Strolling Along Down the Highroad

I collected this song from a retired taxi driver known locally as ‘Little Jackie’. Jackie lived on Moor End Lane, Dewsbury Moor and quite often sang it in his local pub, on Moor End Lane, The George Hotel.

He told me that he and a friend had written it during the First World War, and that they had regularly performed it at Concert Parties when entertaining the troops. Concert Parties were started in World War 1 to provide entertainment and keep up the morale of the troops, when they were not engaged ‘At the Front’. The Wartime Concert Parties, featuring songs and comedy were based on the travelling concert parties that were popular on the piers and beaches of seaside resorts in the early 1900s, back home in ‘Blighty’.

At first the army thought that the improvised entertainment was detrimental to the war effort, but they soon changed their minds when they saw how the troops responded to the entertainment. They started importing professional groups of entertainers from England, and by 1917 each division of the Army had its own full time military touring troupe made up of men from different regiments and corps.