studio stories no. 4--Compliments from Miss Irwin!

"You must be this 'Len' I've been hearing about, who's been singing my songs to the phonograph.

You do it with considerable skill Leonard."
"I should say the same to you dear--but the phonograph is not yet made yer acquaintance."

One busy day in late-1896, Len Spencer was making his way to one of the recording studios he was dedicating himself to at the time, as he kept on dressed in his seal skin coat and high silk hat, an impressively dressed stocky lady came up to him. This wasn't just any lady though, this was the famous "Rag-Time" singer May Irwin. Irwin had been presented with many of the versions that the phonograph boys made, and found Len's rendition the most amusing of them all. J.W. Myers, Dan W. Quinn and George Gaskin were to "tied up" for the loose and rugged Rag-Time style that Spencer naturally had the talent for. She was taken by Len's raucous and slightly romantic tone of voice on his records of her songs. She was mostly impressed by his rendition of her "The Bully":

also with her success of "Crappy Dan(de spotin' man)":

and her tune "An Awful Wicked Nigger":

just to name a few of Spencer's May Irwin imitations. The popularity of the popular recoding artists recording Irwin's specialties faded when she actually came into Victor in 1907 to record only four of her songs. Those records sold and extremely high amount of copies, even if there were only four different selections, and she was performing all over the place at the time. 

(this story came from the  November, 1896 issue of The Phonoscope)

I hope you enjoyed this!