Listed only(what records exist?)

(July 1898 issue of The Phonoscope  I think we all know who's on the piano behind Spencer on those record by him..)

 (Dec. 1896 issue of The Phonoscope)

(also from Dec. 1896 issue of you know what)

Many of these titles look really interesting and eye-catching for who their listed performing them. But how many of these records actually exist to-day? It's a question that many record collectors wonder about. These record lists from The Phonoscope are always interesting because they show many titles that are largely forgotten of unknown, they also become a target for sheet music collectors. The lists could easily catch the attention of sheet music fiends because of some of the rare coon songs and comic songs listed. Well over half of all of the brown wax cylinders that were made in the 1890's have either been destroyed, or broken, or rotted over with mold and mildew. And there were well over hundreds of thousands of brown cylinders made in the 1890's alone.

As to prove this example further, here is another section, this time about Len Spencer, from The Phonoscope from November 1896:

62,000 records! And that's only as of November 1896! That's not even at the height of his recording career, and yet he had already made that many records. That's a little hard to fathom. I couldn't have ever known that if I hadn't read that thing. It makes sense if you think about it for a minute, because this was written back in the days of thirty or forty takes of a single song. It's still an amazing number. But it can be assumed that less than half of all of those 62,000 or so cylinders are long gone. It's amazing to hear any of these for that matter, if any of Spencer's mid or late-1890's cylinders survive.

Here's one from 1898(with Hylands on piano!):

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/mp3s/10000/10662/cusb-cyl10662d.mp3

(beware! It's pretty messy)

 It's good that he made so many, so there are more out there than those singers who made only about a dozen(such as the very mysterious Atwood Twitchell).

Speaking of Atwood Twitchell, one of my good record friends spoke of this mysterious character last November. He told me that years ago, it was thought that Atwood Twitchell was a queer pseudonym for one of the other popular recording artists(such as Dan Quinn he told me), but this friend of mine heard a Berliner disc decades ago that was announced as being by "Atwood Twitchell"and learned that he didn't sound like anyone else in the recording business who was ever recorded. So he found that this performer was apparently a popular vaudeville singer and performer, who only made about a little over a dozen records here and there.

So getting back to the main subject, most of these great sounding title by these great singers listed do not survive to this date. We record collectors can only look through these record lists and imagine what these eye-catching titles would have sounded like by all these singers. Some of these were never reported to have been sung by these singers! They weren't until you find the record lists, here's a few odd ones:

Some of these titles get me interested and really wishing that at least one of them still exists somewhere. I have only heard descriptions of Russell Hunting's "Casey on Parade", and it must have been a comical mess, but from what I've heard, it's a fantastic parody on all of Hunting's Casey records. He did not write it though, to add to the unusual circumstances of the tune. Another composer wrote the song and of course, one of the record boys must have given it to him almost as a joke, but it was an immediate hit with him. 

Another thing odd to note above is that J. W. Myers was listed very often as a Coon song singer, but to most of the records that survive of Myers, it seemed that he preferred popular songs and ballads, even if he was considered one of Len Spencer's minstrels(i.e. the picture below):

(I do not know which one is supposed to Myers, but he would be the only one with a moustache, and I know that I have used this picture before)

We all know that Spencer is in the center though. 

If this was in 1899, Hylands and Dan Quinn would be here in this mix. 

Myers was involved in Spencer's apparently reasonable successful minstrels in the late 90's, but he didn't stay with it for very long. That was until Spencer tried to bring that back in 1905(alluding to the picture above, even though it was taken in 1907). All of the singers we collectors know recorded all of the popular songs(especially Dan Quinn), even the ones that don't seem to go with the usual types of songs they took on, well the ones that survive nowadays. Just like the fact that Edison recorded Frank P. Banta on the piano in 1902, Columbia probably did the same at some point between 1898 and 1903, and if they ever did, it probably would have been in the late 90's side of his term at Columbia. Just like most of the cylinders though, this supposed piano solo "played by Frederick Hylands for the Columbia phonograph company of New York and Paris" has long died off from all of the collections of cylinders that exist. There was no doubt they would have recorded Hylands on solo piano at some point, only because the record boys(such as Harry Spencer) would have to figure out how to correctly balance him on their piano, so a test recording or two was certainly of order. But it's long gone. 

There are a million other possibilities as to what cylinders made in the 1890's were made and listed, but don't survive the decades and playing time they got. 

I hope you enjoyed this!