Ah yes, the Brilliant and lovely Vess Ossman.
There's a whole lot that could be said about him, from his crazy head-over-heels love for his Eunice to his fantastic Rag-Time banjo playing. Luckily with Vess, there's more than just Banjo plucking. He was infamous for his short Irish temper, as well as his systematically German mindset musically, all of which meant for a slightly unhealthy mix of a personality. Of course when interviewing him, you wouldn't know about any of that being a factor into why most people who worked with him didn't do so for very long, if I were to put an expiration date for that, it would be 4 years maximum.
While searching around on the Old Fulton New York newspaper site recently, I stumbled across a fantastic and long interview with Vess Ossman while in London, published in 1900. A reporter went up to where Vess was staying while in London, and had the great chance to interview him about what he thinks of England, and how he got to be there in the first place. In this interview, not only do we get a better image of Ossman, a rather unique one in fact, but we also get advice to other banjoists. This was published in the Hudson Evening Register on June 5, 1900:
A handsome American gentleman of medium height, with frank features and a pleasant way of talking soon set me at my case, and I never had a more agreeable talk than my conversation with Mr. Vess Ossman.
"I like London! It's immense, in every sense. My friends in the States told me I should not like it, but I do. Everything interests me, and I like nearly everything. The cheapness of London surprises me, most of all your cheap cabs. I am going everywhere, seeing everything and enjoying myself right down."
... ... ...
Interviewer: And yourself?[in asking how he felt he was treated at the music festival]
Vess: Ah, they were real nice to me, I had had a hard day, I only landed at Southampton at 5 a.m., on the morning of the festival...
... ... ...
Interviewer: Were you nervous?[about getting before the immense festival crowd]
Vess: Don't know what nervousness means! You see, I practice. It's practice that makes a banjoist--practice and practice and then practice. If a chap's nervous he had better go back and practice for three or four hours more, and then he'll be safe on at least two tunes.
Interviewer: Then that is your golden rule for banjoists?
Vess: Certainly. Practice! That will do it if a man is not a fool. And scales, don't forget scales! I know there are players who do not use them in study and teachers who do not teach them. But they are wrong. Scales are the foundation of music, and the foundation of speed on any instrument, including the banjo. So stick to practice and scales.
... ... ...
Interviewer: How much do you do now?[in terms of practice]
Vess: Four hours a day. That's enough to place me in good form, and keep getting ahead into the bargain.
After speaking a whole lot more about his successes in the banjo competitions and touring and such, the interviewer pleads for more of him.
Interviewer: Go ahead about yourself, please?
Vess:[with a smirk] Not done with me yet then? ... ... [more about his musical upbringing and such]
Interviewer: Did you like the work?[being contracted to make records for Columbia, 1898-1900]
Vess: Most interesting, you have to pick hard and keep the same volume of tone through a piece. There is no light and shade under the phonographic conditions, and absolute accuracy is imperative.[that's BS Vess, we all know that's wrong, maybe for you this is true]That contract paid me, and now that is over, I am a free man, and so here I am in London. ... ...
... ... ...
Interviewer: What were your encore pieces?
Vess: "Whistling Rufus" and "Smokey Mokes". Quaint titles they give to melodies in the United States don't they?
Interviewer:[Ignorantly asks] Are they your own?
Vess: No. I never play my own compositions. My arrangements I play by the batch. But I think no composer should play his own pieces, except on rare occasions. Some players don't know how to write, and when they set down a piece it is to show off their best points and slur over their worst. That's a bar to perfection all around , and a check to progress. I do not hold with it, I have studied harmony and have written many things which other players fancy hugely. But myself, I don't play them, except, perhaps once apiece.
The rest of the interview is about Vess continuing onward with the same advice he gave before, and more about the man managing the festival and keeping him in his nice hotel room and such. Now we can take away quite a lot about Ossman from this interview. His take on the recording process is challenging most of what we have learned over the years as collectors, but remember, Ossman was just a banjoist, he was no studio engineer or pianist. If perhaps Hylands, Spencer, or one of the Emerson brothers were interviewed about the recording process, we would hear a different story. Also, it was really interesting to hear what he thought of composers playing their own compositions, especially since he did that rather often. Hmm, what did he really think of playing "The Darkey Volunteer" with the composer as the accompanist?
Speaking of that, here's a newly slowed down transfer of that very recording:
https://archive.org/details/DarkeyVolunteerOssmanwComposer1898
Makes me wonder what Ossman really thought of Hylands, and what Hylands thought of Ossman. It still seems like Hylands was trying to pay back Ossman for some trouble he caused him or something like that.
Yep.
It's like when Hylands threw Dan Quinn on the cover of his own piece "The Prize Cake-Walker is old Uncle Sam", it seems a little strange, especially since I always get the vibe that Quinn held a little animosity toward Hylands. If you don't believe me, then why did Quinn only praise Banta? No mention of Hylands anywhere, even though he recalled more of his Columbia days before 1900, and recalled more of his Edison days after 1900. Always seems a little suspicious to me.
Quinn is mysterious, no matter how much we think we know about him.
Just because I really do have a special place in my heart for Vess, here's an image that proves this point:
Before I dug myself into that hole that became of this picture last evening:
I found another image that is not nearly as misleading and unusual.
That picture of the Columbia orchestra that was in The Phonoscope, well, turns out there's a better quality copy of the image!
This image is not specifically labeled as the Columbia orchestra in any of the sources it came from, but it's almost certain that that's who this group is. Not just because of who that pianist is, but also because of the piccolo player, and the shape of the windows. That man playing the piccolo is a familiar face:
Yes indeed, luckily he's not hard to spot. He was distinct looking enough for this to be so.
I had assumed when only seeing the low quality version of this image that the piccolo player was Schweinfest, but now this is very clearly true. The clarinet player is also a familiar face:
Indeed so.
That is without a doubt Tuson. The valve trombone player is also a familiar face, and it's David Dana, as I have previously observed, but can really see it now. These are all former Issler musicians, but as we know, Issler was no longer Columbia's chief pianist by the time this image a taken and then interpreted by a Lithographer. So, that must mean that the pianist:
Is Fred Hylands!
Alright, this time it's for certain, there's no need to got off on a tangent and try to figure it out this time. Notice that Hylands is the only one not looking like he's playing, and looking at the viewer as well. This part of the image almost looks like a photograph, but I can still see lines of a Lithographer ever so slightly. Recall that this image was staged, and they weren't actually playing at the moment the image was taken. I still don't understand why he had his right hand up hear his tie, it's very strange. It seems like they told him to pose in some way, and that's what he came up with. Everyone else looks like they know what they're doing. Well, that pretty much sums up Hylands' role in the Columbia Orchestra. You may notice that the wallpaper is the same in this image as the one I used in the last post, the window is the same, and the doorway is in exactly the same spot, with the same design on the wood. Really look back there behind Hylands, you'll see that doorway.
Before I finish, I also found a fantastic image of Burt Shepard!
That's exactly the face I see when hearing his records.
http://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/matrix/detail/2000001155/Pre-matrix_B-1692-Thats_where_she_sits_all_day
This image came from a Pathe Catalog, so that means that Russell Hunting was in charge when he made records for them, how he must have been a riot to Hunting!
While searching around on the Old Fulton New York newspaper site recently, I stumbled across a fantastic and long interview with Vess Ossman while in London, published in 1900. A reporter went up to where Vess was staying while in London, and had the great chance to interview him about what he thinks of England, and how he got to be there in the first place. In this interview, not only do we get a better image of Ossman, a rather unique one in fact, but we also get advice to other banjoists. This was published in the Hudson Evening Register on June 5, 1900:
A handsome American gentleman of medium height, with frank features and a pleasant way of talking soon set me at my case, and I never had a more agreeable talk than my conversation with Mr. Vess Ossman.
"I like London! It's immense, in every sense. My friends in the States told me I should not like it, but I do. Everything interests me, and I like nearly everything. The cheapness of London surprises me, most of all your cheap cabs. I am going everywhere, seeing everything and enjoying myself right down."
... ... ...
Interviewer: And yourself?[in asking how he felt he was treated at the music festival]
Vess: Ah, they were real nice to me, I had had a hard day, I only landed at Southampton at 5 a.m., on the morning of the festival...
... ... ...
Interviewer: Were you nervous?[about getting before the immense festival crowd]
Vess: Don't know what nervousness means! You see, I practice. It's practice that makes a banjoist--practice and practice and then practice. If a chap's nervous he had better go back and practice for three or four hours more, and then he'll be safe on at least two tunes.
Interviewer: Then that is your golden rule for banjoists?
Vess: Certainly. Practice! That will do it if a man is not a fool. And scales, don't forget scales! I know there are players who do not use them in study and teachers who do not teach them. But they are wrong. Scales are the foundation of music, and the foundation of speed on any instrument, including the banjo. So stick to practice and scales.
... ... ...
Interviewer: How much do you do now?[in terms of practice]
Vess: Four hours a day. That's enough to place me in good form, and keep getting ahead into the bargain.
After speaking a whole lot more about his successes in the banjo competitions and touring and such, the interviewer pleads for more of him.
Interviewer: Go ahead about yourself, please?
Vess:[with a smirk] Not done with me yet then? ... ... [more about his musical upbringing and such]
Interviewer: Did you like the work?[being contracted to make records for Columbia, 1898-1900]
Vess: Most interesting, you have to pick hard and keep the same volume of tone through a piece. There is no light and shade under the phonographic conditions, and absolute accuracy is imperative.[that's BS Vess, we all know that's wrong, maybe for you this is true]That contract paid me, and now that is over, I am a free man, and so here I am in London. ... ...
... ... ...
Interviewer: What were your encore pieces?
Vess: "Whistling Rufus" and "Smokey Mokes". Quaint titles they give to melodies in the United States don't they?
Interviewer:[Ignorantly asks] Are they your own?
Vess: No. I never play my own compositions. My arrangements I play by the batch. But I think no composer should play his own pieces, except on rare occasions. Some players don't know how to write, and when they set down a piece it is to show off their best points and slur over their worst. That's a bar to perfection all around , and a check to progress. I do not hold with it, I have studied harmony and have written many things which other players fancy hugely. But myself, I don't play them, except, perhaps once apiece.
The rest of the interview is about Vess continuing onward with the same advice he gave before, and more about the man managing the festival and keeping him in his nice hotel room and such. Now we can take away quite a lot about Ossman from this interview. His take on the recording process is challenging most of what we have learned over the years as collectors, but remember, Ossman was just a banjoist, he was no studio engineer or pianist. If perhaps Hylands, Spencer, or one of the Emerson brothers were interviewed about the recording process, we would hear a different story. Also, it was really interesting to hear what he thought of composers playing their own compositions, especially since he did that rather often. Hmm, what did he really think of playing "The Darkey Volunteer" with the composer as the accompanist?
Speaking of that, here's a newly slowed down transfer of that very recording:
https://archive.org/details/DarkeyVolunteerOssmanwComposer1898
Makes me wonder what Ossman really thought of Hylands, and what Hylands thought of Ossman. It still seems like Hylands was trying to pay back Ossman for some trouble he caused him or something like that.
It's like when Hylands threw Dan Quinn on the cover of his own piece "The Prize Cake-Walker is old Uncle Sam", it seems a little strange, especially since I always get the vibe that Quinn held a little animosity toward Hylands. If you don't believe me, then why did Quinn only praise Banta? No mention of Hylands anywhere, even though he recalled more of his Columbia days before 1900, and recalled more of his Edison days after 1900. Always seems a little suspicious to me.
Quinn is mysterious, no matter how much we think we know about him.
Just because I really do have a special place in my heart for Vess, here's an image that proves this point:
Before I dug myself into that hole that became of this picture last evening:
That picture of the Columbia orchestra that was in The Phonoscope, well, turns out there's a better quality copy of the image!
I had assumed when only seeing the low quality version of this image that the piccolo player was Schweinfest, but now this is very clearly true. The clarinet player is also a familiar face:
Alright, this time it's for certain, there's no need to got off on a tangent and try to figure it out this time. Notice that Hylands is the only one not looking like he's playing, and looking at the viewer as well. This part of the image almost looks like a photograph, but I can still see lines of a Lithographer ever so slightly. Recall that this image was staged, and they weren't actually playing at the moment the image was taken. I still don't understand why he had his right hand up hear his tie, it's very strange. It seems like they told him to pose in some way, and that's what he came up with. Everyone else looks like they know what they're doing. Well, that pretty much sums up Hylands' role in the Columbia Orchestra. You may notice that the wallpaper is the same in this image as the one I used in the last post, the window is the same, and the doorway is in exactly the same spot, with the same design on the wood. Really look back there behind Hylands, you'll see that doorway.
Before I finish, I also found a fantastic image of Burt Shepard!
http://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/matrix/detail/2000001155/Pre-matrix_B-1692-Thats_where_she_sits_all_day
This image came from a Pathe Catalog, so that means that Russell Hunting was in charge when he made records for them, how he must have been a riot to Hunting!
Hope you enjoyed this!
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