Harry Fragson was a French chansonnier, composer and piano player at the turn of the 20th century. He was one of the earliest French singers to have his songs mechanically reproduced on wax recordings. Several of these wax recordings have survived and can be found on the internet as MP3 files, although the quality can be considered as rather poor. Yet, apart from the minor sound quality, the wax recordings give a fair indication of both Fragson's vocal style (heavy timbre, fastly articulated, nearly spoken) and the popular music of the day (precursor of the popular French chansons, obviously inspired by American jazz and ragtime music of the late 1890s and early 1900s).

With the technological advances in sound recording and playback techniques in the early 20th century, Fragson's hammering vocal style soon became outdated, as with much singers from the wax cilinder era. The dramatical, half-spoken vocal delivery of Fragson did, however, become a trademark in later chanson music, as performed by the likes of Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.