[1] He was born Harry Haley McClaskey and used Henry Burr as one of his many pseudonyms, in addition to Irving Gillette, Henry Gillette, Alfred Alexander, Robert Rice, Carl Ely, Harry Barr, Frank Knapp, Al King, and Shamus McClaskey.

Born in the border town of St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada,[4] Harry McClaskey was the son of a candy and tobacco store owner,[6] A.

On April 14, 1901, Burr appeared at the opera house in Saint John in his first notable concert with the Scottish soprano Jessie MacLachlan.

[6] Emboldened by Campanari's endorsement, McClaskey ventured to New York in 1902, where he began lessons and sang with the Grace Methodist Episcopal Church choir.

[6] His teachers included John Dennis Meehan (or Mehan) and Kate Stella Burr, from whom he would adopt his stage name in her honor.

The pair had a succession of hits between 1911 and 1925, including "The Trail of the Lonesome Pine" (1913), "Somebody's Waiting for Someone" (1919), "Till We Meet Again" (1919), and "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" (1919).

That year, he formed the Paroquette Record Manufacturing Company with Fred Van Eps, based in New York City.

As a novel introduction in a highly competitive market, the Paroquette recording technique was an early failure, and the company was out of business by 1917.

He made his first appearance in 1920 in Denver, Colorado using a microphone improvised from a wooden bowl with an inverted telephone transmitter.

Burr is also credited with making the first transcontinental 'broadcast' by singing into the telephone in New York and being heard by diners wearing headphones at a Rotary dinner in California.

Electrical recording technologies had encouraged the crooner style of tenor vocals, as in the singing of Gene Austin and Al Bowlly.

Around 1935, he returned to performing on the radio as a member of the WLS Chicago National Barn Dance troupe, which was broadcast over NBC on Saturday evenings.

Notably, in the 1960s, the famous ukulele-playing singer Tiny Tim frequently played Burr songs on stage and on such programs as The Johnny Carson Show.