Morton Fraser's Harmonica Gang
British comedy musical group
Morton Fraser's Harmonica Gang was a British comedy musical group, formed in 1946 by Morton Fraser (born Emmanuel Fish; 3 November 1905 – 10 June 1982).
History
Fraser was born Emmanuel Fish in Leeds, to a naturalised immigrant family of Polish Jews originally named Fisz. In the 1920s, he won an All-American harmonica competition in Philadelphia, and became a renowned solo harmonica player, touring theatres around the world. In the late 1930s he intended to form a harmonica group along the lines of Borrah Minevitch's Harmonica Rascals, but with the onset of the Second World War he joined the Royal Artillery and became a participant in Stars in Battledress shows as a harmonica soloist.
After the end of the war he formed his troupe of harmonica players in 1946. They starred in the 1947 film Morton Fraser and his Harmonica Rascals, later changing "Rascals" to "Gang" to avoid confusion with Minevitch's group. They rapidly became a popular variety act in Britain, playing at the London Palladium on many occasions, and featured in television shows through the 1950s and 1960s. They also recorded for EMI.
The personnel of the group changed over time. In 1950, Fraser himself stopped performing, becoming the group's arranger and manager. The group included, at various times, Stan Key, Henry Samuels, Nat Lees, Dave King, Tony Vincent, Gordon Mills, Don Paul, Ronnie Wells, Johnny Stafford, Reg ‘Johnny’ Farrow and "Tiny" Ross.
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This entry incorporates text from “Morton Fraser's Harmonica Gang” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.