Harry Tally

Harry Lee Tally (June 30, 1866 – August 16, 1939) was an American tenor singer of popular songs, who recorded between 1902 and 1917.

Biography He was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and began performing in a popular vaudeville act, the Empire City Quartet.

Among his most commercially successful songs were "Seminole" (first recorded in 1903), "Wait 'Till the Sun Shines, Nellie" (1906) – which he may have been the first to record – and "Take Me Back To New York Town" (1907). Several of his songs were inspired by new technological innovations, including "On An Automobile Afternoon" (1906), "Let's Go Into A Picture Show" (1909) — one of the first songs to mention this new form of entertainment — and "Come, Josephine, In My Flying Machine" (1911). Tally also recorded duets, in the Edison Diamond Discs series, with another member of the Empire City Quartet, Harry Mayo, which have been described as "finely tuned performances combining expert harmonization with hilariously unrelated nonchalant banter."

He continued to perform his songs in vaudeville, and made his last recordings in 1917. In 1918, he retired from the music business, and set up a cigar store in Ocean Park, California. He died in 1939 at the age of 73.