A rather common thing among these early recording stars is the fact that more than one sibling worked in the business. It usually began with one family member getting into the business. Most of the time the single misfit of the family got into the business, but occasionally, more than one of the family joined after the other did so. It's strange that this seems to be a pattern in the early business of recording, more so than many would think at first. The Spencer's probably come to mind at first, but there were more families with misfit children who joined recording early on. Sometimes it ended up being husband and wife in the business, but most of the time it was siblings following each other around in the studio.
The most famous of these families in the early business is the Spencer's.
Len
and Harry(the taller one here)
These two brothers were all over the early recording and film business. It seemed natural for brother Harry to catch the bug that his older brother Len got in 1888. Harry came into the business in 1895-1896, more as a salesman and repairman than his brother. He was more of a film enthusiast when he began, which sets him apart from Len.
(an advertisement for Harry in 1896, from The Phonoscope).
It seemed inevitable for Harry to tag along with Len in the business, as he had been interested in the technology since 1888 like Len, but he was too young to join back then. He waited until he was 20 to set up his own shop and experiment with film and projectors. While Len was doing the frivolous work in the studios, Harry was working with machinery. Their wives must have been alone at home a whole lot, and probably often became tired of their frequent absence. The lady to really wonder about here is Len's wife, since it's hard to imagine him being married, with children. It's said that Jim Walsh interviewed her, but of course we can't all see those fantastic articles he wrote.
By 1897, Len and Harry were both working in the same studio, doing the same work at the studio as well. They often took turns announcing takes and handling sound effects, which Harry had to learn how to do from Len. They almost never worked on the same recording early on, which is a little strange, but makes some sense. It seems as though they new that they sounded almost identical on recordings, so both of them speaking on a single recording would get confusing rather quick. After 1900, this occurred a little more often. There are recordings such as this one that help us in trying to distinguish the brothers, but make us realize why they weren't on the same recording very often. Oddly enough, Harry's speech is often a little harder to understand than Len's, with a sort of lisp, accompanied with a dialect thicker than Len's. Some of Harry's announcements sound a little strange with this factor. After 1900, Harry was the chief announcer for the Columbia orchestra, essentially doing what Len did before 1900. Pretty much all of the Columbia orchestra announcements were by Harry from 1901-1905, with occasional anomalies, occasional takes announced by Dan Quinn or Joe Belmont, which doesn't make much sense, but it did happen.
One of Harry's strange announcements sounded like this:
War-shington Pos' Ma'ch, played by Sousa's band-- fo' Columbia Phonograph com'pny of New Yo'k an Loondon
Yep, that's about right. The only reason I haven't the link shared to the recording is because it's one of those links I cannot share publicly. That's the closest I can get to writing it out exactly as he said it, because the lisp he had is very hard to write out. It's much like how he and Hylands sound on this 1898 cylinder. It's very odd, but interesting all the same, because Spencer's announcements were not nearly as weird, such as his on this late-1897 cylinder.
If I were to phonetically decipher Len's announcement in the cylinder just above, here's how it goes:
I thought I was a winna' , er I don' know you ain't so wa'm--played by Columbia orchestra, fo' Col' umbi' Phonograph company a New Yo'k an Paris.
It's still a little queer, but it's not nearly as much so as the announcements of this brother. Also, the rest of the recording in the link just above is great, please listen to the rest of it! It's a very early piece of authentic Rag-Time, from 1897. Other than the two dynamic Spencer's, there were also the Emerson's who dominated Columbia's studio at the same time.
Victor Hugo Emerson entered the recording business in 1890, when he was working as a telegraph operator. He began as a helper of Columbia's newly formed company in Washington, but the next year he became the manager of the U. S. Phonograph company, of which he kept up until 1896. In 1897, when Columbia moved to 27th and Broadway in New York, he was their studio manager. We may know of Victor as the infamous studio manager for Columbia, but his brothers George and Clyde were also running around that studio at the same time. These boys were a bunch of misfits, beginning with Victor, who was the second of the four Emerson boys. Victor and Georgie(as they called him) took turns running daily recording activity at Columbia in 1898 to 1900, with George more often than not the engineer on many of the brown wax Columbia's that we listen to.
(a cartoon I did of Georgie Emerson)
Victor may have been strange and disliked, but George was more highly regarded by the Columbia staff, especially since he was a better engineer and was much less tightly laced than Victor. The studio stars felt more comfortable around him than Victor, because Victor was high in the management, George wasn't, and seemed more rebellious and interesting then Vic. In a few editions of The Phonoscope, George was mocked for being rebellious and the polar opposite of his brother. This makes the Emerson's ever more interesting, because it seems that Victor wasn't the black sheep oddly enough, despite him being the first to enter the phonograph business. It must be noted that George was born in Oakland California(yay! not far from me!), and that he was the youngest of the Emerson boys, so there's a reason that he didn't join the business until 1897. He was 21 when he joined Victor and Clyde at Columbia.
When Victor was running the studio, the stars had to behave themselves, but when George or Charles Carson were there, it was work just as usual. Victor must not have been proud of his brother George straying from the good name of the Emerson's, though being involved in recording was the first step in doing this, George escalated this fact. The Emerson's remained together in the recording business until the early 1920's, when Victor was running his own label, the Emerson label.
We are well aware of the Berliner family being involved in early recording, not just Emile being the only one who did this. It began with Emile, making his label seem more like a family business, with the studio being managed by a bunch of misfit teenage boys. Their family to-day are advocates for spreading the history of their family, and keeping the history alive. This is much like the Quinn family, who are continuing to do just the same as the Berliner family, even if it was relatively recently that they began doing this.
Since Berliner hired a bunch of misfit teenagers, it seemed inevitable for him to dig up Fred Gaisberg, as well as his brother Willie, both of whom worked for Berliner. Willie was a few years younger than Fred, but they both worked for Berliner from 1893 to 1898, and the both of them went out on quests that took them around the world for the sake of recording.
Another group of brothers who dominated Columbia's studio in the 1890's were also involved in its management--the Dorian's.
Frank Dorian(in the center) was Columbia's first studio manager, beginning this job in 1889. Frank remembered recording Len Spencer in the earliest days, when Spencer had to do everything himself, and when he was coming in just to take parts from machines to repair his father's office phonograph. The other two Dorian's helped around with Frank, since he was running Columbia's studio in that period of uncertainty in 1892-1895. When Frank was sent out to Paris in 1897 to run Columbia there, brother John(seen at the left in the picture above) went with him, and also went on other voyages with fellow recording stars who were performing in England and France, such as Russell Hunting and Burt Shepard, and later Steve Porter. Marion(at the right) was not as involved in these ventures, though he helped out Frank in his management job out in Washington DC, and later went out to Paris to do the same. The Dorian's more specifically Frank and John, remained in the recording business into as late as the Emerson's did, if not a few years later, since Frank lived into the 1930's, he had a million stories to tell, and it's great that Jim Walsh was able to interview him. Dorian was surprisingly sharp when Walsh interviewed him, much like when Quinn wrote his letters to Walsh around the same time. Dorian seemed a little bitter though, more so that Quinn, who was the optimist, clearly observed from his letters. Thinking of the fact that Dorian was Columbia's manager in the early days, it's not surprising that he seemed a little bitter later in life, all we can say to that is that it's good Walsh didn't interview Emerson.
Whew, that would be rough going. I almost don't want to imagine an interview with old man Emerson. Same goes for Edward Easton.
Before I finish, I have to share this FANTASTIC early Rag-Time brown wax that was newly posted on Youtube last evening.
What a cylinder! My god!
The sound of the piano(from what we can hear), is absolutely perfect! It has that perfect sound that only a few Columbia's I've heard have, and it's a sound that really defines what the 1890's sounded like on recordings.
That's the cover to the music, it's dated the year before this recording, 1897.
In a way, this can seen a like a motto for the Columbia Company at the time that this was recorded, with the Rag-Time adding to the realistic nature of this statement. I just cannot get over how much I love the sound of the piano on this recording, it's got a similar sound to this J. W. Myers cylinder from the same year, that probably means that these "rounds" were recorded not too far from each other.
Also, if you look up the sheet music to this song, the lyrics are actually really kind of funny, one of the lines in the first verse reads thus:
you had to be a ragged coon to enter in the hall
such a bunch of ragged japs I neva' did saw
As horribly racist as that is, it's pretty funny, and Spencer singing it is ever better.This is another one of those recordings that Rag-Time freaks and pianists really should take note of, since it's a fantastic example as far as these early brown waxes go. It's not surprising that this is coming from a Spencer and Hylands brown wax, like most of these examples turn out to be.
That's all the families I'll speak of for now, since there are more, but that will make this post unmanageably long and hard to navigate, more than it already is.
With that,
Hope you enjoyed this!
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