A few nights ago as I was in a moment of full concentration playing Arthur Pryor's "Southern Hospitality", I realized something curious. Recently I heard a rag from 1916(quite late!) that was published in the state that Arthur Pryor came from, Missouri, and it seemed to get deeper than that.
I played through all the Arthur Pryor rags I know, and realized that this one rag I had heard from 1916 was in exactly the same style as Pryor's rather unusual rags.
I went back and checked the publishing location of the sheet, and lo and behold, the piece was published in the town that Pryor was born in! Pryor came from Saint Joseph Missouri, a very distinct location musically and in terms of stylistic regions. That very location is in the upper left corner of the state, right by Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa. Missouri-Arkansas rag style is perhaps one of the most folksy and most recognizable of all the American regions. This is the style that Joplin grew up in, as were James Scott, Arthur Marshall, and many other of our "classic" Rag-Time composers.
In this distinct style that Pryor had, there's a lot going on with the left hand, in fact there's almost equally as much going on with both hands in this style. Here's the "Alison Rag", the piece from 1916 that triggered my discovery regarding Pryor's style:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U9O_VZV0pA
It made so much sense once I looked at the location of where this piece was published, as it just happened to be the very town in Missouri that Pryor came from.
In this distinct style that Pryor had, there's a lot going on with the left hand, in fact there's almost equally as much going on with both hands in this style. Here's the "Alison Rag", the piece from 1916 that triggered my discovery regarding Pryor's style:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U9O_VZV0pA
It made so much sense once I looked at the location of where this piece was published, as it just happened to be the very town in Missouri that Pryor came from.
This photo came from a Conn catalog, c. mid-1890's.
So why does this matter? Why would this be significant in terms of rag-time and recording history?
Well, as I have been digging more into the band leaders of the early recording days, their influence and impact on the material that was recorded was quite significant. It also just so happens that many of these band leaders were pianists featured on records before 1905, Arthur Pryor included. Save for Fred Hylands, most of these other studio pianists were band leaders of some kind inside and out of the studios where they worked. Starting with with the first studio pianist, Issler, these pianists had to know how to herd the cats that these studio band musicians were, it seemed as though it was part of the job. Of course this is only so because Issler set the precedent regarding this.
Now back to the Pryor thing.
To further illustrate this point regarding his regional characteristics, I place two standout pieces of his that have a lot of identical characteristics. The first piece is a Pryor rag from 1899 entitled "At An Arkansaw[sic] Huskin Bee", and it is played here by Gilmore's Band in 1901-02:
The ever running trombone lines in the second strain and trio are exactly what those quick octaves in the "Alison rag" translate to. Also, just a side note, the second strain of the Pryor piece is a quote of an old standard shout called "There's-a going to be a barbecue this mornin"(or something like that), I only noticed that after listening to a section of a 1902 Edison by the Invincible quartette( Arthur Collins, Byron Harlan, George Lennox, and Frank C. Stanley).
And perhaps the most telling of Pryor's rags, is his 1899 masterpiece in rag-time "Southern Hospitality".
The very odd and exaggerated syncopation paired with the constant running of the bass, whether it be octaves or entire chords in the treble, is exactly what went into Pryor's playing style and musical mindset. This mindset just happens to correspond with rags that were published near or in the very town he came from. Isn't it nice when these things line up?
Remember! We still have yet to hear Pryor's 1900 piano solo of "A Cork Dance" recorded for Victor. That very solo, if it's ever found, will probably clear up a lot of confusion surrounding Berliner and Victor piano accompaniments. Also, who wouldn't want to hear a Pryor piano solo? With all those curious Missourian characteristics, any amount of piano playing from him would be fascinating to study for Rag-Time and early recording scholars alike.
So this brings me to another pair of band leaders/studio pianists.
Fred W. Hager and Justin Ring.
These two handsome men have become much more significant in my recording studies in the last few months, as their employment at Zon-O-Phone remains a fascinating story. In the last few weeks I have spent a lot of time listening to many Zon-O-phone records to attempt to really get to the bottom of this mystery of these two pianists.
As far as we know, Hager and Ring were almost certainly accompanists for Zon-O-Phone. I am certain Ring was a Zon-O-Phone accompanist, thanks to that picture description that literally states thus when identifying Ring:
Accompanist of [Hager's] band, a clever writer and arranger
This bit was written in the long description to accompany(pun intended) that large panoramic photo of Hager's entire orchestra.
I still think Hager's looking over at Ring.
So attempting to distinguish these two sweethearts has become very difficult(I'm pretty sure I've already said that same line in previous posts), as the more music I hear by them, the more similar they sound. It makes sense why they were featured somewhat interchangeably on many sheets of music, as it's so difficult to find distinct differences in their written pieces. Despite that, I can assure you now that their touches to the piano were very different, though they had similar tendencies. This last week I listened to many Zon-O-Phone records back to back with pieces they composed, to directly compare the accompaniments to which of the two I think it might be. This proved to be a great way to finally gain some ground in this perplexing matter. It also helps that recently I have taken to learning Ring's early rags(the ones he wrote while at Zon-O-phone), which has also jump started this investigation.
I was going though a lot of the Zon-O-Phone's I have access to this last week, and two particular pieces I kept going back to were proving themselves well.
the two pieces I used for solid reference in this comparison were Ring's "Sweet Potatoes", and Hager's "Handsome Harry".
These two pieces provide a good groundwork for what their piano accompaniments would sound like. So after a lot of studying of Ring's pieces, "Sweet Potatoes" and "Jovial Joe" particularly, I realized something significant. Ring's pieces follow a folk rag format. They have a lot of the same chord progressions and chord inversions of folk rags from Kansas or New Orleans, and that's quite strange. There's no reason that Ring should have those characteristics in his playing, as he was just a regular old New York city boy who just happened to grow up with a musician father. He must have heard a lot of music growing up, and not just the kind of music heard in polite white society. In fact, I would wager that, based on his rags and accompaniments, he heard a lot more of the rough and ragged music that was in its early years when he was growing up. So with this all in mind, which pianist is Ring?
Well, of the about 30 Zon-O-Phone records I studied, I can now definitively say that Ring was the pianist with the very pushy and bluesy feel on many later Zono records. A good example is this Zono here:
(transferred a bit too fast unfortunately, but you get the point)
And yes, if you listened close enough to the last chorus, the accompanist plays a very quick 32nd note chromatic thing, and that characteristic I have now come to associate with Ring, and not Hager. Another record with that same accompanist is this Collins and Harlan Zono from around the same time:
Wow. The more I listen to that accompanist(who is probably Ring), the more I am astounded by the bluesy and folksy characteristics. Very quick and seemingly erratic, almost more forceful than Hylands' accompaniments could get with Len Spencer. So if that's Ring, which is Hager?
Well, a few posts ago I went on a whole spiel about how Hager's playing would, according to his associations, most closely resemble Victor Herbert's playing. In that post I used Herbert's 1901 rag "Panamericana" and compared it to a few Zono records with that very similar attack that is somewhat notated in the piece itself. Perhaps one of the best examples I've heard, even compared to all the outside sources I have access to, is this 1903 Zono with Arthur Collins:
This particular record has been used often and spoken of for decades by rag-time and record scholars(I believe it was featured in a few LPs a few decades ago), and when you listen, it surely lives up to its reputation. The breakdown the pianist plays in the final chorus is outstanding, so much is going on, yet the steady and rocking rhythm remains the same. The very light and airy attack on those rollicking octaves is definitely reminiscent of Victor Herbert's piano pieces, "Panamericana" included. The rhythm is particularly astounding to me, as it remains almost the same throughout the record(much like Issler's accompaniments), even with all the difficult risks being taken with the improvisations. This accompaniment is on quite a majority of etched label Zon-O-phone's, which leads me to think that with these Zono's it's important to really listen to the accompaniment, as it could be either Ring or Hager. This isn't like 1898-1900 Columbia's where the pianist is almost always Hylands. Even when thinking that Hager is on most of the etched Zono's, I have heard a few of those that have that Ring style accompaniment on them(see what I mean with them seeming to be interchangeable?).
I made sure to go back and forth between Hager and Ring accompaniments, to see if I could get them both straight at the same time, so as to create less confusion with the styles. The light and airy accompaniments I associate now with Hager, as according to the notation of a few Victor Herbert piano pieces, as I would assume the pianist here to be Hager:
That record sounds to be an etched Zono from early 1902 or late 1901, with that distinct very clear and sharp but somewhat distant piano sound. The more precise and light touch is Hager's, and the aggressive bluesy touch is Ring's.
But even with knowing all of this an sorting it out pretty well, I still have questions regarding their early written music. Their pieces are so damn similar, with even a lot of the same end tags and similar rhythms. I know they spent so much time together in the studio, but in reality they simply couldn't sound so similar. Take Hager's "Handsome Harry"(or Handsome Hager as I call it). You an hear it in the raw here:
(There's that comical silhouette!)
That end tag at 2:18, it's a familiar rag-time tag, but it's also something that runs rampant in Hager-Ring pieces. Ring's piece "The Virginia Two-step" uses exactly the same tag, you can hear a crisp piano roll of it here:
That same tag, there it is.
That same end tag is also in Ring's "Sweet Potatoes". But don't be fooled, I have heard a few really nice Zon-O-Phone records with that same tag in the solos where the pianist has those Hager characteristics, not the Ring ones. So this is starting to get confusing isn't it? I have gotten to the point where I think that Hager himself wasn't too great at writing his own music, so Ring took hold of it and arranged it in his very slightly varied way. The reason this may be true is because on the inside of the cover of Hager's "laughing water", there's this curious little thing:
(from my collection)
Ring even notated a lot of the expression that is characteristic to Hager's accompaniments on those earlier Zon-O-Phone's. So this is where it gets most puzzling to me, how interchangeable were they? And why was Ring arranging Hager's pieces? Why would he need to do this when they already sounded so similar?
Who knows.
I've been trying to find answers to these questions, but the answers are not clear in any way. Certainly Ring was the more eccentric and erratic accompanist, and Hager the light and airy but precise accompanist, but I am still trying to understand why these two were so close and why their music was so damn similar. I'm sure hearing more of Ring and Hager's music would help to get somewhere with these questions. I'll keep listening to Zon-O-Phone's.
Anyhow!
I'll be taking a trip to UCSB during the first week of February, so I will definitely be writing a long post about that trip. Let's see if a few new things get transferred!
Hope you enjoyed this!
"And why was Ring arranging Hager's pieces?" Could it be that Hager wrote this (and others) for his band, and Ring just extracted the solo piano scores for printing and selling? With large-scale works like operas or symphonies, it is common to have a piano score that's not by the composer himself but by some assistant, who then is of course named in small print just like Ring(leben) is here.
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