Miss Louie Webb

Three items from the scrapbook of Miss Louie Webb, pianist, composer, singer and orchestra leader.

Her orchestra was engaged for Anzac Day 1921 at the Palais Royal, Glenelg, known as  'The Palace of pleasure by the whispering sea'.
Her orchestra also played regularly at the Palais Royal on North Terrace.
The 1922 letter from the Managing Director of the Wondergraph, which was in Hindley Street,  relates to her playing music to accompany silent films.

The concert to raise funds for the RSL sub-branch in Kapunda was held in 1920. The Chronicle reported The concert in the Institute Hall given by Miss Louie Webb's concert party, assisted by Mr. A. Demodena and others, was a treat to the crowded audience.  Saturday 3 April, 1920, p11.

Jessie Louisa Emily (Louie) Webb, was born in 1891 in Victoria. After working as a contralto and musician with Mr GH Pudney Tours, (King’s Pictures and Musicians or The Kings Musicians and Concert Co.) through Horsham, Bordertown, Colac, Coleraine, and Stawell, Louie toured Western Districts and The Golden Valley in Victoria with Aderee Comedy Company. Then in 1913 she performed at Naracoorte and in a mixed concert at Millicent.

During the Great War Louie became associated with Rundle Street’s Arcade Music Stores, owned by Richard Correll senior (died 1932).  Louie wrote the pianoforte arrangement of the patriotic song:  Marching to Berlin published in Adelaide; although only credited in the second edition. On 9 November 1915 she appeared at a Norwood Patriotic concert. In 1916 she performed in Adelaide’s Vaudeville de Luxe Company. In 1917 Louie taught dance at Balaklava and was pianist at Norwood Town Hall picture show and other venues.

After the war she studied at Elder Conservatorium of Music. She played piano to accompany the Wondergraph silent films in Adelaide where, in 1924, for JC Williamson’s The Paramount Four, she sang along to the films. Louie also sang with Elsie Woolley for Jack Fewster’s Arcadia (Café) Orchestra.

Louie then returned to Melbourne where she married Richard Correll junior in 1936. In the 1940s she broadcast as “Aunty Louise” for Perth radio station 6WF. Her husband died in 1965 in Victoria where Jessie Louisa Correll died in 1981.

Copyright is assigned to the Libraries Board of South Australia with unreserved use by State Library of South Australia customers. 

Permission to use this item for any purpose, including publishing, is not required from the State Library under these conditions of use.

Buy a high resolution copy.