We all recognize this picture and quote. And this piano man has been forgotten by most collectors and record geeks. It's unfortunate really, because Fred Hylands practically(just like Frank P. Banta) gave his life for the good of the record companies he worked for, even if he did not exactly croak when he was still a studio pianist. We can sure as hell assume that his time at Columbia, Victor, Leeds and Zon-O-phone was what wore him down more than traveling around and performing. He really only lived eight years after he stopped recording, so what does that tell you?
I know I have gone on many a speil about Hylands on this blog before, but the only reason for that is to make sure that collectors hear him behind the singers that he accompanied. He was on thousands of cylinders, and probably just as many disc records too, and most collectors of these old records have completely let this pass over them! Even the best and most authoritative record collectors don't known of him. The ragtimers now who are looking for ragtime on cylinders don't look to Hylands and Banta either, they just look for the obvious Rag-Time band records from the late 1900's and early 1910's, like "Maple Leaf Rag", "Black and White Rag", and all of those countless Rag-Time songs that Billy Murray and Eddie Morton recorded. The best and clearest Rag-Time is not the most obvious, like these three cylinders:
(Billy Golden with Fred Hylands, 1903)
(George W. Johnson with Fred Hylands, 1898)
(George W. Johnson with Hylands, 1898)
Yes indeed, these three examples of Fred Hylands are very clear and representative examples of genuine early Rag-Time, more specifically, Indiana Rag-Time. Indiana was where Hylands came from, that was where he was born and raised, and it was where he first began playing the piano. by 1887 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, 15 year-old Fred Hylands was already producing and managing shows, but what was what, he was also playing in his father's saloon, as well as others around probably. Though it was Indiana he began and started his interest in the instrument, it was in Chicago in 1893 where he was first introduced to the new method of playing that Ben Harney was playing. Back in '93, Harney and the people who couldn't give it a name called it "Jig-piano", and this was Rag-Time essentially. Hylands had already been experimenting with broken time music before 1893, but when he heard Harney, and Krell's band, and even Silas Leachman, he was swayed in that direction fully. Hylands had probably been playing things like this.
Krell and Leachman became friends with Hylands not long after he moved there, as he was just another one of the great eccentric musicians who flooded into Chicago in 1893, and all of them were welcome by the eccentrics who already resided there. Hylands was one of them, unmarried, out of work, but had tons of potential. He was kind of wandering around there playing in various venues, getting drunk, and enjoying his freedom, even if his father probably thought is was only slightly ludicrous. With the few early "rag" pianists who remained after 1893, Hylands probably followed them around and listened to them closely, trying to imitate everything they played, and create his own style with them. He did so much of this, to where his style in 1898 could be heard to sound like this.
Very natural, Ragged, and extremely showy, but he had fantastic rhythm to balance it out. Unlike Mike Bernard, who was extremely showy, ragged, but had a very broken sense of rhythm. Even when Hylands got married and left Chicago, he still kept the way he played with him, as this is evident in the cylinder's he's on years later, as heard above.
Those Rag-Time pianists now who think of Rag-Time as it is, they are wrong, and what I mean by this is that there were some pretty advanced Rag-Time pianists before James P. Johnson and those novelty weirdos if the 20's that were already playing like those boys back in the 1900's and even the late 1890's. One such pianist like this has often been said to be Ben Harney, other than being an already forward-thinking pianist and dancer, his playing was sometimes said to have sounded more like piano of the 1920's meshed with true 1890's "rags", which is really saying a whole lot. This is only so because I hear Hylands back in 1898 and 1899 playing novelty type of things in the bass notes and Ragging Franz Schubert. And to think that Hylands was a real Indiana saloon pianist, it makes for an interesting line of thought. It would really be wonderful if Hylands wrote more of his music down, as I'm sure he wrote more things than what got published of his.
I'm sure that if more of his music got published, we would hear more of rags that sound like this.
The rag in the link above is really a great example of what Hylands sounded like, even if there aren't any trills or things like that, some of the syncopation and left hand patterns really remind me of Hylands's playing(especially the final strain!) and guess what...the rag was published in Chicago! What a surprise! This really get's my point across.
And to close off, here are a few great examples of Hylands' Chicago-Indiana Rag style:
(I cannot get over what Hylands plays on the Whistling chorus!)
(this one is from 1901, not 1906...)
(fifths in the octaves!!!)
(walking octaves in the final strain!)
I hope you enjoyed this!
Great post, the Freckles rag by "Larry Buck" could be that composers direct imitation of Hylands style.
ReplyDeleteLarry Buck was actually Laurent Dubluclet, a black (actually creole) band leader and arranger from New Orleans who specialized in arranging rags and songs of illiterate ragtime pianists. Probably half the rags published in New Orleans were arranged or notated by him.
I was very surprised to see your comment! Thanks for saying something! That would make some sense that "Larry Buck" could have been imitating Hylands, even if the dates don't exactly line up, but they're close enough for it to be a direct connection. It just struck me when I heard "Freckles" that it sounded so much like Hylands, with all of those weird broken syncopated patterns, and the deep octaves with the fun more-than-octave jumps. It just sounded a little suspicious to me. none of the broken octave patterns in the left hand though. I guess that no one knew how to notate that in the 1890's/1900's.
DeleteReally great to see a comment from you Nick!
Hylands was a somewhat Freckle-faced redhead anyhow, the name of the rag is "Freckles". Just saying.
DeleteGreat post, the Freckles rag by "Larry Buck" could be that composers direct imitation of Hylands style.
ReplyDeleteLarry Buck was actually Laurent Dubluclet, a black (actually creole) band leader and arranger from New Orleans who specialized in arranging rags and songs of illiterate ragtime pianists. Probably half the rags published in New Orleans were arranged or notated by him.