Turner Layton Biography

Turner Layton was born in Washington DC in 1894, where his father was a director of music at a school. He started playing the piano as a child. He was at college, about to study medicine, when his father died. He had to find a job quickly and he soon secured engagements singing to his own piano accompaniment.

He went to New York and worked in bars, dance halls, restaurants, theatres and even in a circus. He met another performer, Henry Creamer, and they formed a double act playing in vaudeville. They toured Britain and France before World War One. With Turner Layton writing the music and Henry Creamer the lyrics, they composed some classics of popular song. Creamer and Layton contributed songs for Bert Williams' 1911 Ziegfeld Follies act. The team scored the 1922 show 'Miss Lizzie'. Their first big hit was "After You've Gone," written in 1918 and was first made popular by Sophie Tucker who had a penchant for black written material. In 1921, they wrote "Strut Miss Lizzie" which was introduced by Van and Schenck in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1921. The following year they wrote "Way Down Yonder in New Orleans," which was introduced by the duo in Spice of 1922. They also wrote Dear Old Southland and Down by the River. Layton also wrote material for several short-lived Broadway productions, including Three Showers (1920, 48 performances), Spice of 1922 (73 performances), and Some Party (1922, 17 performances).

Layton’s first recordings were released on Black Swan in 1921. He made one solo with piano accompaniment by Fletcher Henderson as a Victor test, which remained unissued, on March 24, 1923.

The story of one of the most successful partnerships in the history of show business - that of Turner Layton and Clarence Nathaniel Johnstone - began when both were employed by the music publisher and folk music annotator William Christopher Handy, in New York, in 1923. The girl who became the Forces' Sweetheart in World War I, Elsie Janis, booked them for a season in her revue Elsie Janis At Home in London in the summer of 1924. They were a modest success; but they also caught the attention of the owner of the Cafe de Paris, who engaged them to appear there in the late-night cabaret, and their success in this medium was instantaneous and long-lasting. They topped the bill in stage and cabaret all over the United Kingdom for the next eleven years, then after a tragic scandal involving Johnstone, the partnership was dissolved in November, 1935. During those eleven years they recorded 1,008 numbers.

Turner Layton managed to pick up the threads of his career and go solo. What is more, he was a success. The society beauty Lady Diana Cooper was a fan of Turner Layton, She said, “He was an incredibly attractive man. I assumed that every woman in the audience felt that Turner was singing only to them, and for me he brought forth admiration and romantic thoughts.”

One of his biggest fans was the Prince of Wales, later the Duke of Windsor, who was seated at a table with Charles Chaplin and Tallulah Bankhead when Turner introduced “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” into his act. Large parties and charity balls were a feature of life in Britain in the 1930s. Winston Churchill, who was guest of honour at a big function in a West End hotel, asked Turner Layton to sing “Trees.”

Although Turner Layton was an American citizen, he refused to leave Britain during the Blitz of World War 2. He entertained the troops and he dodged the bombs to maintain his busy schedule of theatre dates.

Layton had the class and the charm to break down any racial barriers. He was courted by high society, attending a smart wedding at St. George’s Hanover Square one day, and dining at the Ritz with Lady Cunard on another. And yet, he was also courted by the working classes, and at every request he signed his autograph. Nor was there resentment when he drove off in a white Rolls Royce. His style and his songs were universal.

A firm favourite on radio, Turner expanded his repertoire to include negro spirituals, a number of which became best selling records. In the 1950s Turner Layton gathered new fans by appearing on television and he still was a popular attraction on variety bills. In the 1960s he had the last of his own series on BBC radio called My Piano and I. It was to mark the end of his career and preface a long rest. His last years, dogged with ill health, were spent in a North London nursing home where he was to die in July 1978 at the age of 83.

Turner Layton recorded 431 songs as a solo artist; adding these to the recordings made with Clarence Johnstone and with early recordings from 1918 made in the USA, including many on the all black label, Black Swan, Turner Layton made over 1,500 recordings.