- A child prodigy, he performed Grieg's Piano Concerto at Queen's Hall at the age of twelve.
- Pianist, composer and band leader. From 1927, he operated a 'School of Syncopation' and a booking agency for dance bands, as well as fronting 'Billy Mayerl and His Vocalion Orchestra'. Mayerl had recording contracts with HMV, Decca and British Columbia.
- Born a stone's throw from London's West End theatreland, pianist Billy Mayerl won a scholarship to nearby Trinity College while still only a small boy.
- In 1940 he took part in a Royal Command Performance and led his own band in the popular radio programme "Music While You Work", conceived to encourage wartime factory workers but which outlasted hostilities by 20 years.
- Most people today remember Billy for his eccentric but highly-pleasurable piano pieces which for the amateur are difficult to play properly. Even the professional has trouble staying the course but a reappraisal of his music in recent years has given a new generation the chance to enjoy the music which made him such a great pre-war favourite.
- In 1925 he gave the first British concert performance of Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and his "lightning fingers" were filmed by a slow-motion camera.
- In 1926, he launched out into the unknown with a "Correspondence Course in Modern Syncopation" from rented premises in Oxford Street. By the late-Thirties he had a staff of more than 100, with 117 branches world-wide and a clientele in excess of 30,000 students. Although he tried to revive it after the war, this proved ineffective and the Billy Mayerl School finally closed down in 1957.
- His records sold before the second World War in their thousands and all around the country budding pianists were wrestling with the intricacies of his vast array of piano compositions, of which the most famous was his unofficial signature tune "Marigold", one of a whole variety of horticultural pieces, gardening being one of his many hobbies.
- His first small musical group dated from the Twenties but by the mid-Thirties he was running a 26-piece orchestra to accompany his musicals at the Gaiety and other theatres.
- His father, a violin player, attempted to introduce him to the violin age of four, but failed. After noticing his affinity to the piano, he started him with piano lessons,.
- Billy Mayerl was a household name in the 30's and he performed regularly on both Radio Luxembourg and the BBC.
- Throughout the Twenties, Billy made many appearances in Metropolitan and provincial variety theatres and also contributed songs for a host of London revues.
- In 1923 he married his childhood sweetheart, Jill Bernini.
- By 1930 he was performing with the Co-Optimists and was ready for full musical scores, the first of which was Nippy, followed by The Millionaire Kid, Sporting Love, Twenty to One, Over She Goes, Crazy Days and Runaway Love, many with horse-racing as the central theme. Although none of the musicals was a spectacular success, each had a healthy run in a large theatre.
- Before he reached his majority he became solo pianist with the prestigious Savoy Havana Band at London's top hotel on the Strand.
- He did his bit for the Services but post-war entertainment changed and in 1958 he made what turned out to be his last broadcast when he was chosen by Roy Plomley to appear on "Desert Island Discs". He signed off with his characteristic "Goodbye chaps, and chapesses" but this time he really seemed to mean it.
- Numerous recordings and broadcasts quickly brought Billy's name to the fore.
- In 1938, jazz pianist Marian McPartland joined his group "Mayerl's Claviers" under the name Marian Page.
- By his early-teens was playing in dance bands and accompanying silent films in a variety of cinemas.
- His Grosvenor House Orchestra dated from 1941 and he continued band leading into the Fifties.
- His song "Miss Up-to-Date" was sung and played by Cyril Ritchard in Alfred Hitchcock's sound film Blackmail (1929).
- In November 1927, his piano styles accompanied the Hamilton Sisters and Fordyce, American Vaudeville vocal harmonizers who first recorded in England.
- He married pianist Ermenegilda (Jill) Bernini. She later helped him write duet arrangements.
- In December 1926, he appeared with Gwen Farrar (1899-1944) in a short film-made in the Lee de Forest Phonofilm sound-on-film process-in which they sang Mayerl's song "I've Got a Sweetie on the Radio".
- He also composed works for piano and orchestra, often in suites with evocative names such as the 'Aquarium Suite' (1937), comprising "Willow Moss", "Moorish Idol", "Fantail", and "Whirligig".
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