Evans, M. Eddie

Composer

b Talysarn, Gwynedd, N Wales 1890, d 1984. His parents owned and ran a grocer’s shop in Talysarn. This was subsequently sold and the family moved to Liverpool where they opened a new grocer’s shop. Eddie worked in this shop. Without formal musical training he became organist and choir master at Edge Lane C.M. Chapel for 35 years. Eddie began composing hymn tunes at 16, advised by John Henry Roberts, qv. Several of his 200 tunes won Eisteddfod prizes, including a national one in 1937. In the 1st world war he was a pianist/entertainer in the officers’ mess; on one visit to London he was deeply moved by the organ music at Westminster Abbey and was allowed by the organist Sir Frederick Bridge to play the famous instrument. Speaking of the original Welsh refrain to No. 178, one of the most popular of recent Welsh tunes, he said on Radio Wales when in his 90s, ‘It’s a great pity that everyone in this world couldn’t say that the Halleluia is in their souls’. No.178.