When you're flying the longest routes in the world, een at it a very long time.
A PEDDLER'S JOURNAL
Bill Bailey won't you please come home on't you come home, Bill Bailey, won't you come home? She cried the whole night long. What few people realise is that the Bill
Bailey of the song was a real person. A vaudeville entertainer from New York by that name showed up in Singapore one day back in the mid -1930s. Not long after he arrived he opened a night club along the sea front in Pasir Panjang, calling it "The Coconut Grove". lt soon became a popular watering spot for the expatriate crowd, including Malay royalty from across the causeway, and flourished until the outbreak of the war. Bailey spent the war years interned in Changi prison as an all expenses paid "guest" of the Japanese. After the war he bought an old house nearer the centre of town and turned the downstairs into a bar and lounge naming it again "The Coconut Grove". lt became a hangout for journalists and writers. Bailey would spend his evenings there, sitting in a butterfly cane chair and spinning yarns to entertain the tourists, while his partner tended the bar. It was during those years that the story spread and that the song was written for
him. lt was a plea to return to his old haunts in New York from an old girl friend or his friends left behind.
When I lived in Singapore in 1970,
I
heard bits and pieces aboutthe Bill Bailey legend. I had also noticed on a side street, just off Orchard Road, a seedy old
establishment with a faded sign in front saying "Coconut Grove". I wondered if there was any connection. One evening when my stepfather from New York was visiting, I suggested we go there and check it out. We arrived about 9pm. The place was deserted except for an elderly Chinese dozing in a chair behind the bar. The only sound to be heard was a dull whooshing
::.
!
noise created by the slowly revolving ceiling fans. Rattan tables and chairs were scattered about the spacious room, and in the corner was an old piano with what looked like the accumulation of several
years of dust. After a suitable interval, but before he had time to go back to sleep, I asked the bartender if there was any connection with this place and Bill Bailey's "Coconut Grove" I had heard about. A flicker of surprise passed his face and he replied "This Bill Bailey's place but he dead." "When did he die ?" I asked, "Few years ago", was the rather vague reply. I began to ask him more questions
about Bill Bailey but it was obvious that even though he had worked for him for many years, he knew nothing about his background. The most we could get out of him was "Bill Bailey very nice man". I suspect he was puzzled why foreigners, and Americans in particular, seemed to
take so much interest in him. Finally reaching down below the bar, he said he
would show us a picture. He placed a thick scrap book on the bar in front of us and opening to the first page said: "This Bill Bailey last picture". We were looking at an album of photos taken the day of Bill Bailey's funeral. On the first page was a picture of a coffin open to expose the torso and head of the deceased. The eyes were shut but the features distinct and had I known what Bill Bailey looked like in life, I would have had no trouble recognising Bill Bailey's corpse. A few years later the "Coconut Grove" was swept away by the building boom of new hotels and shopping centers on Orchard Road and the vicinity. I have no idea what happened to the elderly bartender with his photo album but I assume he lived out the rest of his life anony-
The Swire Group
mously in a tiny flat in one of the huge housing estates in Singapore. A couple of years ago I heard from a long-term resident of Hong Kong, a different and possibly more accurate version of the Bill Bailey legend. My source, well advanced in years I should add, remembers a Bill Bailey who played the banjo in a Shanghai night club back in
æ:
I
e.=
æ
1931 . lt was called the "Cinderella Club",
located on Sichuan Road and was owned by one Whitey Smith. Bailey had a partner at the time, Lynn Cowan, who played the piano. According to my informant, when the club closed around 2am, the musicians were in the habit of hanging around for a few congenial drinks and to do their own thing. These sessions often lasted until the wee hours and invariably lead to the appearañce of Mrs Bailey to drag her old man home. This was done by mild coaxing followed by impatient demands when he showed some reluctance, which was normally the case. This became so much of a routine that one evening, on the appearance of Mrs Bailey at the door, the pianist pre-empted the coming outburst with staccato and crescendo chords setting spontaneously to music the following ref rain. "Come on home Bill Bailey, Bill Bailey come on home. Come on home Bill Bailey.
Bill Bailey won't you PLEASE come HOME." Bailey and Cowan left Shanghai a few years later, appearing next for a relatively short stint at the "Gryps Grill" in Hong Kong. That was sometime around 1933.
By this time the Bill Bailey song
had
As
I
I
lz
pioneers of ultra long-haul
flights to and from Hong Kong,we
know how to make flights more enjoyable. From the technology of
our all Rolls-Royce powered
bodied fleet, to the finest pilots in the
world, and service by flight attendants
from 10 Asian lands. All is designed to
become a standard in their repertoire.
Leighton Wíllgerodt,
an Associate
help you arrive in better shape.
Member of the FCC, is a sales
,a
executive with a US multinational chemical compqny.
^--
44 TIIE CORRESPONDENT
APRIL 1992
wide-
CATHAYPACIFIC Arrive in better shape.