In the last few weeks, I have become quite fascinated with a guy named Eddie T. King. I have mentioned him here and there in previous blog posts, more recently I have attempted to place his name in studio pianist research, but so far nothing on that has produced much.
As I have become ever more intrigued with this eccentric Eddie King, many people have shared odd stories regarding him. From the dozen or so stories that have been shared with me regarding him, it is evident that no one really liked him too much, and that he was a classic eccentric.
In the 8 years of record research I've done, King's name has come up here and there, never seeming to completely escape the research process. I might add that that's quite a difficult thing to pull off, but since King was lurking around literally everywhere, it really isn't much of a surprise. When I was starting out on my Hylands digging back in 2012, King's name came up a few times as a pianist alternative to Hylands(if the whole Hylands thing didn't end up working out!). But why would King's name be added to the mix with Hylands? Well, according to most sources, King worked at Columbia in the late-1890's and into the early 1900's, but what exactly he was doing there I do not know. I cannot confirm what he was doing at Columbia in the late-90's, but I would firmly believe he was there somehow. Recently I went on a dig on ancestry for Mr. King, and only found him in the 1900 census so far, but, I know it's the right guy! The record indicates he was born around 1868, which is quite early!
Just to give you an idea, King was older than Banta and Hylands.
So...In considering his age, it would make sense that he would be poking around at Columbia in the era of the Hylands accompaniments.
It's quite possible that King traded off with Hylands playing piano accompaniments, but I have no way to know that just yet.
King worked for Columbia through 1903, and around then he ended up as Hager's percussionist, making a few xylophone solos and regularly appearing as Hager's drummer(I do not know what happened to James Hager when King stepped in). King supposedly remained at Zon-O-Phone until their end in 1912, and then he was off to Victor until the mid-1920's. After Victor he returned to Columbia to supervise many famous Jazz and popular sessions.
So that's the sequence of his employment, but there's a lot more to this story. The tales people have been telling me about him are larger than life. Naturally, I drew several cartoon involving him and his eccentricities. Oddly enough, he actually seemed to be an eccentric in a way similar to Hylands, the kind that everyone in the studio made fun of and mocked constantly behind his back. From the tone of the stories, it seems that's all they did. When they were all in the studio with him they had to act quite well, as when he was lurking around he'd raise hell and kick everyone's butts around if they didn't behave. Since I have known about Mr. King, I have never seen a picture of him, but from the very detailed descriptions of his appearance I feel like I have. There's a section on him in Nat Shilkret's autobiography, and he's also mentioned a few times in more than one book about Bix Beiderbecke's Paul Whiteman sessions. The boys in Bix's band provided a very colorful description of his appearance, it went something like this(I am entirely paraphrasing here!):
He had the head of a bull. He was a short man with a very large waist and bottom, but delicate hands.
Also he was very short tempered, easily triggered by small things.
Yep, how about that for a colorful description! That immediately got me thinking, I needed to draw a few cartoons to poke fun at this, but of course he probably wasn't so grotesque looking in the 1900's and 1910's(sounds a lot like another Columbia studio pianist). Since I have not seen a picture of him, I am only going off of these comical descriptions, here's my first cartoon of him:
Of course this combines the detailed description as well as his relationship with Hager and Justin Ring. This is poking fun at how he likely changed quite a lot after Hager "left" Zon-O-Phone in 1906 and left Eddie to tend to his orchestra and musicians on his own. By 1914-15, Eddie was playing on many of the Fred Van Eps-Felix Arndt Victor's, beating on the drums to the discontent of Van Eps and Arndt. King's aggressive and somewhat antiquated drumming made for some odd sounds on these particular records. I quite like this particular record of his:
He's playing very straightforward percussion, sometimes sticking to the melody and other times not. The physical descriptions make for some elevated humor in the listening of any records he's on, particularly the Van Eps records. Now that I know about King being on them, I am glad to own a few of them. I can almost feel the cringe of Van Eps and Arndt on those records, having to deal with King's queen-like bossy rule, then having no choice but to allow him to be their percussionist. Just for the fun of it, here's another Van Eps record he's on, this time he plays some more pieces of the percussion!
All the stories come together into one when I listen to records I know he's on, it becomes hard to keep a straight face at that point.
The second cartoon I drew of King was illustrating one of the Nat Shilkret stories. In Shilkret's book, he told several stories about King, but one in particular is too great not to share. He told that after King's second wife died, he insisted upon performing a séance to contact her spirit. When he did this, he absolutely insisted that Harry MacDonough sat next to him(a little suspicious, but okay), and he was entirely passionate and confident about the result he got from the thing. The others he invited did funny little things to help get Eddie's goat and lead him to believe all that he was intending on. I did not draw him in the 1920's, but I did draw him with Hager and Ring again of course:
(I drew most of this waiting for the train in Santa Barbara)
So, if you are observant enough, you could see that the spirit he's attempting to contact is Banta's, as by 1905 Banta had been gone for almost two years.
So this story was where I really understood that he was a classic eccentric, as only a true weirdo of the times would insist on grabbing a few friends to perform a legitimate séance, particularly at the beginning of the 20th century.
No one liked working with Eddie King. He was bossy, aggressive, constant, and a serious grump. But despite all of these negatives, he was one of the most valuable people in the studios in his day, as he was a very well educated musician, and he played all the vital instruments for the foundation of a recording lab at that time. He played piano, all percussion, organ, and was a great studio manager. So it makes sense why he remained in the studios for so long, even with all his eccentricities and drawbacks. Just as I'm writing this, I dug up an interesting record from 1920, where you can hear the voice of Eddie King quote clearly, and it's actually a familiar voice:
(right at the very end is where it's the best)
https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/matrix/detail/700010044/B-24810-Sweet_mamma_Papas_getting_mad
That voice is all over Zon-O-phone's in the early 1900's, doing all sorts of calls and shouts on Hager's orchestra records. So that's what he sounded like.
The most unrelated cartoon I drew involving Eddie King was themed for Valentine's Day, but it also includes Justin Ring once again:
So from King's connections to early Columbia and Zon-O-phone, it can be almost guaranteed that he knew both Hylands and Justin Ring quite well. The parallels between King and Hylands are quite astounding, as all the studio boys tried pulling pranks on him when they could, and spoke of him quite dirty all the time, a similar story to what we can gather from how Hylands was portrayed in The Phonoscope.
In my last post, I used the statement two(or three)Zon-O-Phone pianists more than once, and there is a reason I did. There are two different pianists I hear on most Zon-O-Phone(and Climax) records from 1899-1907, but sometimes there are Zon-O-phone's I hear that don't fit into the dichotomy. So in this mission I'm on to unlock the mysteries of Zon-O-Phone, the three names I have as accompanists are Fred Hager, Justin Ring and Eddie King. Eddie King would likely be on Zono around post-1902, as he was still working at Columbia by then as far as I know. Unfortunately, I haven't heard enough of his accompaniments to decipher a distinct style, but hearing more of his drum attack is helping. This record here is about as good as it gets in terms of his accompaniment:
I have been listening to this record a lot lately to attempt to pull something out of the accompaniment, but so far I only have little fragments that don't tell me much. However! A collector told me recently that in one of the Bix books, the boys in the band described his playing as antiquated, exaggerated, and well founded. Yes, that's helpful, but doesn't really tell me much. He naturally would have sounded like that, considering his age and high musical education. The only thing I can gather from his accompaniments is that he was a good accompanist, but aggressive and pushy, similar to the Hylands attack, but don't take that as an important characteristic here. In no way did King have the Cincinnati Swing that distinguished Hylands' accompaniments like a pin to the finger. King had the same aggressiveness in his accompaniments(not just on piano, but also his drumming) that would push around the performers, and create an extra amount of swing in the overall rhythm of the record.
Well, that's about all I got on Eddie King for now, hopefully I can dig up some more on him in the near future, as the odd stories keep piling up, as do the cartoon ideas. No matter what I study in this recording world, his name will always pop up, as his name is on the most Victor records in their ledgers, just to give you an idea of his significance. He was obviously an important figure, despite his eccentricities, because he remained working in studios from the 1890's to nearly 1930!
To close out, here's a Hager's orchestra record I know he's doing the calls on(as well as beating away on the woodblock throughout):
I really wanted to get this Eddie King post in before I forget, that's why I'm doing it so close in time to the previous post. I was so anxious to share this, as I have never been so tantalized by a character I have never seen and know hardly anything about.
Hope you enjoyed this!
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