The Rosie Side of the Street

London's stately Albert Hall has long been a choice working ground for the piebald bevy of street musicians, sing ers and dancers known as buskers. Let a ticket line form on the sidewalk out side and the buskers were there to clown, sing and fiddle, while their bottlers (assistants) passed the hat for coppers and shillings like Dickensian urchins in the night. Last week there were no buskers on the sidewalk. Instead, 40 of them were inside giving the concert of their lives. And no one had to pass a hat: more than 3,700 persons paid to get in.

The concert was "a dream come true" for the greatest busker of all, Don Partridge, 26, who plied his trade in the streets of London for five years singing traditional English and American folk songs. One day last winter, a record company executive named Don Paul heard Partridge sing his own song, Rosie, on a street corner; he liked its cheerfulness and Partridge's McCartneyesque style.

Paul recorded Rosie, and after it be came a top-ten hit, Partridge quit busking for a professional career of singing on records, concerts and TV.

Classics Only. Partridge wanted one final farewell to his old street pals. He hired Albert Hall, then arranged for all the buskers to share the profits equally.

With the audience shouting its approval and clapping along, the buskers put on the biggest one-night pitch in their his tory. Partridge himself sang Rosie and his latest single, Breakfast on Pluto. As much of a hit was the grande dame of busking's elder set: a round, waddling littie woman of 54 known only as Meg, who sang Danny Boy in a round, waddling contralto. Said she: "I only sing classical." The Spoonies, two stubble-chinned men in their 60s named Scottie and Georgie, clattered through Waltzing Matilda, one whacking a banjo, the other clicking two bent dessert spoons like castanets. The evening was a smash success. "After all," says Partridge, "if they weren't any good, they wouldn't be buskers. Bad buskers starve."

It was in the pubs of mid-19th century England that wandering singers first came to be called buskers.* They were then best known for their obscene songs, but they gained respectability as they moved to the sidewalks and brought along their own touch of music-hall gaiety. George Bernard Shaw loved them. So did Actor Charles Laughton, who used to gather a group around him in their favorite pub, the Black Swan, and buy them sandwiches and a barrel of beer. Buskers basically are drifters, as Accordionist Tony Turco admits: "You have got to be a performer or else you are nothing but a disguised beggar."

Partridge started out busking with pretty much the same motives in mind. At 15, he admits, he did not have the slightest idea what he wanted to do, and he left home because he was "a bit flighty." His first job was burgling. From that he graduated to ice cream salesman, crane driver, and 45 other different jobs (by his count). He now has seven children and is married to the mother of two of them. "When I'm rich enough," he says, "I hope to get all my kids and their mothers into one house with my wife and me and our kids, and we shall all live together. My wife won't mind. I have a knack for persuading people to do what I want them to do."

One-Man Band. He was persuasive as a busker too. Starting out with just a guitar, he gained attention by becoming a one-man band, simultaneously playing a kazoo, tambourine and drum, in addition to the guitar. "He really busked in style," says one admirer. "He used to arrive in a taxi and go home afterward the same way." At his peak, Partridge made $300 a week.

He still decks himself out with kazoo, tambourine and drum for his concert dates, and operates with all the style that nearly $4,000 a week allows. Next week Partridge will take all his gear along to the U.S. to promote the new Tom Courtenay film Otley, in which he sings the song Homeless Bones on the sound track. Unless his fortunes ebb, his busking days are over. "It became too embarrassing," he says. After the success of Rosie, people started recognizing him as a celebrity. But instead of dropping less in his hat, they gave more. He still does not understand that.

* From the verb "busk," to move or shift about restlessly.

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