A few days ago I went on my usual cabinet card/tintype dig online. Every month or so I go through hundreds of cabinet and tintype photos on Etsy to see if i can weed out anything worthy of saving and preserving. In the past, my digs haven't ever produced very outstanding pieces that are the gold standard, and reason for, my digging. That 1880's tintype of little Tommy Glynn is still floating around out there, but no one has had the stuff to try getting it for a reasonable price. Maybe sometime soon I'll see what I can negotiate regarding that tintype.
Aside from that, this week's dig produced perhaps the most valuable piece I have ever seen and will soon have in my own collection. Last time I did a post on a cabinet card dig, it was awhile ago, and I found a portrait of a fellow I thought looked somewhat like Hylands. Now that I've had a pair of very detailed portraits of Hylands for nearly a year, I have a very solid understanding of what he looked like(after nearly a decade of research!). I can say now that that last card I highlighted was definitely not of Hylands. However, on my last dig, I may have actually found a very nice clear early photo of Hylands.
This time I mean it. Last time I had no idea what I was talking about. So, here's the picture:
So there ya have it folks.
Yeah, that really does look like a young Hylands. From the look and style of this portrait, it looks to be from the late-1880's to the early 1890's. This date range would indeed correspond with Hylands' age. Hylands would have been about 17-20 in that time, and that does indeed look like the fellow's age above would be. Now, here's the thing really take a good look at the two very clear portraits I have of Hylands for comparison:
Well there you go.
So, this very modest portrait from the late 1880s's or so seemed like nothing when I first saw it, until I started to get a better look at it. This is exactly why I dig through every box of Victorian photos, is for times like these.
Just take a look!
The weird slightly crooked mouth, the flushed cheeks, curly hair(at least in the back), the big oddly pointy ears, the pleading eyes, strangely long and prominent nose, and even the dimple chin!
Everything lines up, even the awkward broad shoulders. I'm getting all excited just writing about this! Finding this thing is absolutely unbelievable, but I always had the hope that I might find an early portrait of Hylands somewhere. The only thing that's keeping me from really digging into the detail of this new old picture is the fact that it appears to be quite heavily retouched. And yes, if this portrait is indeed of Hylands that proves that he was indeed slimmer when he was young, further pushing the possibility that he's the pianist in that 1897 Columbia studio picture:
Even with all the retouching on the 1880's portrait, I can still see the awkward young Hylands come through, if indeed that's a teen aged Hylands.
What's funny, is that I have drawn what I have conjectured a young Hylands would have looked like, and I wasn't far off!
I sketched this one recently.
To further complicate my analysis of this very likely Hylands portrait, you may have noticed the location. The location of this particular portrait was Erie Pennsylvania, not in Indiana or Ohio where I would assume a portrait of any Hylands to have been taken. But! The location of this portrait isn't too far away or removed for it to be Hylands. Erie Pennsylvania is right on the eastern edge of Ohio, up in a corner where music congregated to sound quite similar to Hylands' style. There is a single piece I know of published in this very town that does indeed actually sound like Hylands' "The Darkey Volunteer". This piece that I am thinking of is called "Moose Rag", and although it was published in 1910, it carries many aspects similar to that of Hylands' and even Hager's composing styles. The beginning of "The Darkey Volunteer" has a distinct rollicking melody, one that can be heard in many later popular "Indian songs", such as Hager's "laughing water" and "Hiawatha". The first strain of the "Moose Rag" has this same melody, listen below:
I also own a copy of the original sheet, so I have gone back and checked just to be sure. Much of the leading melodies of this rag are very similar to Hager's composing style, but at the same time are reminiscent of Hylands' somehow.
Listen to Hylands' "The Darkey Volunteer", and hear that distinct melody at the beginning as in "Moose Rag":
The overall structure of the first strain is almost identical to the "Moose Rag", even with the rollicking, constantly going 8th notes after the distinct melody.
So what has this to do with the cabinet portrait?
Well, this says that Hylands did indeed have some roots back in that corner of Ohio and Pennsylvania, and I might add that their family did end up there often after Hylands was recording. Also! In Hylands' bio in The Phonoscope , it states that he worked in theaters in Pittsburg before coming out to NYC in 1896. By 1888, Hylands' father had exited the saloonkeeper business, and settled with his job on the railroad, so that in itself would have gotten Fred and Etta going a lot of places. So there ya go!
Well, I really hope this portrait is of Hylands, it sure as hell looks like him! I already paid for it and it's currently on its way through the mail. I am glad it happens to be in good shape too, so it's not any more difficult to try and identify crucial facial features in comparison.
Now, moving on!
This evening I did some digging on Eddie King again. And no I still haven't found a picture of him yet. Hopefully a picture will turn up of him somewhere, the physical descriptions of him are too good to never see. I was finally able to track him quite well, and finally clear a few things up regarding him. I am certainly glad for all the stories people have told me about him, as they have actually helped me cross reference things and piece things together easier. Someone sent me a few pages from Nat Shilkret's autobiography, and all the little details that Shilkret puts in his chapter about Eddie King has actually helped me out a lot on my search for him.
In these few pages that were sent to me, he talks about how after his first wife died, he remained single for a few years, which, believe it or not lined up perfectly with my digging on him.
I was able to find him is all the appropriate census records, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, and 1940! what? Well, it seems that despite his rotten reputation, he outlived his recording lab years by many years. I was able to track down when he finally left the recording business, which was right around 1930, not long after his days working with Bix Beiderbecke and the crew in the late 1920's.
I was able to find that he was married in 1894 or so first to a women named May, but she died around 1918 or so, he remained single for a few years then got married again to an "old maid"(I hate to use that terminology, but I want to remain historically accurate here) named Julia, who just happened to be his sister-in-law. Heh?
Umm that's strange.
But okay, whatever works, you do that.
I'm seeing lots of parallels to Hylands if you know what I'm getting at here. I'm seeing even more than in the last post I did on Mr. King. So I haven't yet been able to fine when he died, but the dates I have so far are thus:
Sept 1868-after 1940.
That's a pretty damn good start on a guy with a pretty generic name and no previous information. And yes, I keep drawing cartoons with him in them, but of course not showing his face completely. His prominence in the early recording studios seems to correspond with Hylands and Justin Ring at times, form his early days at Columbia in the 1890's to his days at Okeh and later Columbia again. I hope the stories keep-a-coming, as he seems like a somewhat lovable eccentric who was too mean to die as some say.
I also thought is quite telling to find that his father Ed Horatio King was a musician. Well, no surprise there, I guess he got started early like Justin Ring! No wonder the two of them seemed to click together so well under the Zon-O-Phone. Or maybe not, not too many studio workers has many nice things to say about him. I would like to finish with another cartoon I drew of him recently:
That's King playing in a recording session with Hager's orchestra.
Anyway...That's what I got for now folks. I will soon be writing for a certain rag-time related publication, so I may be taking a brief break from writing on here. Hopefully this new engagement turns our well, and hopefully some of you regular readers will see where my writing ends up going in this new gig. I hope to have some more digging on Eddie King done soon, but there are no guarantees on that, as I have done about as much of the basic research that I can to at least get a brief outline on this guy.
I hope you enjoyed this!
No comments:
Post a Comment