In 1846 he appeared at the Hereford Festival as a singer, and also played a piano concerto of Mozart. He undertook concert tours at about this time with Sivori, Vieuxtemps and others, serving both as accompanist and solo pianist. He also gave monodramatic entertainments, as for example in this description of a concert in the Assembly Rooms at Peckham in December 1846: "Mr J.L. Hatton was the Atlas of the entertainment, and bore the weight of the concert on his own shoulders. He lectured, sang, and performed on the pianoforte. Like Malaprop's Cerberus, he was three gentlemen at once. The entertainment was novel and interesting. Mr. Hatton gave some capital specimens of pianoforte music by various masters including Corelli, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, etc. He sang songs comic, sentimental, and serious. He levied contributions upon many nations for their compositions, and kept his audience alternately moved with delight and excited with laughter. Mr Hatton was modest enough not to obtrude too many of his own works upon his visitors. 'The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe', a song intended, no doubt, to be very comic, was the only composition of Mr Hatton's performed during the evening." Although differing in that – on that occasion – Hatton did not perform many of his own compositions, this style of one-man entertainment with speech, songs and a keyboard with accessories had been pioneered by Charles Dibdin more than fifty years previously, in his "Entertainments Sans Souci": Hatton was certainly well aware of the example of Dibdin.