He was a key figure in 1920s English musical life, befriending composers such as Rebecca Clarke, Frederick Delius, Bernard van Dieren, E J Moeran and Peter Warlock.
Goss built his reputation from 1920 onwards as a recitalist (he never performed in opera or oratorio),[5] touring extensively in Europe, the US, Japan and Canada.
[7] Goss sang in the second performance of Warlock's The Curlew, at the Hyde Park Hotel on 31 January 1923 with the Charles Woodhouse string quartet and Léon Goossens playing the cor anglais.
But clashes over repertoire with the committee organising the 1939 Festival of Music for the People, dominated by Alan Bush, led to his withdrawal and prompted his move to Canada just before the war.
[14] While attending a peace conference in New York in 1949, Goss was evicted from America due to his Communist sympathies and sent back to Canada.
One of his last recitals took place in Birmingham on 14 October 1952, with accompanist Philip Cranmer, performing songs by van Dieren, Dowland, Purcell, Schumann and Beethoven.
[16] Ten years after his death his friend, the composer Elizabeth Poston said in a 1964 BBC broadcast:[17] John's voice was not a great one: it was a light baritone with a high range, extraordinary flexibility and beauty of tone.
Goss' publications include The Daily Express Community Songbook (1927),[18] The Weekend Book (with Vera Mendel and Francis Meynell), An Anthology of Song (1929) and Ballads of Britain (1937).
[20] In Tony Britten's film Some Little Joy (2005) on the life of Peter Warlock, John Goss is played by the baritone Giles Davies.