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I was looking on a 1918 Columbia record yesterday and the name Billy Frawley was listed as a composer of a song (see 'Teens music boring?" thread. I thought "could this be the William Frawley who played landlord Fred Mertz on "I Love Lucy"? Then I looked up William Frawley in Wikipedia and saw that he was a singer in vaudeville. I was very surprised to see that he was the first to sing hits like "My Melancholy Baby" 1912, and "My Mammy" 1921, and "Carolina in the Morning" 1922! I don't think he made records back then, but maybe someone out there knows?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Mammy

I believe it was during the "I Love Lucy", when there was a recurring continuity of Fred & Ethel "reviving their vaudeville act" for some occasion, that "Carolina in the Mornin'" was frequently one of their numbers ?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9MAtltZAlN4


I always enjoyed Bill Frawley's work as a character actor...

There's a Billy Frawley credited as a writer for "Oriental Moon" on this Edison Diamond Disc... sadly, there's no vocal...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVgYJTBELEY

Bill Frawley was indeed a song-and-dance man long before I Love Lucy. He made at least 1 LP in the late 50s/early 60s of the kind of material he sang in his vaudeville days.

Here he is doing a bit of singing during WWII: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OVpLEeAZSg[/youtube]