The title of this post is something that I have to a whole lot of on this blog. It's just how being a history nerd works. And from this, there are indeed people I come across that don't believe the ideas I throw at them, because the evidence is only something you can hear, and not everyone can hear those little things I point out.
One thing that I have come to notice on one of the cylinders I shared within the last few days, is that there are only tow voices on it, and one of them has to be Fred Hylands. It is this cylinder here, Harry Spencer's "Side Show Shouter" from 1898. I am pretty sure that voice at beginning, that starts in just after Harry Spencer does his "Ikey! Ikey..." thing just after the announcement, is that of Fred Hylands. It's very odd that Spencer wanted Hylands to do some hard-to-decipher talking at the beginning, of which I cannot understand a word of, but it's interesting nonetheless(if any of you can understand any of the words, if there are any, please leave a comment on this post!). If you think about it, it's not really that odd that Hylands spoke on many records he's on, he wanted to have a place on the records(which he always did anyhow), more than just the background accompaniment. From how the exhibitions of 1898 through 1900 went however, it seemed that the record avid buyers knew that it was Hylands on the piano or organ when they heard a Columbia record. So sometimes I really wonder why Hylands has been so largely forgotten to the record collectors. There's an obvious reason why Rag-Time pianists now don't know of him, and it would be more likely to hear a record collector of this ancient material to say "Hm, I've heard of him."
I have asked several of the most prestigious Rag-Time sheet music collectors about Hylands before, and all of them had never heard of him. That says quite a lot. He didn't write too much music anyhow, and later he had to use a handful of pseudonyms, so it doesn't make it any easier to identify which pieces are actually his. Only three collector friends of mine had ever heard of him(and probably a fourth if I had met the man, as he is deceased now).
All I really know is that someone who was one of the pioneers of the recording business said something back in the 1930's or 1940's alluding to Hylands, and I don't know who it was, but there's a handful of names that I would consider when thinking of this notion. I do have the feeling however that it more likely may have been Joe Belmont. But then of course, that leaves open some more names I know of, like the two Spencer daughters, Byron Harlan, Fred Gaisberg, Dan W. Quinn, Russell Hunting, Albert Campbell, and several more.
I am not entirely sure how much the ladies Spencer remembered of their father, but as I recollect now, I remember that one of them had more memories of him than the other. Their names were Ethel and Clara, Ethel was born in 1898, and Clara in 1902. I'm pretty sure it was Ethel that recalled much more of her father than Clara, and thinking of it logically, since she was the eldest surviving of the Spencer girls. Len did have three daughters before that, but they all died very young, but if any one of those girls lived to adulthood, I would think that our knowledge of Spencer would be much more complete and complicated. There was one born in 1887, 1895, and in c.1896. The girl who was born in 1895 did live until the early 1920's, but that was before any old record geeks or researchers could get to her.
I have only read snippets of the Spencer girls' accounts of their father(seen above), but I am beyond anxious to read all of them, word by word. I just went back to my bookshelf a few minutes ago to look something up about Len's daughter Myrtle(who was the girl born in 1895), and didn't realize that she sang with him on a few records, which come to think of it makes sense. It did indeed seem that Ethel was the one who provided most of the information of the two of them, as she was the one to witness his quick and terrifying death in 1914(of which I do not want to get into details of right now). It's odd to think, that Len Spencer, the chap who recorded he most coon songs of any of the early artists, had a love for making records for his daughters. It's very contradicting, he had a great sweet side to him, even if he had a crude sense of humor and loaded every phonograph and graphophone with some of the most cruelly offensive "Coon Songs" of the late-1890's. He had specialties before 1900 with these two songs:
Yep, that's it. Those are only two of them, he had hundreds more in his repertoire. It must have been very emotional(in many varying ways) for his daughters to once again listen to their father's "Coon Songs" when they were older.
It's really an interesting thing to think about, the artists that remembered all of these things I speak of on this blog so much. There are always missing pieces to the puzzles of this early business however, as most of the actual artists who were involved in the business in the time period were very old by the 1930's and 1940's. Most of the best possible sources had been dead for at least 20 years in fact, like Fred Hylands and J. W. Myers. If Hylands had lived at least as long as his father did(into his 60's I'm pretty sure), we would have a hell of a lot more information on the early recording business and music publishing business. The house musicians would be better sources for information on this subject than the actual artists, as they endured more, and knew EVERYONE. They even knew the ones that wouldn't be expected. Not too many of these musical saints lived very long though(minus Fred Gaisberg and Edison tuba man Fred Geib). When they got the job at a record company, they were shortening their lives, whether they knew it or not. This is why Frank P. Banta was 33 when he died, and this is also why Hylands was 41 when he croaked suddenly in England. The artists featured didn't have nearly as much to take as the musicians behind them, they gave their lives to the business, this is why most of them are long forgotten.
I hope you enjoyed this!
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