Whew!
It's been a hell of a month for research. I mentioned this in the last post, but now that I have spent time combing through what Justin Ring left behind, it's clear that there's a lot more to see than his 6 page essay!
In the last few weeks, I have been closely studying the photographs that Ring kept, and just as expected, Hager is all over the place! I may have to split up this post into more than one because there are so many pictures to study. In the next post I'll stick to the pictures where Hager is included, and in this one I'll go through the pictures that were of him and his family.
So, it came unexpectedly to know that Ring became a family man later in life. Considering the kind of life Ring lived in his early recording days, I would have never expected that. In previous posts I mentioned his first wife Alice Davis, whom he divorced around 1906. This marriage was short, and it was likely seen as a shameful mistake to Justin as he aged. I have no idea why they divorced, and it could be any number of reasons why exactly. Considering how much he enjoyed Hager's company, it come as a surprise that he remarried by the end of 1908. Of course in the period between 1906-1912, Ring and Hager were split, so maybe they didn't enjoy each other's company so much at that time.
According to Ring's own writing(as per the essay detailed in the previous post), he met a young girl named Elsie Patz who had black hair and brown eyes. He met Elsie in 1907 while playing piano with the rather famous show The Chocolate Soldier. This was a big thing for him, as he had finally been invited to perform with the orchestra of a famous broadway production, something he had been wanting to do for years(at least since 1902). According to his essay, Elsie was the understudy to the leading woman in the show. 
an example of one of the covers for a song in the show.
Ring even kept a portrait of Elsie in her costume for the show.
It's awfully nice to have several high quality portraits of her, as before I had only that one crappy large group photo of the Okeh dinner. Elsie wasn't just any girl, she came from a long line of prominent musicians. Her father, Gustav Patz, was a in Gilmore's original band in the 1860's, and later a conductor for the Boston Symphony. All of her siblings were musical as well, and thanks to pictures that Ring kept, we can be assured that his in-laws were judging his musical ability closely during the supposed "quick courtship" they had. To the delight of his in-laws and his own family, Ring became a father at the end of 1910.When their first daughter Vera was born, quickly he changed his tune, from a rambling rag-timer to a devoted dad. His daughters were very dear to him, even the beckoning relationship with Edgar Farran at the time wasn't as important to him.
Of all the amazing pictures that Ring kept, none was as captivating as this one, a serious yet somewhat candid portrait of dad and his dear baby daughter in 1911:
That picture above made it very clear that he had a change in pace in his life. He was still a dandy, but if a dandy could be a devoted dad, he did it. It makes sense now why he spent a few years away from recording. Not long after this portrait was taken, he moved from the Bronx out to a larger home on the edge of Queens(called Flushing at the time).
More family portraits like the one above don't come up again until the middle 1920's, after his second daughter, Marion was born.
As we know, he didn't return to recording until about 1915, and even at that he didn't really resume all the same work he had been doing until Okeh was founded in 1918. He resumed his relationship with Hager around 1916.
Marion was born in 1919, and it turns out that she became very curious about her father's past, and was part of the reason that her dad wrote that 6 page essay about his life. She knew him when he was older, and became most familiar with him out of context of his friends like Hager and Eddie King. By the mid-20's, Ring had a new member of the family, and it wasn't another daughter.
As you can see, there's Marion on the left, mama Elsie in the middle, and Vera on the right. It's difficult to date this picture exactly but I'd say based on the car it's probably late-1920's. One thing that's interesting about Elsie is that in almost every picture of her she's got that big smile. Ring kept portraits of her going back to when she was a little girl, and she still looks extroverted and fun even then.
There were portraits of little Ring too, but I'll save those for the next post. Little Ring was absolutely adorable, and serious as always.
A lot more photos that Ring kept were from the middle 1930's to middle 1940's. Thankfully the cute doggie makes another appearance!
I must admit, as a historian who studies body language in portraits, these two portraits of Ring are very interesting with that in mind.
I'd like to close out this part of the post with a portrait of Justin and Elsie from the late 1930's or so, that seems to sum them up pretty well.
It's also curious to note that Ring smoked. Hager, as I found out from gathering his papers, did not smoke.
So I hope to cover more on Ring's papers in the next post, as I will cover the pictures and artifacts related to him and Hager. Thankfully there were quite a lot! There's also a lot of new information to explore on that front.
*Thanks so much to Tricia Wentz SirLouis for sharing all these amazing pictures and documents!*
So as I promised in the last post, I will share my winnings from the Nauck auction. I must say, this is one of the best batches of records I've gotten since the brown wax find at a local antique store. I ended up paying the most for a cylinder this time, which came as a surprise. So here's some pictures of the stuff I got:
So first of all, the Metropolitan orchestra record is some of the hottest rag-time I've heard on a record from that era. It's classic black rag-time led by Banta. It may be a 7 incher, but it packs quite a punch for its size. For years I had been wanting to hear that particular song by Will Marion Cook, as it has such a strange and comical title. Boy how it didn't disappoint!
Here's a crude transfer of it:
(hope the link works for you!)
So getting this record actually has raised a question. I noticed that the Metropolitan orchestra recorded several very unusual yet very hot rag-time songs on Berliner and later Victor. I'm wondering what gave Banta the liberty to do so, arranging such unusual and rather serious rags like the one above. What I'd like to know is why Banta was given license to do that at Victor, but Fred Hylands, a pianist known specifically for his rag-time, wasn't. Why didn't Hylands get the freedom to record instrumental versions of coon songs with the Columbia orchestra? They did a few songs like "Hello my baby" "My Honolulu Lady" and "I guess I'll have to telegraph my baby", but nothing as obscure and rare as "who dat said chicken in dis crowd" or "The Sun do move"(a cake-walk).
Banta wasn't known by all for his Rag-time, though it was certainly part of his charm. Hylands was specifically hired by Columbia for his rag-time abilities, so wouldn't it seem strange that all the most authentic and serious rag-time was recorded under Banta's command?
something to think about.
So the Zon-O-Phone record of "recollections of 1861" is actually really interesting, more so than you might think at first. The reason I bid on that record is because of the trumpet calls.
In Hager's scrapbook, there are a few pages that include pieces from Zon-O-phone catalogs, and on one of these pages he saved a write up on the above selection.
I'm not sure if I have said it on here before, but I'm pretty sure Hager wrote up all the short descriptions for the records in the early Zono catalogs, as they are very characteristic of his writing to Jim Walsh and in his own papers many years later. So based on that little write up, Hager is playing the horn calls on the record above! Someone told me awhile ago that Hager played a brass instrument, but I wasn't sure whether to believe it. Well, there's your evidence! After getting to listen to the record, I'd say that it really does sound like Hager playing the horn, as it oddly has the same sort of inflections that his violin playing and composition style possessed. His playing was very precise and pointed, through not entirely accurate tonally.
I'll highlight one more of these records before I close out, and I'll include the others in my next post.
Hager was very proud of his violin playing, and his solo records especially. With this in mind, it's no surprise that he kept a page from a Zon-O-Phone catalog with his solo records listed. I got two of these records in the recent auction, both of which are outstanding examples of the superior recording quality that all major record companies possessed in the year of 1900. Hager's "Hungarian dance" Zono was surprisingly good musically, and in terms of piano accompaniment, it was phenomenal. Both Ring and Hager's playing comes through clear as a bell(though the piano is just a bit louder!).
So here's the catalog page from his scrapbook:
Oh how he was so very vain.
I got his record of the "Pilgrim's chorus" and it is a very well recorded piece as he states above, but I find his description of it more interesting than the actual record!
"a magnificent record; the violin being loud and sweet and the piano unusually loud to give the variation effect that is so well known in this piece."
Oh Hager, his magnificence!
I wish he saved more pages from Zono catalogs, as these descriptions are just as entertaining to read as listening to the records themselves.
With that I will end it here. I'm really glad to have lots to research, and each day I am realizing something new about Ring as I comb through what remains of his papers. More records and photos in the next post!
Hope you enjoyed this,
Happy halloween!
Hi, Ramona. My name's Fernando and I'm from Spain.
ReplyDeleteI got so many doubts about G.W. Johnson after reading Tim Brook's biography. I only want to ask you two question if you agree...