Baritone singer Edmund Hockridge reached his commercial peak during the mid-1950s, an era when expansive ballad vocalists dominated the British charts just prior to the arrival of rock & roll. Born in Vancouver on 9 August 1919, he trained on piano and, while in London during the Second World War, came to the attention of New York Metropolitan Opera star John Charles Thomas after the latter heard him perform in church. Back in Canada, Hockridge captured first place in a 1941 Forces club amateur talent contest, which secured radio appearances on Maple Leaf Matinee and Johnny Canuck’s Revue. Continuing to divide his time between London and Vancouver, he also broadcast on the BBC accompanied by the Queen’s Hall Light Orchestra and the Melachrino Strings.
During the early 1950s he took part in several Gilbert & Sullivan productions, interpreted the title roles in Don Giovanni and Peter Grimes, and assumed principal parts in the West End premieres of Carousel, Guys And Dolls, Can Can and The Pajama Game. Recording activity began at the same period, yielding three British hit singles, the most successful of which, “Young and Foolish,” reached the Top 10 in March 1956; the remaining two entries, “No Other Love” and “By the Fountains of Rome,” both appeared that same year. Although he subsequently issued more than twenty singles on assorted labels and over fifteen albums, no further singles-chart entries materialized after 1956, save for two EPs—Most Happy Fella and The Music Man—that registered on the separate EP listings in 1960.
Hockridge sustained an international cabaret career and later brought his wife and two sons onstage with him under the name Hockridge Family Singers. He remained active in live performance until retiring in the 1990s. EMI subsequently issued a CD drawn from his early-1950s work titled Songs From The Great American Musicals, followed by the twenty-track anthology The Best of Edmund Hockridge in 2003 and the twenty-five-track collection The Ultimate Collection in 2007.
