Hylands' Union endeavors, and new findings

Yesterday evening, Tim Brooks sent me a link to a wonderful website where you can dig through and analyze thousands of newspaper and magazine  sections. Of course, the first thing that I searched for was anything having to do with Fred Hylands. Most of what I found had to do with him being a music director, of which most articles one will find on him will be. Of course, amid these many times of being a genius music director(as one of the pages actually stated), it seems that his place as one of the leaders of the White Rats Union, of which I have described in detail in previous posts, was of much importance. Before being one of the founders of this union's cause, he attempted to create a "union" a few years before this endeavor. This venture is something that I often highlight when speaking of his time working for Columbia, which is when this came along. This first failed venture of a union was called "Knights of the Footlights", which was similar to his publishing firm with Len Spencer a few years earlier. 

To really prove how similar the two businesses of his were, here's the letter that was published in the September 19 issue of The New York Telegraph:

Love that so much. If you'll recall, the Hylands advertisement from The Phonoscope  read just this exactly:
(I can't really get a decent screenshot of the page, so I'll write it out exactly as it says)

RECORD BUYERS NOTE

Don't fail to place an order at once

[insert popular song titles here, four of them in fact]

TO PHONOGRAPH VOCALISTS:

You are cordially invited to make our office your headquarters when in New York. All mail cheerfully forwarded.

Our Mr. Fred Hylands and Mr. Burt Green will be on hand both day and evening to coach artists in our latest song successes. Every facility has been provided for your convenience. 

Professional copies free to performers enclosing programme. Send permanent address for future reference. 

TO PARLOR EXHIBITION MANAGERS [no colon here...]

Enclose stamps for our handsome title pages for display in automatic nickel-in-the-slot machines. They are nickel coiners. [Okay...]Records containing our new songs furnished free of charge when you handle our music. Write for our special terms and discounts. 

TO MUSIC DEALERS[no colon here either]

Send name and address and we will forward circulars descriptive of our special introduction plan.   It will pay you to handle our music

                             Yours fraternally, 

HYLANDS, SPENCER AND YEAGER

Damn it's so fun to pull apart and read it in detail like that. it's more fun than it should be. Now to return to the comparison. These two advertisements are very similar, and in fact, amid these travels of digging for more Hylands in newspapers, I found and ad for the publishing firm that succeeded Hylands Spencer and Yeager in 1901, which was Aldrich, Linton and Hylands. This partnership bought out the remaining music from Hylands' catalog, and had a very similar way of operation to his previous firm, but had a much more formal atmosphere it seems. The performer who was the instructor at this firm was Fred's sister! How about that for strange? 

Burt Green was basically Fred's assistant at Hylands Spencer and Yeager, and was their publicist, since that's another area he had expertise in surprisingly. This publishing firm lasted about as long as the previous one. 

Now back to the union thing. Hylands' begging(literal in this case), of performers, publicists, sporting performers(Yes! FINALLY EVIDENCE OF THIS!), realtors,Wall Street stock sharks, and general philanthropists. Pretty much everyone that you could think of with lots of expendable income at that time was what he was calling for--no, begging for. These high hopes and attractive offers that Fred was so good at presenting(after learning this art better from Spencer), were not fulfilled, and soon the "union" busted to bits, leaving him a laughingstock to the Columbia management, and the other musician's unions that existed at that time. I find it very funny that on both of the advertisements, Hylands wrote this closing statement before signing his name:

                      I beg to remain yours respectfully,

FRED HYLANDS.

Hilarious. I absolutely love that, it sounds almost like he caused someone trouble and was apologizing for it. HA! The irony is overwhelming! These sections truly reveal a whole lot more about Hylands than I have read before, as it helps that they were written by Hylands directly. Among the many sections I saw highlighting the doings of the White Rats Union, there was one that created a very queer crossover with Hylands and Spencer so many years after the publishing firm. It seems that in 1908, Len Spencer's famous Lyceum got in a scramble with a few White Rat members, which called for a lawsuit of the Lyceum. It was a fail that was caused by Spencer's bookkeepers, involving a lost contract and too little money being paid to the performers at his theater. Oddly enough, Fred Hylands probably had to be involved with this case, essentially going against his old publishing and studio friend! Amid the digging, I found many hundreds of advertisements for LEN SPENCER'S LYCEUM scattered all over theatrical magazines and newspapers from 1904 to 1913, which is really unexpected! It also seems from the amount of films being advertised under his Lyceum, that he was a photography and film freak just as we thought. It seems that his desire to work a camera didn't go away. This affinity of his seemed to last far beyond the 1890's, and since films were becoming a much more popular media of entertainment, he seized the chance and promoted showing films and song slides at his theater and wanted to book film showings. The lawsuit against Spencer's Lyceum must have been the most awkward thing, since Spencer was against Fred's management essentially, which he must have realised before the suit that it would be as such a time to meet Fred once again. As well as the hundreds of Spencer's Lyceum advertisements, it seems that in the late-1890's, Spencer's minstrels was a pretty popular attraction, much more than we'd think from reading The Phonoscope. They weren't lying there. The New York Clipper presents a few sections fro 1897-1899 advertising and describing the popularity of the troupe. That's a pretty big deal, since it was in that paper that Ben Harney and Mike Bernard were advertised as popular Rag-Time pianists. The main headliner of these performances was of course Billy Golden and the Spencer trio, but Spencer also found some other talent that wasn't exactly recording at Columbia, or at all in this case. Most of the performers were Columbia stars though, as expected. Hylands is not specifically mentioned in these sections, but since he was part of some of these performances as reported in 1899 and 1900, it is very likely that he was involved in at least some of these performances. They needed their token Rag-Time pianist anyway, so they wouldn't dig out Banta in this, as it was a specifically "Columbia" troupe, since contracted Columbia stars ran the troupe anyhow. 



All of this was really interesting, and this is not even close to everything that I found! I will have to split up these sections by the stars that they are connected to, as I found a whole bunch of sections on Russell Hunting, Vess Ossman, and Burt Green. I will continue to dig for more sections within the next few days, and will certainly find more at the rate it's been going. 

Hope you enjoyed this!