertising in the Stage publication for competent personnel to supplement the group. The same year on the 21st July Fred and Maud had married at South Shore parish church in Blackpool while they both shared an address at 34 Hill Street, a three storey terraced house with a view of the Tower to the north. At nineteen years old, Fred’s profession at the time, is briefly described on the marriage certificate as ‘theatrical’ and Maud’s is given as a somewhat hurried and careless, ditto scrawl beneath Fred’s.
Fred, as Fred Vypond (often written as Vipond), had by now created the Vyponds, a comedy group, for which he assumed responsibility. They called themselves the ‘Vypond Trio’ and, performing as a larger group, they were the ‘Swiss Cavaliers,’ and they mainly performed ‘refined’ comedy sketches with music.
At Whitsuntide in 1902 the Viponds’ (there is a freedom of use of both ‘Viponds’ and ‘Vyponds’) Swiss Cavaliers, a ‘versatile and talented group of artistes’, having been engaged for the season, ‘will be entertaining on the Victoria Pier’. They give three performances daily excepting Sundays, so quite an exacting workload. It is possible that Maud would not have been on stage with the troupe for some time as on the 22nd April of the year she gave birth to daughter, Vera Maud and who was baptised on 14th May at South Shore Parish church. The couple at the time had an address at 10 Station Road, which is close to the sea front where the Victoria Pier (now South Pier) is directly at the end of the road across the promenade. It was a pier that, in its taste, would suitably accommodate the ‘refined’ entertainment that the Vyponds provided.
As the Vyponds, they did mainly concert work before moving on to the Music Halls and Maud became a very good favourite with her audiences, singing songs titled, ‘Hello My Baby’, ‘Give Him The Moon’ to Play With’ and ‘Rosie Posie’ among others, many of which are extant as recordings today. From 1907 they became society entertainers before making another step upwards and calling themselves Max Erard and Zona Vevey, a comedy couple. Respective brother and sister, Walter and Bessie, who would perform with them, would get together and eventually marry in Camberwell London and go on to create their own direction in the music halls. Max presumably took the name Erard from the eponymous, and high class piano created by French pianist and manufacturer, Philippe Erard and, while there was already a Maud Brennan on the stage, Vevey is a picturesque town on Lake Geneva in Switzerland, and it is also a street address in Leyland which Max and Zona shared at one time. Max was to become recognised as a ‘musician, writer and composer of exceptional ability’ and Zona ‘a charming personality, with a dainty style of working, and she can entertain an audience, thoroughly on strictly refined lines.’ By 1909, and touring in Manchester and London on the same bill as the renowned Victoria Monks from Blackpool, they had future engagements up to 1913 including offers from America, would became international stars earning large salaries. In the subsequent promotions, Zona is the feature and Max is her pianist accompaniment. Max was occasionally referred to as ‘Herr’ Max Erard, perhaps to add a little of the curiously exotic to a British audience or to lower his status as a mere foreigner as an accompanist only.
The songs she is singing (Blackpool Herald March 26 1909) at the Palace during the season include, ‘My Pretty Pansy’, ‘Every Sunday Evening as the Bells Begin to Ring’, ‘Have You Seen Wee MacGregor’, ‘Norah, My Irish Colleen’, and ‘My Magee From Dundee.’ New numbers for this season are ‘The Church Across the Way’, accompanied by elaborate church bell and organ effects and with scenery to match, and ‘Little Boy Blue’.
On the 12th July 1910 Max Erard and his wife depart from Liverpool for New York on the Cunard liner Carmania. While Max is listed as an artiste, he has a wife, a Mrs Erard, who is deemed to be only a wife and who is not given a first name and, further up the passenger list there is a Beatrice whose surname is mostly indecipherable, and listed separately as a professional singer.
Zona and Max make their first appearance in the USA on the 25th July 1910 at the American Roof Garden in New York. The American press describes Zona as an English character singing comedienne of pleasing personality, her methods of impersonation are original and, singing charmingly in costume, she arrived with the reputation of being ‘one of the best dressed young women on the English stage’. Zona while performing is surrounded by five other performers of unknown identity, and is dressed as an English farmer’s boy to sing, ‘Every Sunday Evening When the Bells Begin to Ring’. Her range is described, to a readership which doesn’t know her, as from operatic selections to coster, and her methods of impersonation are original while Max is merely and English piano soloist and accompanist. There hadn’t been advanced publicity, and both Zona and Max arrived largely unheralded and unknown onto the American stage. Zona’s credits in the New York Tribune, go no further than ‘pleasing’ but her performance ‘was refreshingly free from the vulgarity of many of the performers who have come to us from English Music Halls’ and her songs, which impersonate the ‘fads and foibles of girls of the European nations’ (though only England, Ireland and Scotland are represented in the reported song titles), were ‘liberally applauded’. Max, though he was credited with composing her songs, was just an accompanist but ‘showed himself to be a capable pianist’ and in his own right played a march ‘of his own composition’ which met with the approval of the audience. The San Francisco Chronicle is more forthcoming and enthusiastic about Zona while Max continues in his reportedly subordinate role as merely an English pianist. It suggests that Zona, with her dark hair, large black eyes, and a decidedly contagious smile, can be compared to Vesta Tilley in looks. She sang the songs from their repertoire to include, ‘Have You Seen Wee Macgregor?’, ‘Norah, My Irish Colleen’, and ‘My Maggie from Dundee’, the latter which was sung as an encore on the first night.
In the Arlington review of 22nd September 1910 after Max and Zona had eft for home, Zona’s quality as a performer is compared to other good acts like Cecilia Loftus, Harry Lauder and Vesta Tilley among many more.Max and Zona are back home by the end of September 1910. According to the Portsmouth Evening News on their performance at the Hippodrome on their return Back in England after about two months away Zona, assisted by Max, could be credited with having been a big hit, which assisted the impact of the publicity.
As ‘Erard’s Great Company of Vaudevillians’, their careers continued to flourish and they became headliners with the Moss Empire Theatres until 1914, touring all over the country including trips over to Dublin and Belfast. As a clean cut performance, differing from a ‘low’ level of comedy and entertainment, ‘Miss Vevey has a powerful influence as far as the elevation of the music halls is concerned, and the vaudeville stage would be richer if there were other productions of a similar nature to hers.’ (Blackpool Herald March 26th 1909). Max was writing and playing the music and Zona performing and singing and at their height, were earning a three figure salary, regularly £350 (£33,829.10), a week and that at the Palace, Sheffield quoted as £420.00 (£40,594.92) for the week. Max then bought an organ for £900 (£65,576.41) but other, more regular, reports give its cost as £2,000 (£145,725.35) for the bespoke instrument, the construction of which he supervised himself. Zona had her doubts but Max had his dream and stuck to it. As a specialist form of entertainment in the theatres, it continued to bring them that £300 a week in earnings and with which they entertained ‘every class of audience from mining town to metropolis,’ (St Helens Newspaper August 18th 1916). It was a period of great wealth for them, and their grandson, reflecting on the death of his father in 1988, could report that his father, Clive, ‘son of Max Erard and Zona Vevey, superstars of English Vaudeville during the early 1900’s, was born into great wealth in Manchester, England,’ and, ‘They were comparable to the Beatles in their day,’ and, ‘Mr. Erard-Coupe and a sister were raised on a great estate in the north of England and as children, were chauffered about in individual Rolls-Royces. Max Erard even had a passenger train set up on his estate to get his family and friends around’. It was a good time of plenty for them, but a time that wouldn’t last and, ‘the rags-to-riches of Clive Erard’s parents collapsed back into rags between 1925 and 1935. Bad investments, hard times, changing tastes and fast friends left Vevey and Erard broke’. While it might be hard to imagine the wealth described, they are the quoted words of Peter Coupe to the Fort Lauderdale News Florida 18/6/1988 where his father had been resident for 33 years.
On the 1911 Census, 30 year old husband and wife team, Max and Maud Erard, along with Maud’s sister, May Brennan who is 22 years old are staying, at 74 Cardigan Street in Birmingham it would seem on tour, and the three describe themselves as vaudeville artistes. By now Max and Zona have two children. Their second child, Clive was born in 1904 and in 1911 the children are living with their grandmother Annie Brennan, and aunty and uncle Bessie and Bertie Brennan at No 1 Love Walk Camberwell SE5. Bessie was born in 1891 and Bertie in 1896, so not a great difference in age between aunty and uncle and nephew and niece. Annie is of independent means so very possibly supported by her daughter and son in law.
On the 24th September 1911 Bessie Brennan, ‘a sister of Miss Zona Veevy, a well-known Music Hall artiste’, was married to Mr Walter Coupe, a brother to Max Erard, in Camberwell, London where she was living at the time. They had previously been on the stage with the brother and sister of each. The newlyweds would branchout in their own sketches but would also feature in the revues of Max and Zona beginning with a new sketch entitled, ‘Silver Wedding’ though the two are not mentioned however in the production when performed at the Palace, Blackpool in mid-December of 1915.
The image provided with the
kind permission of the Leyland Historical Society. ‘Zona Vevey kicks off the match watched by Max Erard’. The annual Leyland May Festival 1913. https://www.leylandhistoricalsociety.co.uk/festival-history.html
At the beginning of December in 1914, the chief billing at the Grand Theatre on Vicar Street in Falkirk is Miss Bessie Brenne, ‘a distinguished artiste and vocalist of acknowledged repute’ and she will be accompanied on the piano by Walter Errard (adding a second ‘r’ perhaps to distinguish or, less likely, an error), the composer of all her songs and the ‘turn,’ it was expected in the preview of the Falkirk Herald, ‘should prove to be one of the most notable yet submitted to the Grand.’ On the bill too is Pauline Rivers and the Twelve Little Sunshines, her young girls, and the occasional boy performers and dancers, who would be known to the Erards with their mutual, Blackpool connections. In 1916at the Rochdale Hippodrome it is Bessie Breen’s ‘dainty musical act’ with Walter Errard at the piano, which, ‘is decidedly attractive.’ Bessie, it can be asserted, had been born in November of 1896 and baptised on the first of November. Her father, Thomas’, profession is as a musician and the family are living at No 3 Market Passage, Southport.
By now, having left the Moss theatre contract it would seem, Max Erard had acquired his eight ton cathedral organ, for which he had overseen its construction. The Blackpool Gazette of the 26th, March in which there is a similar promotional advert to its neighbouring sister paper above, reviews the programme as, ‘A cathedral organ on the music hall stage and played by the unmistakable hand of a master of his art, is a distinct novelty, in fact, as one would have thought impossible until Max Erard showed what originality, talent and determination can do when combined in enterprising unity. This remarkable musician, with his eight ton organ and its majestic harmonies, is demonstrating to all of us who visit the Palace this week that a music hall is a “music” hall and not the paradox we have been apt to think it. His recital is a magnificent departure from the “rut”, a splendid contrast to the ordinary run of varieties. Though always an artist, Max Erard knows his public, and he passes from the grave to the gay, from the sombre to the sunny, with a delightful sense of contrast. Whether playing on his wonderful organ – how the fascinating melody of the “Lost Chord” rolls out from its pipes! – or on his fine concert grand piano, his work is always finished and appealing to the emotions. With him is the bright and vivacious Miss Zona Vevey, whose tuneful ballads, so engagingly delivered and so superbly accompanied, now on the organ, now on the piano, by Max Erard, are always a delight to the listener. The performance of this clever pair, who are too seldom heard in Blackpool nowadays, has a special interest here, where they achieved some of their earliest triumphs.’
The big musical organ had become quite a cult of the time, and with the arrival of the even bigger organ of Max Erard at the Hippodrome, he had taken over in popularity from the popular organ playing of David Clegg at the Winter Gardens. ‘With its rows of huge gleaming metallic tubes and thundering batteries of sound, Mr Erard’s £2,000 organ reminds us of the giant gun. But its ammunition is not the ammunition of destruction, but the kindly ammunition of the melody which is said to conquer, not cities, but savage breasts’. His music ranges from the drama and seriousness of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 or an equally rousing marching tune, or the quieter to a Bach fugue or a Mendelsohn or Chopin and into the foot tapping reels of an Irish jig.’ For an encore Max played ‘Father O’Flynn’ and ‘The Dear Little Shamrock,’ and then provided a piece of music describing the building of the Cathedral organ, where Zona Vevey provided the ‘charming’ recital which accompanied it. (Blackpool Gazette and Herald Aug 11th 1916).
In 1916 Max and Zona have been contracted to the Hippodrome Blackpool, and here, the review in the Blackpool Gazette of August compares the mighty size and sound of the eight ton cathedral organ to the popular choice gun size in the military in which the Germans had created their 15 inch ‘Krupp monster’, and others were following suit to match the size of destructive power. It is a relevant comparison of the times steeped in war and destruction. ‘I looked in at the Hippodrome the other evening and found Mr Erard playing magnificent melodies on his great instrument. Sonorous fifteen inch chords which swept round the big building in rolling peals of sounds, then a rattling raffaele of 75mm melody, and so on through the gamut as this big gun of the organ world sent its musical fire far and wide.’ (Blackpool Gazette August 11th 1916). The organ reportedly took five railway trucks and eight lorries to transport it at a cost of £50 (£3,643.13) a week and, on occasion, special floors had to be fitted to some of the theatres to accommodate its weight. Zona’s contribution is as a, ‘vaudeville artiste of remarkable talents who always pleases her audiences with her delightful songs which are presented in an inimitable manner.’ In 1916 at the St Helen’s Hippodrome, among her songs are included, ‘Come Back’ and ‘My Shepherd Boy’ while Max can play with his ‘brilliant and expressive skills the, ‘The Lost Chord’ and other famous compositions including a clever melange of patriotic melodies.’ (St Helens Newspaper August 18th 1916).
In 1917 they are to be seen once more at the Blackpool Hippodrome, and the Blackpool Gazette reviews the performance as, ‘There are few more beautiful or more popular performances in the world of variety than the fine musical entertainment given by that gifted couple, Miss Zona Vevey and Mr Max Erard. These clever dispensers of music in a novel and spectacular form scored some of their earliest triumphs at Blackpool and have since attained a very high position among music hall stars. They are at the top of a very fine variety programme at the Hippodrome this week. Miss Zona Vevey sings in that charming way of hers, and Max Erard, the talented creator of her greatest successes, lays wonderful music on that magnificent eight-ton cathedral organ of his, the largest such instrument ever built for touring purposes. It cost a matter of £2,000. The performance is ‘a feast of love and Miss Zona Vevey will continue to enchant her listeners with her beautiful singing, while Mr Max Erard, the creator of some of Miss Vevey’s greatest successes, will once again make this spacious hall resound with the music of his magnificent eight ton cathedral organ, the largest of this class of instrument ever built for touring purposes’. (Blackpool Gazette and Herald August 10th 1917.)
The organ was indeed a hefty piece of equipment to move about, and it had to be dismantled, piece by piece, pipe by pipe, transported, then re-erected and tuned in situ before a performance at the next venue. When it was removed from the Blackpool Hippodrome in August of 1918 it cost Edward Topping, a general labour and bricksetter, the loss of the end of a finger. During the performances he was employed as a stage hand by the manager, Mr Fenton, of the theatre, and for extra money he helped the artists remove their equipment from the theatre and he had agreed a fee of £12 (£571.18) for the removal of the organ. Compensation for this loss was denied by the courts as it was agreed that Edward Topping carried on working the next day and suffered no loss of the £12 earnings of the contract he had agreed for the removal of the organ. Max Erard who had an address at the time at Ivy Dale West Drive, Cleveleys, was awarded costs.
Not everyone was enamoured by the flamboyance of the gigantic musical organ which Max had surrounded by coloured lights for extra effects and music critic and cricket correspondent Neville Cardus was one of these, and there were harsh words between them after one of his negatively critical reviews of Max Erard’s performance.
The 19th March 1918 saw the death of Mrs WC Horner, wife of the manager of the Burnley Victoria Opera House and Empire Theatre. A popular figure in the town, there were wreaths from the Coupe family, that of Zona and Max in the form of a harp, their daughter Vera a cross and their son Clive, a cushion. The professional family represented by the private, nuclear family, along with many friends and relatives and music hall personnel.
In May of 1919, ‘Miss Zona Vevey and the great Max Erard, England’s premier pianist, organist, author-composer’ played once more at the Hippodrome in St Helens. And they are the principal feature at the Hippodrome in Blackpool in August, Miss Zona Vevey, ‘the great international vocalist’. ‘They have no equals in their own particular line and both are accomplished musicians.’ (Blackpool Times August 16th 1919).
In 1919, still with a bit of money in the bank, Max had purchased a confectionary business for his daughter for £450 (£19,463.32) which lasted for about 18 months and a similar business in Blackburn in 1920 for his son which cost him £350 (£13,103.76) and which he put in the hands of his cousin to manage. This was unsuccessful as was a two and a half year stint as licensee of the Commercial Hotel in Stalybridge which his brother managed. A dentistry business which his brother in law managed was likewise unsuccessful.
In July of 1921 they are at the Hippodrome in Blackpool once more where Max Erard ‘can make the organ do everything but talk’, and Zona Vevey as an ‘international idol’ is a ‘remarkable singer’.
Max and Zona continued to travel and perform, with that claimed success that was ‘comparable to the Beatles’, until about 1922, when its heyday had passed and their popularity was lost, selling the organ for £670 (£31,891.15). (The Era of 14/6/1931 states that it was sold to the Grand Theatre in Failsworth). Max and Zona’s next enterprise was to produce and perform in revues for his touring company based in London. This first revue, ‘The Menu’ though achieving a long run in London, was not ultimately financially successful, nor a further revue, in 1926 ‘The Fun Box’.
In 1925 they returned to the Palace at Blackpool with the London production of their ‘clever and entertaining, “The Menu” which at this date had been running for 17 months in in the capital. It is a revue which is ‘well staged and dressed and has the added advantage of good, lilting music and infectious songs and lyrics’. Fleetwood Chronicle 13th March 1925.Their children, Clive and Vera are now on the stage with them.
Each of the revues contained several family members, Max and Zona, Clive and Vera, who, in her own right, or as a member of the ‘Menu Maids’ in the performance, was Vera Vena, and who speaks, sings dances and plays the occasional music, probably with the Italian accordion, Bessie Brenne and an unidentified, as yet, Al Brennan.
An interpretation of the review in the Rochdale Observer of the 27th October 1926, (which perhaps is the date and place of the opening image of this account), regarding the performance at the Hippodrome there, might be that, though Max and Zona were well known and liked in the area, they were not at their best in this review. Here ‘their contributions are somewhat limited.’ They are only at their best in the revue when they are singing three songs together during a scene entitled ‘Moments of Melody’, and accompanied by their son, Clive on the accordion, perhaps echoing their former moments of glory. Indeed it is Clive, along with chief comedian Reg Heaton, who comes away with the main honours. Vera Vena too, comes in with praise as along with her dancing and, accompanied by Mary Mellor and Reg Douglas display, ‘an exhibition of the proper manner in which the much abused “Charleston” should be danced’. The Fun Box Girls provide the chorus.
Then in 1927, and in need of a regular income, Max became an organist at the Princess cinema in Blackpool, when it is recorded that he had changed his name to Max Edwards (The Stage 16/12/1962). He did attempt to continue a stage career and in 1928 Max and his son Clive can be seen in vaudeville at the Empire in Nelson, Lancashire. Max now has a new ‘four manual’ organ which he and his son played along with his ‘symphonic band’ which is composed of several talented musicians. With changing public tastes in entertainment, Max was providing the audiences with a variety programme that was now being superseded by the ‘long runs of revue and musical comedy’. There is no mention of Zona who had previously captured the headlines, but now it seems it was the end of the big times and the high life. Clive would eventually branch out on his own and move to the USA as Clive Erard-Coupe, ‘pop group musician, and bandleader,’ and who sang with the American, Merrymacs, ‘pop’ group of close harmony singing.
In 1929 Max was appointed musical director and cinema organist at the Mayfair cinema in Hull which he was invited to open on 7th October 1929, and he continued in this role, with an address on Beverley Road, being in this positon when he filed for bankruptcy in February of 1930. Zona had been ill and was unable to work which hadn’t helped matters but the claim for £800 (£43,801.84) income tax had ultimately resulted in that bankruptcy with a total debt of £2,935 (£160,697.99) and no assets. Regularly, in the preceding years, out of a salary of £120 (£8,743.52) a week, Max had had to pay travelling expenses leaving him a net income of between £20 and £30 (£1,457.25 and £2,185.88).
The London Gazette of 18/3/1930 records the event of his bankruptcy; ‘COUPE, Frederick, described in the Receiving Order as Fred Coupe {otherwise known as MAX ERARD), of Beverley-road, Kingston upon-Hull, York, MUSICAL DIRECTOR and ORGANIST, carrying on business at Beverley road aforesaid. High Court of justice. No. of Matter—132 of 1930. Date of Order—March 13, 1930. Date of Filing Petition—Feb. 8, 1930.’
He had always been an enthusiastic and a generous man, it seems, and he had looked after his family beyond his means, perhaps seduced a little by the specious dreams of Micawberism. His sincere desire to entertain others didn’t stop at his incurred costs and, even though he was well travelled, close to home there remained a little loyal parochialism about him and in the annual Leyland May festival of 1913 he was able, as well as to entertain the players and officials, also to donate a full kit to the Leyland football team for which his famous wife’s initials of ZV were attached to the shirts, perhaps an early form of sponsorship so essential to the commercial sport today.
The 1920’s had seen the decline of his success, but not of his enthusiasm for his metier nor his desire to entertain and to look after his family. By 1931 Max is back on the Fylde Coast in the North West and is first at the Marine Gardens in Fleetwood as a bandsman’. While he is playing in Morecambe in the July of 1931, his son Clive is broadcasting on the radio from the Amateur Dance Club in London. Max no longer has his cathedral organ nor his revues, nor even a smaller organ, but had a piano, and had turned the concert enclosure at the Marine Gardens into a dance arena and is prepared to cater for his audiences whatever their tastes. If they prefer the popular jazz to classical music then so be it. In July of the following year his band, ‘a talented combination of instrumentalists whose performances should become an attractive feature’ is booked for twice daily concerts at the Marine Gardens. In fact such was the nature of Fleetwood as a working town with an unenviable list of unemployed at the time of a depressed fishing industry, that it was a surprise to learn that the townsfolk could actually dance, and it was an unusual sound to hear a band playing a waltz on the sea front rather than hearing the continuing hoots of the passing trawler sirens. These concerts met with little success at first, and they were not well attended. There were few dancers and this was in some part put down to the surface originally intended for tennis courts and which was not suited to ballroom dancing. An appeal was made to support the band and its twelve musicians as it was entirely dependent upon the takings of each performance. There are now many musicians out of work due to the popularity of the ‘Talkies’ and the Council did not provide any financial support nor did the band receive a fee for its performances. By 1932 there are 6,000 people at the open air band enclosure and Max Erard’s band led the singing, so presumably enough in the takings to live on. At this time, Councillor Priestly once more appealed for support for the band as the twilight set in and the new electric lights lit up the proceedings and the ‘open air dancing continued for some time under the fairyland conditions.’
Max continued to make a name for himself with his band on the Fylde coast while Zona, unmentioned from now on, remains in the background and retiring from the stage in 1936. He was to be seen at the Lowther Pavilion at Lytham, and on the beach at Lytham, continuing at the Marine Gardens at Fleetwood, and at Morecambe, and in 1933 at Stanley Park in Blackpool. In June of 1933 he is a busy man in Blackpool, a place he called his own, in directing three bands at the same time, one in Fleetwood, another in Stanley Park and yet another at a South Shore café. As well as being satisfied with the open air bandstand in the park, he was also proposing a gala night with a floating bandstand on the lake, for a choral and orchestral concert, an idea which had been successful at Rhyl previously. It is not certain whether this proposal took off or not. The season would soon be underway in earnest and already 2,000 people had bought tickets for a single concert.
Of Max Erard’s bands, his son, Clive, was directing one of them, and at least a portion of these were made up of unemployed musicians, though it seems that Max had some difficulty in encouraging many out of work musicians to trust in a sufficient income in takings rather than that of a contract as, by that year of 1933 Blackpool Council, had complained that it had not received a reply to the offer made by Max Erard two years previously to play on the park. But the band did play in the park at Blackpool, making their debut on the 4th June 1933 and provided an afternoon and evening concert, daily playing a range of music which had attracted a lot of interest. In the intense heat of the summer of that year, there was an estimated 40,000 people using the ever increasingly popular and relatively newly laid out park. The evening concert is recorded as having been well attended on a Sunday in June that was called ‘Undress Sunday’ as the numerous sun seekers wore the least amount of clothing they acceptably could.
At the Marine Gardens in 1933 once more, as the holidaymaker was now also a motorist, a car park was created on the foreshore as well as a widening of the road, and thus there was a greater potential for day visitors. It was decided by the Pleasure Grounds Committee to allow the Max Erard band to play also at the open air baths at certain events to increase the appeal of the baths, and of course to increase revenue. When this came about, in August, the members of the Fleetwood swimming club carried the piano from the Gardens across to the baths.
There is no more information on either Max or Zona, (or Fred or Maud). In 1947 Frederick Coupe aka Max Erard, aged 66, died in Davyhulme Road, Stretford and is reported in a short column in the Manchester Evening Post. It is not known what happened in between, whether he carried on playing until he died, but his death occurred, quite suddenly at the home of friends in Davyhulme, according to the Daily Mirror Feb 26 1947. He was 66 years old. Zona would live on in some obscurity in the public domain, though close to her family it would seem until 1953, dying at her home in Blackburn. (information from Ancestry).
Clive and Vera
Much information about Clive comes from the obituary contributed by his son, Peter, to the Fort Lauderdale News (Florida) 18/6/1988. As the newspaper reveals on the instruction of Peter, his father Clive Erard-Coupe, pop group musician, and bandleader would follow a similar profession to his own father and eventually sang with the Merrymacs an established pop group, joining sometime after the death of co-founder Joe McMichael, killed in action in 1944. Mr. Erard-Coupe, who used the stage name Clive Erard is credited with co-writing the children’s Knick-Knack Song in 1946 which the popular, close harmony group sang in their repertoire. According to his son Peter, he was born into great wealth in Manchester, England, in 1903. His instruction to the newspaper is that he was the son of Zona Vevey and Max Erard, superstars of English Vaudeville during the early 1900s, and who were comparable to the Beatles in their popularity at the time. Mr. Clive Erard-Coupe, was educated at Ashville College, Harrogate and in 1925 he graduated from London’s Royal College of Music. He worked in Vaudeville for a while before joining a series of bands in the London area. He played the piano, accordion and organ and in the mid-’30s joined the Jack Hylton Orchestra as a vocalist. When World War 2 broke out, he served in the Royal Artillery, much of it at the Scapa Flow submarine base in the Orkney Islands. The definitive histories of the Merrymacs, show that Clive had joined the group in 1944 after the death of member Joe McMichael killed in action inthat year. Peterhowever claims that his father joined the group two years after the war ended. He toured the United States and Europe however, with the American pop group and flew to Berlin during the 1948 airlift to entertain Allied troops, brought on by the Soviet land transport blockade to the Western sector of the city. In 1950, the Merrymacs performed in the Bing Crosby movie, ‘Mr. Music’. Clive is still with the Merrymacs in 1950 and on stage at the Royal Variety Performance (The Stage publication 16/11/1950) and later on at Portsmouth in 1953 (Portsmouth News 15/5/53). The Merrymacs, however, ‘never regained the popularity the group had enjoyed before the war’. In 1955 it would seem that Clive moved permanently to the USA, to Mango Grove, Fort Lauderdale. Clive then lived in Broward County Fort Lauderdale for almost 33 years and was musician and bandleader at the top hotels in the County, ‘the Diplomat, Fontainbleu, Jolly Roger, Imperial House and Yankee Clipper Hotels and the Lago Mar Yacht Club and many are lounges’. Many performances were with trios but he occasionally went solo, working area piano bars. He was a ‘Peter Nero-type performer with a mellow voice’ and music that was ‘kind of like pop with a jazz flavor,’ and he was ‘one the wisest scoundrels you could meet’, according to Peter. ‘He had a young outlook on life and he saw humor in just about anything.’
In 1988, Clive’s death is announced. He will be buried in Derry, New. Hampshire having died at a nursing home in Manchester, New Hampshire, aged 85, (Manchester, by coincidence or otherwise, being on the Merrimac River). With a reference to Ancestry, it appears that the family emigrated from Blackburn in Lancashire, referred to in a Beatles’ song, to Florida after the death of their mother, Maud in the town in 1953. Clive had been born in Manchester and had died in Manchester, though two cities which are several thousand miles apart. His family remains in the USA. (Ancestry).
Vera Maud’s life after the professional retirement and eventual deaths of her parents is not known and it is possible she died in Brighton in 1974, as Vera Coupe, so unmarried unless having reverted to her birth name. In 1929 Vera Maud Coupe is living with an Olive Coupe at No 38 Calder Road in Blackpool’s North Shore. On the published electoral rolls, Vera has an occupational qualification while Olive has a female residential qualification. Olive has not been identified to date but it is somewhat possible that this might be an original misinterpretation of Clive, in the scrawl of the handwritten name as in evidence on the census returns. Vera Coupe, if the same Vera Coupe, is on the passenger lists over to New York and listed as a clerk in 1957 and her home address is given as 39 Southbourne Rd in Marton, Blackpool. Perhaps more exact information would be forthcoming from traceable family trees via Ancestry to bring the family name up to date.
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Sources and acknowledgements
Newspapers. The largest part of the body of information has come from the contemporary newspapers. Thanks to https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/ accessed via Findmypast https://www.findmypast.co.uk/
Erard performances in Coventry https://www.historiccoventry.co.uk/theatre/index.php?search=erard
Inflation calculator comparable for 2024 https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator
Pauline Rivers; https://www.cmronline.co.uk/pauline-rivers/
Victoria Monks https://www.cmronline.co.uk/victoria-monks-musical-hall-artiste/
Clive Erard in the Merrymacs- https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-merry-macs-mn0000476878
Zona Vevey songs https://78rpm.club/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/ZONOPHONE-Catalogue-1924.pdf
Max and his cathedral organ Poster; https://archives.shef.ac.uk/repositories/2/archival_objects/3242
Vera Maude Coupe https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/?name=vera_coupe&event
Photographic image of Max and Zona https://www.tumblr.com/footlightnotes/39830711458/husband-and-wife-max-erard-and-zona-vevey
Reflections of a cinema organist https://www.pipelinepress.com/harry-remembers-3.html
The Mayfair cinema Hull https://cinematreasures.org/theaters/44995
Merrymacs https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1310616/bio/
https://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-merry-macs-mn0000476878
Clive Erard with Jack Hylton https://www.jackhylton.com/personnel
London Palladium 1950 https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/the-merry-macs/1950/london-palladium-london-england-4bfe37b2.html
Clive’s obituary https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/237872537/
Peter Nero https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/08/arts/music/peter-nero-dead.html
The New York Roof Garden https://blog.mcny.org/2014/06/10/up-on-the-roof-entertainment-en-plein-air/
The American Music Hall https://playbill.com/venue/american-music-hall-1908-new-york-ny
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Colin Reed September 2024, Blackpool Lancashire.
There is a poster held by https://archives.shef.ac.uk/repositories/2/archival_objects/3242 in the archive and which might be added if access can be acquired.
