Yes, that IS Banta, I guarantee it. It's the hair slim figure that got me wondering.
We all know Frank P. Banta well from them old records. Those who know him are most likely to know him from the hundreds of Edison cylinders he devoted the last five years of his life to. While he was the great and beloved pianist of Edison's studio, he was also the pianist in the Metropolitan orchestra in the late 1890's and into the 1900's. As I have explained before on this blog, Banta was the one who you can hear counting off the band at the beginning of many of the Metropolitan orchestra records. It's very odd how the engineers let that pass for so many years, and that they didn't seem to do a thing about it. They let a surprising amount of things pass over them o the records in the late-9
0's and early 1900's, such as an out-of-sync piano and chatter in the background.
There are a few early Victors that indicate that Banta was the pianist, but after that they didn't credit them, probably because they had three different pianists at Victor after that, and Banta was getting very busy back at Edison. Here is one of them where he isn't identified, but he was on a previous take of this same selection by Clarke:
http://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/matrix/detail/100002555/Pre-matrix_B-3412-Grand_Russian_fantasie
I found this record years ago and fell in love with the piano accompaniment from the first time I heard it. I would never have thought that I would ever know who the pianists was...
Here is the Edison cylinder with the same accompaniment for a comparison:
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/mp3s/9000/9232/cusb-cyl9232d.mp3
Banta was not identified as their pianist at Victor, even when he was the pianist on several records where it's really clear such as this next one.
Here's the Edison cylinder with Banta:
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/mp3s/5000/5273/cusb-cyl5273d.mp3
This song is very funny and odd for 1901, but it's great all the same paired with S. H. Dudley's voice. Anyhow, the one thing that makes Dudley's Victor of this easy to tell that the pianist is Banta is because of the weird solo at the end in all octaves. It doesn't go with the song very well, and it's slightly jarring to the listener. Here is the Victor with the same accompaniment:
There's two takes here, and I'm referring to the second one listed, the first one is with a different pianist
http://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/matrix/detail/2000000540/Pre-matrix_B-1090-Not_by_a_dam_side
Two identical accompaniments is something to get curious about. This happens a lot with Hylands as well with Columbia and Zon-O-Phone. It proves that they alternated time in the Victor piano chair. Most of the time, they wouldn't stay playing at Victor for several days in a row, they would split the weeks and even days. Banta must have tried his best to keep together the scattered Metropolitan orchestra on the many records they made, they sounded broken half the time.
Even though the Victor ledgers often said that S. H. Rous(Dudley) was the leader of the Metropolitan orchestra, he probably just did sounds effects and other various things, much like Harry Spencer did for the Columbia orchestra. it was Banta who counted them off and did some of the arrangements. Before the whole Metropolitan orchestra business, which began in 1899, he was the pianist in Edison's studio ensemble the Peerless orchestra. Banta, along with Arthur Collins,(on later records) Ed Meeker, and who else in the Edison concert band was able to get there, made up Edison's Peerless orchestra.
Here are a few Ragged examples of their playing(featuring Frank Banta on the piano)
From 1899:
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/mp3s/0000/0054/cusb-cyl0054d.mp3
I have a feeling that this cylinder was played too fast.
This next one is from 1900:
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/mp3s/10000/10025/cusb-cyl10025d.mp3
Collins' announcements were always hilarious. Because,
HE'S SHOUTING FROM THE BACK OF THE ROOM!
and also because mispronounced words a whole lot too.
Banta must have found Collins and absolute crack-up in the studio, also because he had to accompany him on his earliest solo records in 1898.
This next Peerless orchestra cylinder is from late-1898 or early 1899:
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/mp3s/5000/5243/cusb-cyl5243d.mp3
Ha! On this one you get to hear young Arthur Collins speak, and you get to hear that god-awful sound that jingle bells made on brown wax cylinders. That's what that high-pitched scraping sound is. they could never really get it right. Even on this high-grade Columbia cylinder of Sousa's Band from 1898:http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/mp3s/8000/8833/cusb-cyl8833d.mp3
"Hey!-Hey!"-from one of the Spencer's and the Sousa band!
These next few are early Arthur Collins Edison cylinders. This first one is an unusual Collins brown wax from c.1899(the date is not listed but that is certainly the date of it:
https://archive.org/details/SlideKellySlideByArthurCollins
You get to hear Banta's signature trills all over the place on this one.
This next one is very early Collins. This was recorded when he and Len spencer were starting to get into recording fights about who could record more Rag-Time. This is the period where the record collectors fight over who recorded more vocal Ragtime in the 1890's. I love to see them argue, because it's pretty obvious that Spencer recorded more of it in 1897, 1898 and 1899. Collins came close though.
Here you go with an unusual Rag-Time ditty by Arthur Collins and Frank Banta from late-1898:
https://ia802300.us.archive.org/31/items/ArthurCollins_part2/ArthurCollins-ZizzyZeZumZum.mp3
This is a fun piece to play. As Banta is loud enough to where you can actually hear what he's doing behind Collins, and Edison's old piano sounds fantastic!
Now this last one is one that I know everyone has heard, but it's a good one in representing so many things about the brown wax era and early Rag-Time as well.
Well, here you go from 1899, Collins' first number 1 hit!
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/mp3s/8000/8650/cusb-cyl8650d.mp3
Banta is really playful and fun on this one, much to the likeness of Collins on it. It's still a very funny and overall great record in itself. I'm sure Spencer learned of Collins recording this after he recorded his version on Berliner with Fred Hylands. For an interesting comparison, here is Spencer's Berliner recorded around the same time in 1899:
https://archive.org/details/HelloMaBaby1899
Kill it Hylands! He really is a riot on this one! And Spencer's pretty drunk too...
Those Hylands and Spencer collaborations from their publishing days were absolutely perfect. Great examples of Rag-Time. But so was the duo of Banta and Collins. Banta had not as much a voice as Hylands, well, he had better control in keeping his mouth shut than Hylands that is. We will never know the whole story of Frank Banta's adventures at the record companies.
I hope you enjoyed this!
I am only now coming to your postings and enjoying them very much. From my own research at West Orange and talking with the late Fred Williams, I get the feeling that at this date "leader" on the ledgers might have meant "contractor". I know that the conductors at Edison (Fred Hager, Eugene Jaudas, Frederick Ecke, and later Cesare Sodero, for example) usually left the actual hiring of musicians to Anthony Giammatteo, who played 1st clarinet in the Edison ensembles. West Orange has dozens of cancelled cheques in large sums made out to Giammatteo, but the studio cash books only list expenditures for all performers under the single heading "Talent". I was quite surprised to find such an apparently casual way of doing business at Edison: West Orange would send a fixed sum over to the 79 5th Avenue New York studio, they noted that in the cash books (which are tiny pocket notebooks), and then W. H. A. Cronkhite blandly penned in what was spent over the week in an almost careless fashion. Nothing exists for the earlier 4th Avenue studio's expenditures (at least that I've found), but this may have been the way they worked from the 1890s on.
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