Columbia's beloved pianist(part 2)

"Freddy" Hylands

(from author's own art) 

we are again with the part 2 of the post from yesterday. So to pick up from yesterday, Hylands was still on good terms with Len Spencer and Harry W. Yeager, and he was still Columbia's busy pianist. 

1900 was, however, the year that his firm Hylands, Spencer, and Yeager folded, for only a single reason: Len Spencer couldn't fully commit himself to the business. 

Typical Len Spencer, he got himself into as many profitable things as possible, and if the venture wasn't constantly creative, he would just leave it behind altogether. 

Hylands must have gotten really pissed off at Spencer when he had had enough of him not wholly committing, as the drawing above(by the author) represents. 

He still remained Columbia's pianist, still playing behind the banjo players, singers, and even in the famed Columbia orchestra where Harry Spencer did the announcements. So on the records by the columbia orchestra where they sing or shout things, it's the band doing this---with Hylands' voice somewhere in the heap of voices.

Hylands didn't write another tune until 1904 because he was still committed to the boys at Columbia, and that was the year that he was believed to have ceased the position of house pianist. It must have been a sad good bye for the many early singers who still were prominent at Columbia. I'm sure that Hylands still was a distant friend of Spencer's after his time at Columbia, as Spencer became more prominent in the city of New York as the years went on. Spencer must have booked hims for a show here and there. And he must have heard word of Hylands' death in 1913, which I'm sure he paid his dues to him. 

After his rather long venture in recording, Hylands became more of a theatre personality, and continued that inspiration that Len Spencer had most likely given him to explore all the fields and media of the entertainment business, from performance to film making. 

He was just as busy as the men he dealt with at Columbia after 1904, performing, publishing, writing musicals, and managing shows here and there. 

The recording business really inspired Hylands to expand into all the fields of entertainment that existed in that time, all thanks to this wild mix of eccentrics like Len Spencer, Dan W. Quinn, J. W. Myers, and Roger harding. 

I hope you enjoyed this!