"33" and Ossman intrigue

What is meant by "33"? 

Well, when I use that number, that's what I use to refer to where Fred Hylands lived as a publisher in 1899 and 1900. In the past few weeks I've had a few important realizations about Hylands and the place that he was known for around the Columbia studio. 

When I first joined ancestry a few weeks ago, I didn't immediately go for the Hylands family, since I had already a very detailed understanding of them, and had most of the important paperwork to back up most things regarding them. The first family I went for was the Hager's(who originally spelled their name Hagar which makes sense). After a few hours of digging for other recording stars, I finally decided to test my knowledge of the Hylands family by digging a bit on them. Turns out that was a good idea. A few interesting things came up that I could never have guessed. 

So the name of this post is pertaining to 33, which was the house number for Fred's publishing firm on West 27th street in 1899. The building still stands there today as far as I know, and is currently awaiting someone to up and rent it. 

From the advertisement that Fred placed in The Phonoscope in 1899, it seems that his 33 had a few purposes, and not just limited to publishing. In his ad, we see Burt Green's name dropped in there as his main assistant. Here's a link to the ad just so you can really see it in all its glory:

https://archive.org/stream/phonoscope13hunt#page/n489/mode/2up

Just as we see often in Hylands' endeavors, he was always open to having company at his location, and remaining ever social. This weakness of his led to a lot of issues, but it seemed that this was his source of extra income while working at Columbia. I had seen the 1900 census record before where Hylands and his wife were before, but until recently I hadn't been able to see whether or not he had some interesting guests crashed there.  Fred, Marie and his father Charles were listed at almost the very bottom of the page, so only two other boarders were shown to be there, a traveling salesman and his wife. Out of my burning curiosity, I flipped to the next page to see three more curious renters there. These three men weren't your typical laborers either. 

Here's who they were:

Noble Allen, a single Draper from the state of Georgia.

Louis Crotan, a single Traveling Salesman extracted from French Canada. 

Max Packer, a single Russian ladies' tailor.

Those aren't your typical young men of that time. When flipping to that page, I half expected to see someone from Columbia, whether it be a performer or engineer, but it's perhaps more interesting to see these rather Bohemian men living there with Fred and Marie at the time. Now what can we gather from these interesting people? Well, take notice that all these men are single, and they were all basically exactly the same age as Fred(27-28), and the wife of the first traveling salesman was English like Marie. Now try and put the pieces together. Clearly this was a partnership of its time, experimental, hot, and new. With Fred's father running the place, and collecting some of the rent from the young men(not including any songwriters or performers), it makes more sense what the dynamic of 33 was. This is a very progressive idea, but it was similar to the fashionable French way of living at that time. 

Father took care of the money, so that left Fred and Marie to run loose. This makes so much more sense now. Imagine 33 not too long before then, when Len Spencer was much more invested in the business, and likely crashing there at least twice a week, and getting to work with Fred much more often. By the middle of 1900, the firm was winding down, and things weren't looking so bright for Fred's vision. So I would imagine the time around when the census was taken was a wild time for Fred, aside from being at Columbia all the time. In the succeeding months Fred would sell most of his stock to a larger publishing firm and lose most of the love and trust he had in the Columbia staff and management. 

But with all this in mind, we can now apply this suspicion to other songwriters he worked with later, and as well as the ones he worked with around the same time. Speaking of that, I have tried multiple times to track down some of these illusive songwriters that Fred worked with, but have achieved no success in digging. I tried J. Grant Gibson, and Will J. Hardman, and wasn't able to find a thing on either of them. These two objects of Fred's affections will remain mysterious until something shows up on them. I know nothing and suspect next to nothing about Grant Gibson. I only know that Hylands and Gibson were both white rats, and that Gibson had known Fred far longer than the year of their 1912 piece:

Gibson's name shows up here and there when digging into Hylands' Broadway history, which almost guarantees Gibson was a white rat that Hylands bossed around while in his leading position. 

Anyway, I hope you all get the drift here regarding Hylands. Just think of how popular experimental types of marriages were in the 1890's, and that now it seems that Fred's was no exception, and this particularly makes sense considering their theatrical line. 

Now to move on to some intrigue!

(Ossman around 1891-92)

Vess Ossman will forever have a special place in my heart, because his grave was the first of these recording stars I visited. It was particularly emotional for me to set those roses on his modest headstone, after it had been covered in dirt for decades--almost forgotten. 

Before I searched up Hylands on ancestry, I of course wanted to see what there was on Ossman that I didn't already know. Turns out there's quite a large family out there. Not only are there lots of Ossman's, but there are plenty of Ossman's wife Eunice's family out there too. That's a good thing, that means there are plenty of people to potentially talk to regarding Vess. Hopefully I'll work up the nerve to do that sometime rather soon. While it may be good that there are plenty of Ossman's out there, this can also lead to issues trying to cross reference the information to make sure everything lines up alright. There are multiple entries for Ossman, from different sides of the extended family, so it took me awhile to really get the information right. 

I had known before that the Ossman's had unfortunate luck with their children. Only four of their seven children lived to be older than 5. Yes this was common in that time, but it's still hard luck regardless. It makes sense why they were so avid with having children when considering where Eunice ended up being buried. Just today I visited the location where Eunice was buried in 1930, and it happened to be at the nicest Catholic cemetery nearest where I live. Her grave was unfortunately unmarked, but I did find the exact location. I had some time in peace to think about their marriage, and how it was similar to one that I have already tried cracking open. Thinking over the scandalous skipping of town by Ossman, it reminded me of the whole running joke that was passed around the Columbia staff regarding Spencer's love life. In Walsh's Spencer article(the longest one), it is recalled that the boys at Columbia made fun of how Spencer had run off with his first wife(Margaret), without getting the go-ahead to marry her. 

This is actually similar to Ossman. He pulled the same thing with Eunice, though in his case the girl was younger, in fact too young to legally marry him when they skipped town in 1890. The more I thought about this, the more similarities I saw between Ossman and Len Spencer. Both of them went through quite a lot to be with the women they married, and at first loved them truly. As awful as this may sound, hear me out with this...

After all the trouble they went through, they ended up fulfilling the religious rite of their wives, basically just using them. This would be in typical fashion of the time period of course. Do not assume that I am calling offense to this, as it is common to see such a thing when studying this period of time. In this case, I call for the observation of another other than Len Spencer pulling this, the similarities are astonishing. With this in mind, it becomes clearer why Ossman and Spencer were good friends for so long. 

Now let's step to some more interesting intrigue, rather than theoretical musings. While digging around on the most reliable and detailed Ossman page on ancestry, there didn't appear to be any surprises, until it seems that old Vess had a son with an unknown woman that wasn't his beloved Eunice. 

How Scan'lous!

This is exactly the intrigue that I'd expect from Ossman. While it initially came as a surprise, it made sense and didn't jar me so much. It's curious also to see the date that all this intrigue came down, which was in 1917, rather late for Vess to be fooling around. Consider that 1917 was when Vess was performing with the Eight Victor Artists along with Arthur Collins and the crew. Such fooling around I would expect from Ossman in the mid-1890's, while he was touring with Banta as his accompanist, not in the later teen's while his performing was winding down. This paints Ossman to be much like a Mike Bernard type, but a little less wild and quick to make decisions. With this in mind, we can now consider Ossman as one of those authentic Rag-Timers of the 1890's, just like many of those rag composers we love.

Whew! The analysis in this post ended up being heavier than expected...

Just to diverge from all of that, here's a great new transfer from Santa Barbara with some fantastic Banta piano accompaniment: 

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?queryType=@attr+1=1020&num=1&start=1&query=cylinder17203

The beginning and end of this record is really where it's at. Banta plays some typical schottische melodies and rhythms, but they're played so aggressively and quickly that it attracts much of the attention on the record, even more than much of Dudley's singing to be honest. It's always nice to hear Banta play song and dance tunes such as this one. His strange sense of rhythm also comes through very well in his intro on this record, with the measure counting and rhythm a little out of whack, which adds to the eccentric charm of Banta's playing on many records. 

Next post I will dig into the new Hager discoveries! Stay tuned everyone!

Hope you enjoyed this!