There's Dudley in the middle.
and here he is here in a clearer picture from 1896:
Well, that's Dudley.
Or Rous must I say.
Samuel Holland Rous was his actual name, and "Mr. Rous" was what the boys knew him by in management at the record companies. He was one of those artists in the early days who thought he was the best there was on the records later in life, even though there were a handful of artists who surpassed him in skill and popularity. Dudley was the Indiana artist that came in the business before Hylands lumbered in. Dudley had been living on unstable finances as a youth, as his family kept in a business that called for constant moving. Young Sam's father was the superintendent of the schools in the area where the Rous family lived, which as I remember now, was near Greencastle, Indiana. Dudley hadn't been trained much, but it's clear that what he claimed later in life(that he hadn't been trained) wasn't true. Dudley was slightly like Richard Jose(seen below:
The similarity with Jose and Dudley is that they both lived a very long time, and that they were interviewed like mad when they were older, and most importantly that their stories and feelings about the recording business were questionable in their reliability. Jose's story has been glorified, thanks to his fame and his wife's dreamy feeling about him, with the fortune they had in his best days. Dudley was the same way, minus the fact that he was born into a reasonably well-off family(as Jose was a Cornish peasant boy in his youth). Dudley had a few years of voice lessons, and then he was off from the school-oriented Rous home out on his own in the acting world. He soon proved to be a very popular dramatist and singer, as he performed in early productions of The Mikado, Faust, and Rigoletto all being from about the same time, which one date has been confirmed as mid-1890. One thing that only a few collectors know of is Dudley's wife. Madame Sofia Romani(0r as I have been told Romaine, or was it Romain?It's been a while since I though about this...). Madame Romaine, as she was called, was a singer that he worked alongside for years in the opera companies. The thing that's so rare and fascinating is that she made a few Victor records in 1901.
I am SERIOUS, only less than a handful of collectors know this fact. Why? well, the only reason for this is that I know the record collector who owns the ONLY copy of Madame Romaine's only issued record from 1901. I have had the absolute privilege of actually getting to hear the 7-inch Victor monarch with Mr. Dudley's wife singing a popular song in that operatic soprano voice of hers. After he played it for me, he told me that it was the only known copy of the only issued record by her. He then told me that is was only sold for a few weeks then dropped from the catalog, possibly because of Dudley's obliging, for whatever reason he had for doing so. The record in itself would be worth $7,000. As he left the room to find another record, he set the one-in-existence record in my hands, and I stared at it in amazement. That was the first time I had ever been in that situation, holding the only copy of a record. It is a moment of silence, and transportation to the week that the record was able to be bought. Only a week, amazing.
Well, Dudley having his wife record didn't last too long, clearly he thought he should try it out, but it didn't work. only two tests, and one was issued, and only sold for a week, well, that's enough to say it didn't work. But Dudley only rose from there in Victor's management, as from 1902 onward, he only climbed up the "Totem Pole" of Victor's staff, as he was no longer just an artist. He was beginning to work as the manager of personnel at Victor by 1902 and 1903, which meant that he was the chief talent scout when it came to the records. Now around this time, he began in the whole "Haydn Quartet" scheme, but as I said in the title of this post, I will skip all of that, only because it is a story that deserves its own post. All of Dudley's Quartet work does. He was the personnel manager at Victor from 1903 to 1916, and he edited the catalog issues from that time, and even started working on the famous Victor Book of the Opera which he worked on until the decade before he died. Since he had been working at a very high position at Victor for years, and had gone on to doing other high-paying work in the business, he had acquired an enormous amount of wealth by the early 1920's. He said later to Jim Walsh that he and his wife had a home in Monaco, and that they had been on trips to Africa, The Amazon, India, and around the world basically is what he said. He was a happy old man by this time, and was living extremely well off, only to be gladdened more so by finding letters from Ulysses Walsh in the mail by the early 40's. He must have been delighted to find someone other than his few surviving friends interested in his most beloved work of years passed. He told Walsh an overload of interesting things about the business in its early days, to when his time was winding down.
The only thing that was a little odd about the great things that he told Walsh, is that he compared himself to Bing Crosby, in popularity terms. This analogy is obviously a very vain and untrue one, as there were many more artists in his time who made more records that him and were generally more popular than him. He had a reason to think this way though, being such a high executive at Victor and dealing with all sorts of different people as a talent scout would show for it.
He was not the "Bing Crosby of 1900", as Mr. Rous once said.
But he was a fine baritone to hear.
I am SERIOUS, only less than a handful of collectors know this fact. Why? well, the only reason for this is that I know the record collector who owns the ONLY copy of Madame Romaine's only issued record from 1901. I have had the absolute privilege of actually getting to hear the 7-inch Victor monarch with Mr. Dudley's wife singing a popular song in that operatic soprano voice of hers. After he played it for me, he told me that it was the only known copy of the only issued record by her. He then told me that is was only sold for a few weeks then dropped from the catalog, possibly because of Dudley's obliging, for whatever reason he had for doing so. The record in itself would be worth $7,000. As he left the room to find another record, he set the one-in-existence record in my hands, and I stared at it in amazement. That was the first time I had ever been in that situation, holding the only copy of a record. It is a moment of silence, and transportation to the week that the record was able to be bought. Only a week, amazing.
Well, Dudley having his wife record didn't last too long, clearly he thought he should try it out, but it didn't work. only two tests, and one was issued, and only sold for a week, well, that's enough to say it didn't work. But Dudley only rose from there in Victor's management, as from 1902 onward, he only climbed up the "Totem Pole" of Victor's staff, as he was no longer just an artist. He was beginning to work as the manager of personnel at Victor by 1902 and 1903, which meant that he was the chief talent scout when it came to the records. Now around this time, he began in the whole "Haydn Quartet" scheme, but as I said in the title of this post, I will skip all of that, only because it is a story that deserves its own post. All of Dudley's Quartet work does. He was the personnel manager at Victor from 1903 to 1916, and he edited the catalog issues from that time, and even started working on the famous Victor Book of the Opera which he worked on until the decade before he died. Since he had been working at a very high position at Victor for years, and had gone on to doing other high-paying work in the business, he had acquired an enormous amount of wealth by the early 1920's. He said later to Jim Walsh that he and his wife had a home in Monaco, and that they had been on trips to Africa, The Amazon, India, and around the world basically is what he said. He was a happy old man by this time, and was living extremely well off, only to be gladdened more so by finding letters from Ulysses Walsh in the mail by the early 40's. He must have been delighted to find someone other than his few surviving friends interested in his most beloved work of years passed. He told Walsh an overload of interesting things about the business in its early days, to when his time was winding down.
The only thing that was a little odd about the great things that he told Walsh, is that he compared himself to Bing Crosby, in popularity terms. This analogy is obviously a very vain and untrue one, as there were many more artists in his time who made more records that him and were generally more popular than him. He had a reason to think this way though, being such a high executive at Victor and dealing with all sorts of different people as a talent scout would show for it.
He was not the "Bing Crosby of 1900", as Mr. Rous once said.
But he was a fine baritone to hear.
I hope you enjoyed this!
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