Chorus:It
It’s a grand old song is Home Sweet Home,
Wherever you may be.
It’s a song that’s heard in every part,
A song that reaches every heart.
But when you’re feeling sad and lonely,
At night when the shadows fall,
What the use of singing ‘Home, Sweet Home’
When you have no home at all.

Home Sweet Home 2: In 1910 Australian vaudevillian, Billy Williams, came home from lucrative career in the UK, spending time with family in Melbourne and touring to capital cities.  He was very known, having made recordings as early as 1902, his singing developing as the sound recording industry developed. All of his cylinders and discs were acoustically recorded and it is difficult to find a singer from his time who sounds better in what has recording survived. It was a comparatively brief recording career… 1902-1915. He died in 1915 of septic prostatitis in London. Some of the songs he brought with him from the UK were designed to attract an Australian audience and they were enthusiastically purchased. ‘The Kangaroo Hop’ and ‘St Kilda’ adding to existing favourites already well-known here, song such ‘When Father Papered the Parlour’ and ‘The Taximeter Car’. The first verse of ‘It’s a Grand old Song’ firmly established a setting and a mood, unusual in Billy’s songs, sentimental, nostalgic rather than broad comedy. More of Billy’s remarkable recorded voice can be heard on Australia’s Billy Williams: The Man in the Velvet Suit, Move Records (with the NFSA), 1989.

Jack was as lonely as he could be.
Out in the big Australian bush was he.
Jack sang a song to his pals all around
Tear drops in every eye could be found.
One said to him ‘We are mile from home!’
Far from the dear ones, across the foam.
Sing “Home Sweet Home” to the boys round’ he cried
‘I’d like to oblige you’, Jack softly replied.

CHORUS…