Okay, to start, scratch all of that I said in the last post regarding the American Record company. Just a few days after I posted that thing, a few friends went on the dig for proving whether this was true or not, and well, as it turns out Hager was nowhere to be found.
However!
It is important to note that Hager may have indeed had a hand in it at some point. Though he may not have had his entire orchestra there at American, it's likely that he handed their bandleader some of his own arrangements, and likely a few musicians of his own in the process. The director of the regimental band of the republic was said to be a guy named Fred Wood. I know nothing of this Mr. Wood, and haven't done any digging just yet. It almost seems like Mr. Wood just popped up out of nowhere, as usually with these house orchestras we would usually see someone we know as the leader, a familiar face from a previous orchestra. It's a lot like how toward the very end of Zon-O-Phone's days(1909-1912) it has been said that Arthur Pryor led the orchestra.
Since we know now that Hager wasn't responsible for the American record company's orchestra, what was he doing instead? Well, when I spoke with one of my friends about the matter, I felt terribly absent-minded when the reason was brought up. In mid-1906, Hager left Zon-O-Phone to go and work with J. Fred Helf in publishing.
Durr...Of course, I have so many Helf and Hager sheets, I should have known! I am not entirely sure when Hager returned to recording, but it's likely that before the Rex endeavor he was associated with the other earliest American vertical cut labels. He and Justin Ring were likely introduced to the Vertical recording method very early on, possibly as early as 1910.
So anyway, do excuse much of what I said in the last post about those blue American records. That orchestra was still outstanding, whoever they were.
Well then!
It's been quite a month for my sheet music collection. In the last month I have sifted through two sheet music collections, both of which were fantastic, full of great valuable stuff. The first collection I went through got me copies of many Coon songs we know and love, including my very favorite of them:
Yes indeed! It's also in really good shape too, which is nice.
I also got these from this collection:
So here's something trippy about that Roger Harding piece. I have no idea who that is on the cover, and it's certainly not Harding. So some of you may have seen a different cover of that Harding piece, and about that you'd be right.
Okay, so what the hell happened here?
Well, I guess that in 1896, Harding got the piece published as he did, and it was a hit with the recording community he'd just integrated into, but something went a little whacked when Fred Hylands scooped up the Columbia staff with the publishing firm. I would guess that the reason it was re-published was because Hylands wanted so desperately to grab the rights to Harding's work. I have no idea why it was published by different people two different times, but there is something whacked about Hylands putting his name on it in 1899. On the original edition, it even says "words and music by Roger Harding", which I would firmly believe. The 1899 edition is really strange, now that I can compare it with the original 1896 edition.
Also, I finally got a sheet with a picture of Dan W. Quinn on the cover. I had seen so many of them in the decade or so I've been doing this and have always wanted to have one of them. The piece I got is titled "The musket and the sword", which is a tune Quinn did not record, but there was a very fine portrait of him on the cover:
All-right, that's officially the clearest portrait of Quinn I've ever seen.
It's even better that the other versions I've seen online of this same picture. It's unbelievably crisp. What's curious about this particular sheet is that the very same cover was featured in the CD Archeophone put out on Quinn's records. I wonder if it's the exact same sheet?
So, almost a month later, I was offered to sift through another collection of sheet music. Last week I went to a friend's house and sifted through around 500 pieces of sheet music, only about a quarter of them were the older large format sheets, or the good stuff. There were plenty of rare San Francisco and Los Angeles published pieces in this pile. I was able to grab a large pile of SF published music that I had never seen nor heard of, but other than the California rarities, there was one particular sheet that has caused a bit of buzz amongst the Rag-Time community.
As I kept picking out all the good coon songs from this pile, there were lots of generic looking sheets from the early 1910's, some I took, some I put back, but there was this one that caught my eye.
Wait a second, is that who I think it is? Let me zoom in a bit...
There he is! Ben M. Jerome. Jerome wrote some hot rag medleys in the late-1890's, and continued to write better than average coon songs after 1900, such as "Melancholy Mose". In case you aren't aware of his rag medleys, here they are:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G4RoWQJrTE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_BE-UOe0Zk
So after the word got around that I have this sheet, I decided to try a little bit of digging on this mysterious early rag pianist. Since the beginning of my time studying rag-time, I have always wondered about Jerome, since his "A Bunch of Rags" medley is definitely one of the best of those early rag medleys. Clearly Jerome had something right in his style for it to sound so accurate. In fact, many of us Rag-Timers thought that Jerome was a black man, as his rags were so accurate to the black pianists of the era. But all of that was debunked when I saw that picture.
So with all of that in mind, i attempted to do some digging on Jerome. When I looked him up on the NYPL, looking for some of his pieces, I saw that his profile stated that he lived from 1881 to 1938. Well that's nice and all, but if he were truly one of those early rag pianists, as he was, he would have to have been born at least as late as 1875. I just cannot fully believe that he would have been 17 writing his slamming medley "A Bunch of Rags". Only someone with quite a few years of experience and study in the rag-time community would have written out the longest rag medley of the era. So as it turns out, as I did some digging, some of these things became a bit clearer.
First of all, it was unreliable to search Ben M. Jerome on Ancestry. So the initial start of the dig was no help. It took a few more days until one of my friends sent me a newspaper clipping containing some curious information. This clipping stated that he was divorcing his wife Florence and having issues with the custody of their two children, Jesse and Sanford. Not only was this there, but it also stated that his name was Bernhardt Michaelis.
Heh?
What a name! So of course when I looked up that name on Ancestry it became very clear which one was him. I found him in the 1900 and 1910 census, which was exactly what I was hoping for. In 1900 he was working as a musician, but in 1910 he's listed as a composer, which entirely makes sense. Also, the most itching thing I wanted to know about Mr. Michaelis came to the light, the fact that he was born most likely in 1876. Okay, that's a much more reasonable date for one of these hot early rag pianists; being 20 at the beginning of the rag fad must have been quite the time! Considering Jerome's lady issues, I am getting some Mike Bernard vibes from him, if you know what I mean...
So on my newspaper dig for Jerome, I found some curious stuff. As I kept digging, I found lots of sections that mention him in Variety, usually related to songs and musicals he was writing and directing. So basically he was a less aggressively weird version of Hylands, and was certainly more popular. His name is on a lot of musical folios, similarly to Max Hoffmann who hung around Broadway doing the same thing.
Damn, he was a good looking guy, even in this crappy newspaper clipping...
I found a little clipping that confirms the 1938 death date, which is great! In that clipping, it becomes clear that he was known mostly as a composer, not as a pianist necessarily. Despite that, he must have been a hell of a pianist, as he's got those extremely detailed rag medleys to prove that. Surely he was an outstanding pianist, aside from all the popular musicals he wrote for.
So now that I have a basic outline for Ben Jerome, I can now use his style for comparison between all these early rag pianists. That was ultimately the goal of all this digging on him, because his medleys sound so much like Fred Hylands' playing and Max Hoffmann's as well.
I hope all's well with you folks! It's been a hard few weeks for me emotionally, despite all the goodies I've been snagging from old clothing to Spencer and Ossman brown waxes. I really wanted to do this post editing the things I said about those blue American records days after I learned all that new stuff, but couldn't get myself up to it.
I also got these from this collection:
Well, I guess that in 1896, Harding got the piece published as he did, and it was a hit with the recording community he'd just integrated into, but something went a little whacked when Fred Hylands scooped up the Columbia staff with the publishing firm. I would guess that the reason it was re-published was because Hylands wanted so desperately to grab the rights to Harding's work. I have no idea why it was published by different people two different times, but there is something whacked about Hylands putting his name on it in 1899. On the original edition, it even says "words and music by Roger Harding", which I would firmly believe. The 1899 edition is really strange, now that I can compare it with the original 1896 edition.
Also, I finally got a sheet with a picture of Dan W. Quinn on the cover. I had seen so many of them in the decade or so I've been doing this and have always wanted to have one of them. The piece I got is titled "The musket and the sword", which is a tune Quinn did not record, but there was a very fine portrait of him on the cover:
It's even better that the other versions I've seen online of this same picture. It's unbelievably crisp. What's curious about this particular sheet is that the very same cover was featured in the CD Archeophone put out on Quinn's records. I wonder if it's the exact same sheet?
So, almost a month later, I was offered to sift through another collection of sheet music. Last week I went to a friend's house and sifted through around 500 pieces of sheet music, only about a quarter of them were the older large format sheets, or the good stuff. There were plenty of rare San Francisco and Los Angeles published pieces in this pile. I was able to grab a large pile of SF published music that I had never seen nor heard of, but other than the California rarities, there was one particular sheet that has caused a bit of buzz amongst the Rag-Time community.
As I kept picking out all the good coon songs from this pile, there were lots of generic looking sheets from the early 1910's, some I took, some I put back, but there was this one that caught my eye.
Wait a second, is that who I think it is? Let me zoom in a bit...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G4RoWQJrTE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_BE-UOe0Zk
So after the word got around that I have this sheet, I decided to try a little bit of digging on this mysterious early rag pianist. Since the beginning of my time studying rag-time, I have always wondered about Jerome, since his "A Bunch of Rags" medley is definitely one of the best of those early rag medleys. Clearly Jerome had something right in his style for it to sound so accurate. In fact, many of us Rag-Timers thought that Jerome was a black man, as his rags were so accurate to the black pianists of the era. But all of that was debunked when I saw that picture.
So with all of that in mind, i attempted to do some digging on Jerome. When I looked him up on the NYPL, looking for some of his pieces, I saw that his profile stated that he lived from 1881 to 1938. Well that's nice and all, but if he were truly one of those early rag pianists, as he was, he would have to have been born at least as late as 1875. I just cannot fully believe that he would have been 17 writing his slamming medley "A Bunch of Rags". Only someone with quite a few years of experience and study in the rag-time community would have written out the longest rag medley of the era. So as it turns out, as I did some digging, some of these things became a bit clearer.
First of all, it was unreliable to search Ben M. Jerome on Ancestry. So the initial start of the dig was no help. It took a few more days until one of my friends sent me a newspaper clipping containing some curious information. This clipping stated that he was divorcing his wife Florence and having issues with the custody of their two children, Jesse and Sanford. Not only was this there, but it also stated that his name was Bernhardt Michaelis.
Heh?
What a name! So of course when I looked up that name on Ancestry it became very clear which one was him. I found him in the 1900 and 1910 census, which was exactly what I was hoping for. In 1900 he was working as a musician, but in 1910 he's listed as a composer, which entirely makes sense. Also, the most itching thing I wanted to know about Mr. Michaelis came to the light, the fact that he was born most likely in 1876. Okay, that's a much more reasonable date for one of these hot early rag pianists; being 20 at the beginning of the rag fad must have been quite the time! Considering Jerome's lady issues, I am getting some Mike Bernard vibes from him, if you know what I mean...
So on my newspaper dig for Jerome, I found some curious stuff. As I kept digging, I found lots of sections that mention him in Variety, usually related to songs and musicals he was writing and directing. So basically he was a less aggressively weird version of Hylands, and was certainly more popular. His name is on a lot of musical folios, similarly to Max Hoffmann who hung around Broadway doing the same thing.
I found a little clipping that confirms the 1938 death date, which is great! In that clipping, it becomes clear that he was known mostly as a composer, not as a pianist necessarily. Despite that, he must have been a hell of a pianist, as he's got those extremely detailed rag medleys to prove that. Surely he was an outstanding pianist, aside from all the popular musicals he wrote for.
So now that I have a basic outline for Ben Jerome, I can now use his style for comparison between all these early rag pianists. That was ultimately the goal of all this digging on him, because his medleys sound so much like Fred Hylands' playing and Max Hoffmann's as well.
I hope all's well with you folks! It's been a hard few weeks for me emotionally, despite all the goodies I've been snagging from old clothing to Spencer and Ossman brown waxes. I really wanted to do this post editing the things I said about those blue American records days after I learned all that new stuff, but couldn't get myself up to it.
Hope you enjoyed this!
Great digging, Ramona!!
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