Along this journey of reconstructing the complicated lives of Fred W. Hager and Justin Ring, I assumed the two of them were a solid pair that were truly inseparable, in the words of Jim Walsh(and likely Hager himself). Within the last few weeks I discovered something that makes their relationship far more complicated than expected.
There appears to have been a triangle here at work.
(illustration, drawn by the author)
To recap, here's the overview of their relationship minus this new third character.
They meet in the late 1890's or in 1900 in a recording lab, they hit it off and soon become a pair, a little more than musical partners so to speak. The recording community takes notice of this. In 1901-02, their relationship blossomed to the point where they opened a small publishing firm together, Hager attempts to move in with Ring, but it ultimately doesn't work out(for obvious reasons). In 1903 they write their most famous piece, Laughing Water, but unfortunately it earns Hager all the money and credibility, not Ring. In 1904 they write a few more popular pieces, one of them being Handsome Harry . By the end of the year Hager is working with J. Fred Helf in publishing, moving away from their employer Zon-O-Phone, and also Ring. In early 1905 Ring and Hager split up and Ring is forced to scrap the publishing firm they both set up(this was Ring music company, highlighted in my last post). In 1906 Hager leaves Zon-O-phone, and Ring takes over the orchestra, also leaves Hager to work for Seminary music company(later to publish some of Scott Joplin's later works like Wall Street Rag). Hager returns from working in Boston for the Phono-cut in early 1913 and begins the Rex company. Ring doesn't start writing music with Hager again until 1916-17. They remained together again until there middle 1920's when Ring takes over Hager's position as studio manager at the Okeh company. They don't work together again until the middle 1930's, then they stayed together again until about 1947 when Ring retires.
Whew! There we go. So who is this third figure in the story? His name is Edgar Thornton Farran. His name occasionally came up in some of my previous digs on Ring and Hager, but I didn't think much of him. It started to seem suspicious when Ring seemed to have written perhaps dozens of pieces with Mr. Farran. Then as I kept looking it seemed that Hager took on Farran a little later and wrote many songs with him too. Something is at work here is seems.
Unfortunately I haven't been able to find a picture of this Mr. Farran, but I did come across two draft cards that give a rough physical description of the guy. Being a cartoonist who cares about appearances, it is frustrating to have only a generic description and no pictures. Anyhow, here's his WWI draft card:
So it seems that he was tall, gray headed(likely redheaded based on the circumstances), blue eyed, with a medium build. Surely he doesn't seem like something to fight over. Well apparently he was.
He was born April 29th 1879, and by 1900 he was working as a dressmaker in the Bronx, not far from where Ring and Hager lived and performed on the weekends in the summer. It is quite possible that Ring or Hager spied the young Farran at one of their park band concerts. By 1905 he was still working as a dressmaker in the Bronx, but his older brother Walter worked as a piano maker, likely catching the attention of publishers and music writers. Coming from a musical family, Edgar proved to be a talented lyric writer. However Edgar got tangled with Ring and Hager, he first started to catch the interest of a Hager-weary Ring. Hager was working more and more with Helf in 1905, so it is likely that Ring became more acquainted with Farran through possibly making dresses for Alice. Remember Alice? yes, she was married to Ring in 1905, and they had been together since the end of 1903. Alice having clothes made by Farran would prove to be a great way for him and Ring to get to know each other better. Something happened in early 1905 to get Ring and Hager to split, and there's a chance that poor Farran may have been entangled in it.
Consider this scenario; Ring and Farran get together while Alice is getting Farran to make dresses for her. At first she is ignorant of the situation, but soon she suspects something isn't right. Hager notices nothing while he's working for Helf and minimally at Zon-O-Phone. Sometime within that year or the next, Alice finds hubby with Farran and she leaves him(they did split soon afterward, but when exactly I have yet to find). So with Alice gone, Ring spends the next three years with Farran. It is quite possible that Alice could have told Hager about all this, and Hager then becomes jealous and frustrated, taking on Helf as a partner.
This is just me throwing around the possibilities here, based on all the events that happened between the end of 1904 and the middle of 1906.
He was born April 29th 1879, and by 1900 he was working as a dressmaker in the Bronx, not far from where Ring and Hager lived and performed on the weekends in the summer. It is quite possible that Ring or Hager spied the young Farran at one of their park band concerts. By 1905 he was still working as a dressmaker in the Bronx, but his older brother Walter worked as a piano maker, likely catching the attention of publishers and music writers. Coming from a musical family, Edgar proved to be a talented lyric writer. However Edgar got tangled with Ring and Hager, he first started to catch the interest of a Hager-weary Ring. Hager was working more and more with Helf in 1905, so it is likely that Ring became more acquainted with Farran through possibly making dresses for Alice. Remember Alice? yes, she was married to Ring in 1905, and they had been together since the end of 1903. Alice having clothes made by Farran would prove to be a great way for him and Ring to get to know each other better. Something happened in early 1905 to get Ring and Hager to split, and there's a chance that poor Farran may have been entangled in it.
Consider this scenario; Ring and Farran get together while Alice is getting Farran to make dresses for her. At first she is ignorant of the situation, but soon she suspects something isn't right. Hager notices nothing while he's working for Helf and minimally at Zon-O-Phone. Sometime within that year or the next, Alice finds hubby with Farran and she leaves him(they did split soon afterward, but when exactly I have yet to find). So with Alice gone, Ring spends the next three years with Farran. It is quite possible that Alice could have told Hager about all this, and Hager then becomes jealous and frustrated, taking on Helf as a partner.
This is just me throwing around the possibilities here, based on all the events that happened between the end of 1904 and the middle of 1906.
So it seems that Ring and Farran were working together for Seminary publishing in 1906. Ring wrote music and Farran wrote lyrics for the big time writers they were working for. From 1906 to 1909, Farran and Ring likely enjoyed some time together, away from Hager and the others. In late 1909, Ring remarried a childhood friend of his named Elsie Patz. Though he had just been married, his time with Farran continued. They wrote dozens of songs together, including this one here:
They even wrote a song in 1907 titled Someday, I know You'll come back to me. That sure is a *suggestive* title for the time it was published. They wrote many songs together between 1906 and 1912, but after that date, Farran ceased working with Ring. Ring seemed to have taken a little break from recording and writing music for a few years, but Farran continued to be a prolific and popular lyric writer. Many of his songs were recorded in the early and mid-teen's.
So this is where things get interesting with Farran, by 1915 he was working as a carpenter, following the family business. Despite this, Farran still wrote lots of music, and by 1916, he was working with someone curious---Hager. Somehow Hager had caught Farran and they were soon writing music together as they both had with Ring in the past. For the next three years, Hager and Farran wrote many songs for the war effort. In 1918, Hager worked with Farran and Ring, certainly making f0r some slightly awkward collaborations. Hager wrote much more music with Farran than with Ring from 1917 to 1920, but for some reason Farran disappears after 1920.
I have not been able to track why Farran ceased working with Ring and Hager after 1920, but I'd guess that it had something to do with their high management roles at Okeh. After 1920 he worked as a carpenter, and he never married it seems. He lived with his mother until he died in mid 1943.
Few remember Farran, but it seems that he may have had a significant impact on the lives of Ring and Hager, whatever this was exactly. He wasn't in any way an exceptionally famous or popular lyric writer, but the tin pan alley folks knew him, and considering his employment for Seminary music, he likely knew Scott Joplin and a young Irving Berlin. I have yet to fully discover what his relationship with Ring and Hager was, but there is indeed a possibility that a love triangle was at work here. A good way to figure this out would be finding out who met him first and how. Hopefully in the future I will be able to find more information about Farran, as his story from a humble Bronx dressmaker to songwriter is bound to be more interesting than it seems on the surface. In the next few months I will try to do some more digging on Farran, which so far has been going well, but I can't find much on him other than what was written above. A picture of him would be nice too, I'd like to be able to put a face to this mysterious lyricist that Ring and Hager spent time with.
Well that's all I got so far in terms of new information. In the next few months however, I will be sharing more records from my own collection, as I finally got my turntable set up again! I am also getting bunches of new old records to go through, which so far has been really exciting and fun. Here are a few of the newest ones:
All of these are exceptional records, though the condition varies greatly. The "little Indian Maiden" Zon-O-phone was especially good. There's a lot of very loud drumming on it, and it seems to have been recorded right before Eddie King took over that position, so the drummer is likely Jimmy Hager.
Anyhow, I'll get into detail about these records soon, I have to go through and listen to them all thoroughly. Hope you're all holding up reasonably well out there. It's been up and down for me, some days are good, others aren't.
Keep listening out there!