Background
George Dryden Wheeler was born in London, the son of Sarah Ann (Frost) and George Kingman Wheeler.
George Dryden Wheeler was born in London, the son of Sarah Ann (Frost) and George Kingman Wheeler.
In 1892, he met music hall performer Hannah Chaplin (stage name Lily Harley), whose young son Charlie would become a leading actor, comedian, and director This also marked the end of Hannah"s career and the start of a long decline. Wheeler married singer Marie Tyler (real name Marian Louise Crutchlow) in London in 1897.
Leo Dryden was best known as the Kipling of the Halls, noted for his patriotic and colonial songs including "The Miner"s Dream of Home" (1891).
He also performed parodies, including "Shopmates" and one on "Feniculi Fenicula". He dressed to fit the songs, as a Canadian Indian for "The Great Mother", as an Indian soldier for "India"s Reply", and "How India Kept Her Word" (1898).
Even America did not escape, with "America Looking On", about the Boer War. These examples of colonial fealty were well received by British audiences, and were parodied in Rudyard Kipling"s Barrack-Room Ballads.
He also was known for tear-jerking ballads such as "Don"t Go Down the Mine, Dad" (1910), possibly inspired by the great 1907 mining disaster at Saint Genard in South Wales, and "Good-bye, Mary!" (1911).
At the start of World War I, he returned to patriotic songs with "Call Us and We’ll Soon Be There" (1914). Dryden also appeared in The Lady of the Lake (1925), an early sound film inspired by the Walter Scott poem. He died in London 21 April 1939.
He is the paternal grandfather of rock musician Spencer Dryden, the drummer for Jefferson Airplane.