He was born in
Memphis, Tennessee, and began performing in a popular
vaudeville act, the Empire City Quartet. Among his most commercially successful songs were "Seminole" (first recorded in 1903), "
Wait 'Till the Sun Shines, Nellie" (1906) – which he may have been the first to record – and "Take Me Back To New York Town" (1907). Several of his songs were inspired by new technological innovations, including "On An Automobile Afternoon" (1906), "Let's Go Into A Picture Show" (1909) — one of the first songs to mention this new form of entertainment — and "
Come, Josephine, In My Flying Machine" (1911). Tally also recorded duets, in the
Edison Diamond Discs series, with another member of the Empire City Quartet, Harry Mayo, which have been described as "finely tuned performances combining expert harmonization with hilariously unrelated nonchalant banter." He continued to perform his songs in vaudeville, and made his last recordings in 1917. In 1918, he retired from the music business, and set up a
cigar store in
Ocean Park, California. He died in 1939 at the age of 73. ==References==