He said that at the time the gramophone was "an instrument of torture", excruciating for the recording artist, who needed "lungs of leather" to make an impression on the wax cylinders, which captured nothing but the very loudest noises.

[4] He was sent to London to be taught by Sir Charles Santley, who first sent him to F. L. Bamford of Glasgow for six months' basic training and coaching in vocal exercises, arias, oratorio pieces and classical songs.

He then studied from 1903 to 1907 with Santley, who gave him a thorough training in voice production and a meticulous understanding of the great oratorios, especially Handel's Messiah, Mendelssohn's Elijah and Haydn's The Creation.

He attended a large number of performances at Covent Garden during the first decade of the 20th century and heard many of the leading lower-voiced male singers of the age, including the baritones Titta Ruffo, Pasquale Amato, Mattia Battistini, Mario Sammarco and the basses Marcel Journet, Édouard de Reszke and Pol Plançon.

On 20 May 1905, he married Annie Mortimer "Nan" Noble, daughter of the box-office manager of the Alhambra Theatre, who sang professionally in the soprano range under the name Annette George.

In 1909, he appeared at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, as the Night Watchman in The Mastersingers of Nuremberg (opposite tenor Walter Hyde as David), with Hans Richter conducting.

Dawson was approached to appear in an important concert in London at the Queen's Hall; but first (in 1909–1910) he made a successful six-month tour of Australia with the Amy Castles company of singers.

He returned via South Africa to England, where he made concert appearances for wartime charities and the troops, but later decided to go back to Australia to enlist in the Australian Army as a private.

Too old (at 57) to enlist, he contributed to the war effort as director of the family firm of Thomas Dawson & Sons, which was producing tins for military use, and by broadcasting and recording songs as well as touring army camps with concert parties.

With the introduction of electrical microphone recording in 1925, the core body of his work was committed once again to disc, including new Gilbert and Sullivan versions under Sir Malcolm Sargent.

His concert operatic titles were principally The Prologue (from Pagliacci), "Iago's Credo" (Otello), "Even Bravest Heart" (Faust) – written originally by Gounod for Santley – "Largo al Factotum" (The Barber of Seville), "Non più andrai" (The Marriage of Figaro), "O Star of Eve" (Tannhäuser), the "Toreador Song" (Carmen), "Pari siamo" (Rigoletto) and "Within This Hallowed Dwelling" (The Magic Flute).

Russian standards also appeared in his recital programs, notably Tchaikovsky's "To the Forest", "None but the Lonely Heart", "Don Juan's Serenade", Rachmaninoff's "Christ is Risen" and Malashkin's "O Could I But Express in Song".

He sang a good deal of the output of Stanford and Arthur Somervell, a few Sullivan vocal warhorses, and a select range of items by contemporary composers such as Percy French, Peter Warlock, Liza Lehmann, Granville Bantock, Eric Coates, Roger Quilter, Thomas Dunhill, Edward German, George Butterworth, Gustav Holst, Landon Ronald, Michael Head, Frank Bridge, Arnold Bax.

He composed a number of songs himself, under the name J. P. McCall, most famously his setting of Rudyard Kipling's Boots, which won the author's approval and was one of Dawson's greatest successes.

[7] In 1984, Dawson was chosen by the Guinness Book of Recorded Sound as one of the top 10 singers on disc of all time, listed alongside Elvis Presley and operatic tenor Enrico Caruso.