Career
His songs were all in the English language, since the Gower of his youth was still culturally distinct from the rest of Wales, and his style of singing is compared to that of English singers. Renowned locally as "the Gower Nightingale", he reached a national audience in his seventies with recordings for Columbia and the British Broadcasting Corporation and an appearance on the British Broadcasting Corporation radio programme In Town Tonight. Shortly before he died, he was featured in an article by John Ormond Thomas for Picture Post, and recorded once again by the British Broadcasting Corporation. In 1976, he was remembered in a British Broadcasting Corporation Radio 4 tribute by the Welsh radio broadcaster Wynford Vaughan-Thomas recalling "the voice of the sanest, happiest, kindest eccentric I ever knew, the voice of Philosophy Tanner, the Gower Nightingale".
His recordings have been reissued several times, most notably on the Civil Defense The Gower Nightingale, which also includes the Wynford Vaughan-Thomas radio programme.
The editor of one reissue, the eminent folklorist Alan Lomax wrote: "When Philosophy died, England lost her best traditional singer".
