I Don’t Know How You Do It

Billy Williams & Fred Godfrey, 1913.

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Recordings

Billy Williams recorded two versions of this song: 1 May 1914 for Zonophone (reissued in Canada on HMV-Victor), and ca. May 1914 for Favorite (reissued on Beka Grand, Jumbo, Coliseum and Scala).¹

Discographers Frank Andrews and Ernie Bayly reproduce a review of Billy’s Zonophone Twin release of I Don’t Know How You Do It, issued just as the Great War was starting:

Admirers of Billy Williams — and we should not be surprised that they exceed the Kaiser’s hordes in numeration — should not miss this for a pension. Evidently, when he made this record something or other must have put him into the best of spirits, possibly for the reason he tells you in this song, that at a Fancy Dress Ball he met a girl dressed as Eve and wishes he had gone as Adam!²

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Notes

1  For comprehensive discographies of recordings by Billy Williams, see Brian Rust,
     British Music Hall on Record (Harrow, UK: Gramophone, 1979); and Frank
     Andrews and Ernie Bayly, Billy Williams’ Records: A Study in Discography
     (Bournemouth, UK: Talking Machine Review, 1982). For a collection of recordings of
     all the Billy Williams songs, see J.P. Myerscough, Billy Williams: All the Songs
     [8-CD set and accompanying notes] (Lowestoft, UK: Music Hall Masters, 2001).
2   Andrews and Bayly, Billy Williams’ Records, p. 70.