A Theater pianist and other New Discoveries

After digging through some information about Burt Green, Ada Jones, and looking back at those 1900 Phonoscope sections, I have found some interesting items. I also looked through much of the issues available online of The New York Clipper, which also allowed for a good bounty of information and interesting advertisements. Of the many things I found about Fred and Etta Hylands, I did not see anything speaking of Hylands' clearly long time and  important engagement as Columbia's house pianist from 1897 to c.1904-05. It's very strange how that whole Columbia thing just passed over everyone's heads, though it's clearly where his trouble started, and its effects haunted him for the rest of his life(If you've ever noticed, Hylands weighed the most while working at Columbia...). I guarantee it, if you look up Fred in any of those theatrical magazines, you won't find anything about him being a studio pianist. It's very bizarre, you'll find Frank Banta being known as a "phonograph pianist", but not Hylands. Take this for example:

 (from Professor Bill's website)
"By the consolidated pianist of Phonograph Fame"
Yep, that's what Banta was known for, even to all the big publishers(including Hylands when he became one!). But, wait a moment, there's this here:

OH! He was on salary! That's right. Durr...
Jeez! Hope you're starting to see why it's very bizarre why you just don't see anything about his commitment to Columbia ANYWHERE. Wow, all the more reason for Jim Walsh to completely avoid writing about Hylands of his perhaps hundreds of fantastic articles. If Walsh was trying to be truly frank with the articles and notes he had, Hylands would have been mentioned hundreds of times. That's only if he mentioned that the pianist accompanied the singer(main subject of the article) was Hylands, and with that, he could have even done one of his specialty biographies on Hylands. That would have saved much of the headache I've had in trying to search around for any scraps of information on Hylands. Even in the November, 1913 issue of The Clipper, where they do a short section on him, there isn't at all any mentioning of the whole Columbia venture:

This little section was a little important, as it provided the information that most people knew him for. As according to every source in that time(other than The Phonoscope) Hylands was known for being a music director, B. F. Keith's prized pianist(of many they had...), one of the best stage accompanists in vaudeville, and that eccentric vanity publisher(like that they mentioned that...). Nothing about his revolutionary publishing firm with Len Spencer and Harry Yeager, his love and adoration at Columbia, or that he was one of the first popular Rag-Time pianists. Now the fact that they didn't mention the Rag-Time part of Hylands is very surprising, as certainly, by 1913, those earliest Rag pianists were beginning to truly get recognition for the fad they helped begin, which, as we well know, was still on by 1913.  Another thing that the section above indicates is that Hylands had been performing in vaudeville since about 1890, which we know is true, but it is indicated that he began as a B. F. Keith pianist, though of course, as expected, they would not dare to mention his lesser contributions that really were obviously the key to his playing style---playing in low-class clubs and saloons. 

Some of the other sections I found included many indications of the openings for the shows that Hylands directed and wrote himself. One of these sections included this:

Heh, imagine him standing on that stage giving a speech to everyone, that's a fantastic thing to picture. Wonder what he said in those speeches...

Ha! I have heard conflicting opinions about this show of Fred's. This one is, as seen, a much more positive and kind word to Hylands' fantastic talent with the parody. Two notable names in the above section other than Fred's, there are also the names of J. Grant Gibson, and Marie Hylands. J Grant Gibson was a long-time friend of Fred's from after being thrown out of Columbia and joining the White Rats Union in 1905. Hylands created a friendship with Gibson much like the one he had with Burt Green and Len Spencer back in 1898-1900. It was with Gibson that he began his second-to-last publishing firm, and wrote this piece here: 

(from my collection)

Without Len Spencer, that signature decorative footer was no more...

Yes indeed, both Hylands and Gibson were on this sheet music, and it's no coincidence that Hylands chose to write and publish with Gibson over everyone else he knew at that time. The other sections that I found this evening include these here: 

"A cyclone hit", gotta love 1900's slang.

Something odd about these two sections is that they were both featured in the same edition of The Clipper in 1905. That must have brought on the competition factor between the two of them, not that it wasn't already present. These siblings were certainly in the same business at the same time, and this is clearly indicated by these two advertisements here. The other section I found is this one:

Well, at least the cause of death is indicated, but it's pretty obvious that it was that what killed him. Though, of course, it can be very certainly assume that it was more than just diabetes that killed him. He certainly was some sweet piano man, I can tell you that! Pardon my very morbid pun. Anyhow, these sections were very interesting, and I stumbled upon them when I was just looking for all of those sections about Ben Harney in The Clipper from 1897 to 1900, but like a heap of the wonderful resources out there that we know exist, they are not yet on the Internet, for good researchers and nerds to freak out about.

(Harney at left and John Biller at right)
 Many of those sections included reviews of Harney's acts with his wife Jesse, and even some compared to Mike Bernard's playing where he imitated Harney. Of course, also I bet if someone was to digitize those for everyone to have a chance to see them , we probably would see reviews of shows at Huber's Museum by Ada Jones with piano accompaniment by Burt Green. Burt Green would probably be listed in many of them. And this would even be so in the 1900 issues speaking of the events going on at B. F. Keith's theater, that way, we'd see Hylands listed a whole lot more(as indicated by the section just above). This is also indicated by this section in The Phonoscope from May 1900:

Yep. That's the one. 
That must have been the time that he got the job there the second time. By that I mean that he had been there for at least one season before 1900, as said in one of the other sections here. The Phonoscope  indicated in their July, 1898 issue though that he was also pianist at Tony Pastor's theater(probably in late-1896 or early-1897, though no exact date was given) but, Keith's was also indicated in that same section. 

Something just came to mind, Edison's talent scouts didn't really get the best of the best when they went out to grab their staff members. Their dynamic was a little different from Columbia's. Edison's scouts hired performers who were somewhat amateur on the stage, and they took them in so they could become big stars. Columbia's dynamic was to stay with the handful of regulars they got, but only hire the best of vaudeville and dramatic performance. Think about it, Arthur Collins pretty much failed as an operetta and minstrel performer before Edison took him in to have him be an announcer for them in 1897. In 1898, Collins became one of the newest big stars of the recording business, one finally to combat Len Spencer's overwhelming monopoly in the area of the "Coon Song". Spencer fleetingly learned of this competition, and probably laughed at how much of a miserable failure Collins had been as a minstrel man, compared to his own extraordinary skills as a salesman and minstrel man. Collins proved him wrong, and Spencer's popularity began to significantly drop by 1906(the same year that he lost the sight in his right eye!). This Edison dynamic can also apply to Frank P. Banta, Byron G. Harlan, Harry MacDonough, and even Edward Meeker. Harlan wasn't really a failure exactly, but he was a very darn good amateur, as many of the early management staff there put it. Most of these Edison artists were under-appreciated before they got hired on to their staff, even someone like Frank P. Banta had the same sort of hard luck in the business, though I think that being Sylvester Ossman's pianist got him some much-deserved status in vaudeville, much earlier on than going off to Chicago to begin his phenomenal orchestra. Banta was no musical director with cute charisma(like Hylands) though. 

I hope you enjoyed this! 

Columbia Rag-Time vs. Edison Rag-Time(also some Victors too!)

A little list of Columbia cylinder offerings from 1900.

Here's a section from it:

Some of you real nerds out there might have been able to see right away that these are all Len Spencer and Fred Hylands selections. Three or four of the selections listed here were published by Spencer and Hylands in 1899, so this would indicate that the list of records was issued in earlier 1900. You can see some very attractive selections here, such as "Whistling Rufus", "You Don't Stop the World From Going Round", "Hello Ma Baby", "Smokey Mokes", "At A Georgia Camp Meeting" and several others that seem they'd make for a great listening. That's the thing about Columbia cylinders from that time frame(the later brown wax era), is that they had the few artists that hit the Rag-Time hard in 1898 to 1900, even if they didn't have Arthur Collins in that time, they had Spencer, and that was enough. In 1898-1900, Collins was just getting started, and wasn't exactly the most popular Rag-Time singer on records until after 1900. The reason Columbia didn't take Collins until 1901 might have been because of the popularity of Spencer and his minstrels in that time, and Collins was an independent outside of the "Columbia crowd"(if you know what I'm saying...). Spencer did not want to have to compete with someone who did exactly what he did, minus everything else Spencer recorded other than "Coon songs". 

Now with Spencer and Hylands at Columbia in the 1898-1900 timeframe, you get Collins and Banta at Edison. The only thing about Banta is that he wasn't paired with anyone on the staff as a specific act. He wasn't like Hylands who clung to the richest of the staff members, Banta was more independent that that. He did fill much of the Edison catalogs from the late 1890's with great and tasteful Rag-Time selections. With Banta leading their "Peerless Orchestra" from about late-1896 to about 1901, you get a great variety of Ragged selections, well orchestrated, and not at all a big cluster like Hylands' " Darkey Volunteer". 

Here is Banta and the Edison Peerless Orchestra playing Fred S. Stone's Ma Rag Time Baby" recorded in 1899(with a comical intro by Arthur Collins!).

In 1899 and 1900, Banta also did arrangements of "Smokey Mokes", "Whistling Rufus", and even "Ma Tiger Lily":

(My copy of it, that isn't the more common song version)

Banta's leadership of the Peerless orchestra was ended in 1901 because he became more infatuated with leading Victor's(before 1900 it was Berliner's house ensemble) Metropolitan Orchestra.

Banta did keep the Rag-Time flowing over at the somehow more conservative Edison company toward the end of the brown wax era and into the Gold Moulded era. You can hear Banta playing all sorts of very fun and Ragged accompaniments behind Arthur Collins, Will F. Denny, S. H. Dudley, and especially behind Vess L. Ossman. This is where you get these two Rag-Time gems from 1898 and 1899:

Collins and Banta with Lyn Udall's "Zizzy Ze Zum Zum" from 1898

Denny and Banta with "The Change Will Do You Good" from 1899

The Rag-Time factor at Edison dropped dramatically after Banta began working much more with the Metropolitan orchestra in 1901, even though in 1903 and 1904(after Banta died mind you), we see some more fun pieces of Rag-Time again, such as Justin Ring.'s "Jovial Joe" and E. Harry Kelly's "Peaceful Henry". It wasn't the same without Banta. 

Meanwhile, at Leeds, Columbia, Zon-O-Phone, and American, you can hear fantastic Ragged renditions of popular songs scattered all over the catalogs(by Hylands of course!). Banta's Rag-Time was popular more to record buyers, but Hylands' was more advanced and rugged, with more of the soul that Rag-Time needs.

Some more of the fun Rag-Time arrangements that Banta did from 1897-1902 include his own "Kareless Koon", "Ragged William"(which you can hear Here!)

"At A Georgia Camp Meeting", "Cotton Blossoms"(of which you can hear a German version here!), "Sambo At the Cake-Walk"(hear Banta's arrangement in action here, recorded actually in 1899-00, not 1901), "The Gridiron"(by Arthur Pryor, which can he heard played here in 1901),  and so many others you can find listed on this page here:

http://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/talent/detail/14357/Metropolitan_Orchestra_Musical_group

I will write more on this soon, as the UCSB site is down this evening, and that can be a real problem when wanting to compare these records, when half of the records I would have used on this post come from there. 

I hope you enjoyed this! 

200th post- "Kingpin" Hylands and the boys in the business

Yesterday evening, I was digging once again through the many issues of Variety that are digitized online. Among these findings are many new things about Fred and Etta Hylands. I would seem from all of the things that I read last evening, that Etta Hylands was quite a talented accompanist, just like Fred, but not particularly in the Ragged aspect of the popular music of the time. It would also seem that Fred Hylands was one of the most valuable accompanists of the stage business in the late-1890's. From this little quote here:

That's saying something! Hylands seemed to be more valuable than I really ever thought before I did my digging yesterday. And it's odd, the man who spoke of this said this when Hylands worked at Columbia, and that might have been what he was referring to. It's hard to know, but that notion is very possible. As I have said on previous posts, Hylands was known later as a house pianist at Columbia, in some ways, he may have been more famous in this field than Frank P. Banta:

 Argue this as much as you want, but I have come to the conclusion that Hylands was actually more well-known as a studio pianist than Frank P. Banta. Yes, I know that Banta's "Ragged William" from 1899:

 has this little thing right under Banta's name:

"The celebrated pianist of phonograph fame"

Yes, that may be tangible evidence of Banta's renown in the same business as Hylands', but that doesn't mean that Hylands wasn't known for this as well. And though, in the long run, Banta was(and is!) more recognized as a studio pianist, only because of his famous Jazz pianist son Frank Edgar. Hylands hadn't any descendants to carry on his amazing talent, and his wife vanished from the public eye not long after he died, and she was only recognized here and there afterward as "Fred Hylands' widow". So sometimes its both surprising and not surprising that Hylands has gone widely forgotten in the field of early record collecting.

Other than the supposed "phonograph fame" Hylands was said to have been a clever comedian. I'm not sure what his sense of humor was like, but would really like to know about it. His musicals were always said to have been funny, and were approved of by all who attended, even if he was oftentimes something comical to look at. The reviewers of his shows most often enjoyed his humor and few scenes where he actually became a part of the action. He wasn't always directly involved in the plot of his shows, as he was usually in the pit getting all broken up from the directing and conducting(as well as piano playing of course!). He did do lots of Vaudeville from 1908 to 1912 however, as he can be seen here in this little section from Variety:

They didn't specify if he was in blackface, but I would presume he was. The fact that he is mentioned here really caught my eye quick. "The Academy Musical Director"? What in the world does that mean? Hmm... Never heard anything like that about him before. This little thing can be interpreted in several ways, it could mean that he was very well educated in musical directing, a very good one, or he seemed to be setting an example for other directors by unintentionally teaching them. I really don't know. I have heard many titles attached to his name, most of which I understand, but this one I do not at all know the connotation of this queer choice of diction. 

Here are a few  of these titles:

"Fred Hylands, the popular heavyweight piano artist-" The Phonoscope, July, 1898

"The majestic Fred Hylands-" from an Indiana newspaper dated March, 1907

"Freddy" Hylands- from that one thing in The Phonoscope from their September 1898 issue

Other than these titles, I'm sure there are things like "The Indiana Wonder", or some things else related to his height, red hair, and comically wide figure. I just haven't found them yet, I have only heard about them from other collectors here and there. Like the whole "Walrus" story. Ha! I really love that one so much. I think it must have been from around when this photograph was taken:

I don't know why, but I can kind of see that story being told around the time this picture of him was taken, which was in 1909. So funny. 

He must have been a favourite among the vaudeville singers, as that thing a little above in this post represents. I have the feeling that his sense of humor must have been slightly like Len Spencer's, as that was probably one of the many ways that they got along so well. Spencer's sense of humor was genuinely funny, and slightly crass. That sounds about right. I have heard Hylands' voice before, and I am still trying to piece together his voice with his piano mastery, and his uncommonly heard singing. You can hear Hylands exchange dialogue with Harry Spencer on this cylinder here from 1898:
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/mp3s/11000/11735/cusb-cyl11735d.mp3
I still cannot understand Hylands' words at the beginning. But it's sure the voice of the organ player, which is Columbia's heavyweight pianist Fred Hylands. He's funny on this one cylinder, even if he's hard to understand.

I hope you enjoyed this! 

Ben Harney's last years and other thoughts

Sorry it's been quite a few days since my last post, it's been a busy last few days for me. But within those few days, I had a chance to read through some of the great book They All Played Ragtime, and I was looking through it at a slight glance, and I came across the long section about Ben Harney and mike Bernard. 

(There's Harney)
What was said about all the general information on Harney was nothing new to me, but when I got toward the end of his life, that's when I really got surprised. I knew somewhat that he was pretty much broke in the last few years after his life, as he was forced to end his days of performing. But he was still seen on the stage in varying places in the 20's, as he can be seen in this astonishing photograph below:

(that's old man Harney in the tailcoat!)

My head exploded when I saw this. I could not believe what I was looking at. The source of this amazing photograph came from this extremely informative article here.(enjoy the article!)
 I just read the article listed in the link above, and learned a few new things about Harney that I did not know, but am not surprised to hear of them. 

His last few years were pretty bleak, living in a crappy old flat in a not-so-great part of town, with only the money from unions to keep them in line somewhat. It was just him and his wife Jesse by that time. The landlord of their building kept a close eye and ear on them for the years that they lived there, as they were an interesting couple to listen to. He said that they were still on the whole "actor's hours" thing, which meant that they were always up all night and asleep the whole of the day, even if they weren't out performing and such. He said that they'd be up all night exchanging conversation and stories from their performing days, and sometimes telling other people's stories. 
But when Ben died "Her big Fancy Man" as  his dear Jesse called him, she went pretty mad. Similar to that episode of "The Twilight Zone"  where that absolutely mad film actress Barbara Trenton cannot move forward in times because of her unhealthy clinging to her glory days. This scenario is very much similar to Jesse Harney not being able to rid of the past, with her "Big fancy Man Ben". 

(that's her in 1901)
She was said to have gone to her husband's unmarked grave every day after he died, and marked the days as well. She could easily have been taken for completely insane as she raved on about him in the long midnight hours, crying out for him, with not much to remember him with anyhow. Without his company, she just did not want to suffer much longer. She must have done things like drink the things that he did when they were together, until she became blind drunk and passed out. Not long afterward, after trying everything she could to bring back the memories of her then-forgotten husband, the landlord poked his head in one evening to her flat and smelled gas going. She had been weeping for hours in her rickety old chair, until he finally came in and found her dead. From an "accidental" suicide. 
Yes, "accidental". Hmm, that's pretty suspicious if you ask me.   I'm sure that the landlord didn't really want to say the exact cause of her death, in detail, as it was a very Victorian thing not to, especially under the circumstances that it occurred. It's pretty obvious what happened though. And it really makes sense if you ponder on it for a little while. 
That whole story haunted me, and still does, I was sitting there in the school lunch room reading  this section from They All Played Ragtime with looks of astonishment and true amazement on my face. It left me in thought of it the rest of the day. 

Now onto the "other thoughts" part of my post. I was doing some general research on Rag-Time composers in the book Rags and Ragtime by Trebor Tichenor and Dave Jasen, and I came across a section that mentioned early recorded Rag-Time on 78s and cylinders. This of which, I was unaware of, as Virginia Tichenor had told me that her father was much more interested in the published music of the Rag-Time field, rather than the way it was recorded. What she really said, was that Trebor had not studied the recordings, but he had a reasonable knowledge of what was what and what records were actually labelled as "Rag-Time" or were classic rags that could easily be spotted by collectors of all kinds. At the end of page 27 in Rags and Ragtime it is stated this:
"Some of the irregular idiosyncrasies can be heard in those folk performances recorded on 78's and piano rolls, where undoubtedly a few playing characteristics were lost(probably in the way of bass patterns), but the rag was destined to become more formalized, a disciplined form of broader and more varied expression"

That is very much true, even if the authors of this book did not study these earliest recording very meticulously. The piano rolls were no doubt where most of their specialty resided, as this is not only evidenced in the book, but also from the spoken accounts of people that once knew them well. After I read this section, all I could think of is only if I knew Trebor to talk with him about the great Rag-Time styles of Frank P. Banta and Fred Hylands, which I'm sure that he knew of them briefly, as he has been said to have at least one piece by Hylands in his vast collection of Rag-Time music, and possibly a few more. He was very much correct in the fact that those examples of recorded folk Rag-Time being mostly from those early eccentric pianists, just like Hylands for example. He may not have thought of suggesting Hylands in this spectrum of speech, as Hylands was a name that very few knew of in the time of the book's publication, which was 1978. Only less than a handful of record collectors knew of Hylands at all, or had ever mentioned his name in anything of their collecting. That was the time when anyone who ever knew who Hylands was only listed him like this on a long series of long articles about other early recording stars:
"Hylands, Frederick-Pianist"

That was it. That was all you would on him decades ago, up until rather recently. They wouldn't even say what record company(or companies!) he worked for or what he was known for! If any of you are one of those pioneer collectors who had any knowledge of Hylands before the 1990's, please make a comment on this post and share what you know with me! 
I am really on a quest now to find out where the information of Fred Hylands' role in the recording business came from, other than the issues of The Phonoscope , as I have vaguely been told that some of it came from newspapers briefly stating his line of work, and being known for it. He was presumably known for being a " phone"(as Graphophone goes that is!) studio pianist, just like Frank P. Banta, who was given the label "the celebrated pianist of Phonograph Fame"(from the front cover of Banta's own "Ragged William"). Since Banta was given that title by 1899, that would mean that Hylands would get a similar one, whatever it happened to be, a little bit before that. 

Please help me find the origins of Hylands' recognition as a studio pianist from sources other than The Phonoscope! All comments read clearly and will be replied to quick! 

I hope you enjoyed this! 

Dissecting things from The Phonoscope

Digging through the great old magazine The Phonoscope can really be fun sometimes. As I'm sure it was fun to write it as well:

(from my own art. Russell Hunting writing for The Phonoscope, with various machines and horns around him.)

He must have had a good time writing and doing editing for it as the editions kept coming. How is it a good source? Well, you just have to know what you're looking for when you get to it, and you can view all the editions from November 1896 to December 1899 Here. 

The sections that I share on this blog are ones that I have dug around for in all the editions available online(there are more of them out there that the Library of Congress owns), because I had heard of the section used and in what edition. But as you're doing that, you WILL run across other little things you want to save. So that is why I have saved so many things from it. This is where the mystery to who "Freddy Hylands" was can be solved, where you can learn when  record companies collapsed and when new ones began. It is also a great way to read funny little anecdotes and yarns about the artists we all love from their records. It's where we can hear how Russell Hunting really wrote, and how mediocre of an editor he was. 

It was Columbia biased however. What I mean by this is that it mostly spoke of matters relating to the Columbia phonograph company and also Berliner. Even though it did speak a good amount of Edison, it was more Columbia in its general writing. Their staff had a high praise for Columbia's "heavy-weight piano artist" and Mr. Leonard Spencer, it's very clear this is true by all the great things they mention about the eccentric and strong-willed Hylands and the intelligent, perfectly figured Spencer. 

Here are a few of these things about Spencer and Hylands:

 (Heh, I remember this one.)

an esoteric reference I still don't really get.

(still makes me laugh)

We all love those Hylands and Spencer stories. That last one still gets me though, I know that cylinder of "Will O the Wisp" by Myers is out there, and I really want to hear how hard it worked Hylands. Apparently, that's how hard Banta worked at Edison's studio, as Hylands as well(well, according to the Hylands section above that one). But as I have said before, it's probably him just complaining almost meaninglessly. 

As expected from a magazine co-written by Russell Hunting, he is mentioned quite a lot throughout the editions. Both his "Casey" records and just general antics on vacation or record sales. He doesn't get mentioned too much though, just enough to catch your attention. The only editions where it's really relevant are in the earlier ones, as he was the main writer if the first few editions. 

here are two Hunting sections:

These are only two of many. 
someone who was never mentioned in The Phonoscope and who should have been was Frank Banta:

He was never mentioned, but his "rival" Freddy Hylands sure was. As this is proving the Columbia bias even more. they still loved him just as much as Hylands was praised in The Phonoscope. 
Something that can be found in several editions of the magazine is documentation of the artists of Columbia doing private performances for big "swells" of New York.It is something that cannot be found anywhere else, not even in small local newspapers. 
Here are some of them:

(Lots of typos on this one)
But a lot of familiar people mentioned.

(This one is actually the first time Fred Hylands was mentioned in The Phonoscope)

I think there are a few more of these, but I cannot find them right now. 
I hope if you haven't read through The Phonoscope yet that my link to it helped you out! Enjoy the reading! 

I hope you enjoyed this!