Digging for Emerson's and Draft Cards

Yesterday evening I spent several hours digging around on ancestry for any amount of new information on Georgie Emerson. Unfortunately i didn't find too much on Georgie specifically, though in the 1900 census his disposition is rather interesting. 

So in 1900, it seems that Georgie is living nowhere near brothers Victor and Clyde back at Columbia in New York. In 1900, Georgie was living alone in a boardinghouse in Denver, Colorado, but working as a phonograph agent. It seemed rather random to find him so far out west, but since was was still closely associated with Columbia in 1900, it would make some sense why he was doing work for them out west. The next source of information on him came from the New Jersey state census in 1905. In this source it is stated that he is living with his wife Helen, his two daughters, and his old mother Elvira. In this his occupation is listed as "phonograph". 

heh?

That's kind of funny. Just phonograph. No specifics. In 1900 he was listed as "clerk phonograph" which makes sense. 

After doing some more painstaking and frustrating digging, I found him in the 1910 census as well. Unfortunately it seems that by 1910 Georgie was on his own, and by that I mean that he wasn't working with the phonograph under the shadow of his successful brother Victor. in 1910 his occupation is listed as working with factory machinery. Well then! What a step in a different direction! 

Even with all this changing around with Georgie, I still assume him to be the one who rambled around and looked real rough. He looked like he had some hard times, even in that picture of him at the mere age of 22! In that picture of him above it almost looks like that left eye of his is black. Those poked in flushed cheeks are also not a positive sign... The more i look at that picture detail of Georgie the more I think that this picture is of him:

Yep. That really looks like the same worn young face in that picture detail. 

Even though we still don't really know anything about Georgie, the little bits and pieces we have regarding him are tantalizing. He looks just as troubled as Victor, if not more so, judging by the amount of extra detail we can see on that face in the small cameo portrait above. Georgie also looked just as slim as a broom-handle, similarly to Victor, but with Georgie it's ever more exaggerated by his tall stature and slim face. All those features scream drug addict to me, which wouldn't come as a surprise in this era. But aside from all this, I still have no idea how long he lived, though we have a birthdate of May 1876, which is nice to save for now. We know Victor lived until 1926, but that would mean nothing when attempting to find how long Georgie lived. 

Speaking of Victor, while on my dig for Georgie, I did come across Victor's passport application from 1922, and a picture came with it!

There they are, Victor and Kittie. 

And you thought brother Georgie looked rough!

Like most of these old phonograph freaks, Victor did not age well at all. You can even see bits of freckles all over his face, which always catches my attention. I'm pretty sure Victor had some kind of red in his hair, though it must have been darker red, as in no pictures of him does his hair look light and shiny. His brother Georgie was the one with the vibrant red hair, and it can well be seen in the two pictures of him we know of. 

All-right then!

Before looking around for Emerson's, I started last evening looking for more draft cards of familiar faces. Of course while doing this I had to make sure I looked up those who were born after 1872. That proved rather difficult! Most of the early recording stars we love were born in 1872 or before that, so it proved rather pressing to think up those who missed that cutoff. Eventually a few names came up and I did find a few curiosities along the way. Finding James Hager's draft card was a great source of happiness for me, so imagine my reaction upon finding brother Fred's!

He was just 2 years younger than the cutoff! 

That physical description is a bit unexpected, much like his brother James'. It's funny though that it's basically exactly the same as his brother's. 

Tall, stout, brown eyes, and graying brown hair.

Well then!

Certainly he had gone beyond his idealistic beauty by 1918. 

There's that pretty, distinct signature of his at the bottom! 

(from the LOC manuscript collection)

While digging for Fred Hager's I also found Justin Ring's, just keeping with the Hager pattern, as they worked together for an awfully long time. 

A little while ago I was able to find Justin in the 1880 census, and it stated that his parents were Prussian immigrants. Ain't that something! Prussian! Now I still have the suspicion that Ring could potentially be an important missing link in the area of the earliest studio pianists. If there was ever one of these guys who could have been a Zon-O-Phone pianist, Ring is it. Of course I would have nowhere to start really in attempting to extract his style from the other Zon-O-Phone pianists. Anyhow, here's his draft card:

I like that he never even attempted to write out his full name on most things, and even attempted to reason with whoever was taking down his name. His full name was Justus Ringleben; not quite your easily written American name at that time. 

Now that we know what he looked like, it's time to get drawing! What a lucky guy he was, with those bright blue eyes and blond hair, and supposedly those great piano skills that we have yet to dissect. 

Now here's something curious, it seems that Hager and Ring died at exactly the same age, 87. Hager died in 1958, and Ring in 1963(whew that's quite a lifespan!). 

While on this dig, I also found Joe Belmont's draft card, which was rather unexpected. 

I couldn't have imagined Belmont with blue eyes and dark blond hair. Well then, I guess that's it for that, I'm all set for drawing Belmont if I need to in the near future. There he is. 

Before I end this post, I want to share one of the recent acquisitions of my record travels. 

This record is prized to me now. Ain't no one taking this from me anytime soon.

When I got the thing, I had no idea that Hager was the violinist, so imagine the heightened joy it brought me upon playing it when getting home after the quest. Immediately I knew that was Hager, no way could that have been the skilled and peerlessly slick Charles D'Almaine. I had listened to the few Hager violin solos buried out there on the internet, particularly finding his Columbia's the most attractive, as Fred Hylands must have been the pianist. This particular record is outstanding in that way, and comes through surprisingly clear for being a spotty record condition wise. 

Here's the transfer: 

https://archive.org/details/MiserereViolinHagerHylands1901

It's such a lovely record. The sound of the piano paired with the echo of the recording room is just as charming as the violinist being matinee idol Fred Hager. This record combines the talents of my two absolute favorite early recording stars, and they pair together rather out-of-whack, which is to be half-expected, but it's what especially attracts me to it. Rarely do we get such nice crossovers like this. There are such a thing as crossover movies and Television shows, but this is what I would call a crossover record! It combines the two different worlds of the early recording business in such a graceful and unique way. All this is so while at the same time not being an outstanding record musically. Hager wasn't the best violinist, and Hylands wasn't the best pianist either, but when together these things cancel out. 

The next post should be more about recent record acquisitions, as I found too much on the Emerson's and similar recording stars yesterday to pass up a post on that. The Hager record find was really nothing less of a miracle. There's this junk shop/antique store I've been frequenting for the last few months, and one time I went there were albums and albums worth of 78s. They were sitting outside in the hot sun catching excessive amounts of heat, which worried me as I began thumbing through them. I just about screamed when I saw that Columbia. 

I thought "could it be? Hager? A Hager? No way in hell..."

It seemed too good to be true. But indeed, that's what it was. 

The story of these records I got at this one antique store is miraculous really, and it's one for the books. All the items i found were really the strangest coincidence. In the next post I'll get into detail about all that. 

Hope you enjoyed this!

Character Studies--Fred Hager(1874-1958)

Now that we know Hager was one of those famed Rag-Time pianists on early recordings, it seems inevitable for more posts to be centered around him and Zon-O-Phone in general. Despite a yearning to learn more about him, there's not too much on him out there, everything there is about him is from later on in his career as a bandleader and arranger, from about 1907 to the 1920's, bit after that there's a huge gap of time before then and after that. Soon, we hope to dig up all of this information on him, much like we did on Edward Issler. We hope that these gaps will be filled at least somewhat, so a trajectory will be known to some extent.

Now for Hager's background and upbringing. This at least gets us an idea of how highly regarded he was from such a young age. He was born in Susquehanna County Pennsylvania in 1874, and from a very young age joined local regiment bands, as this state was known for such a thing at this time.  In 1895, Hager was given a full scholarship to attend the New York Music school that had just been set up by the famous Czech composer Antonin Dvorak. He was sent here to study the violin, likely in his case under Dvorak himself, which is very strange yet amazing all at once! Once at the music school,he gained a reputation as a violin virtuoso, and a blossoming musician all around, playing brass and piano as well. By 1897, he had formed his own band, and this was given many awards as one of the top bands of all New York State, which is no small thing. He was soon invited to make records for the relatively small firm of Harms, Kaiser, and Hagen(as stated in The Phonoscope), and the next year, 1898, he was making violin records for Edison. Oddly enough, this caused some competition for Charles D'Almaine, who was then working for Edison and Columbia. It was around this time that Hager became a pianist for Edison, adding to their already three pianists on staff. Of course, just like with D'Almaine, Frank Banta must have unexpectedly entered competition when he  came along, not aware at first of Hager's curiosity in playing Rag-Time. But Banta and Benzler underestimated Hager's curiosity and rather surprising skill when it came to actually playing the style. He didn't surpass Banta in this, but he came pretty close to doing so, in a rather short period of time, since by 1898, Hager was also playing Rag-Time accompaniments for Edison, to compete with that horrid mess of a pianist at Columbia. Edison had two Rag pianists to essentially equal one Hylands. 

the equation was simple:

two Rag pianists:

Banta and Hager= equals one Hylands. Good.

That's Walter Miller's(Edison's Victor Emerson) logic for Rag-Time at Edison.

Anyway, Hager worked at Edison into 1899 and 1900, but it was around the latter that he became associated with the scandalous new company Zon-O-Phone. With this new company, he essentially was working with a clean slate, since this company had no history or baggage with any other company(save for Victor after 1900), and the orchestra was his to piece together. That's exactly what he did, and by 1901, he had created Zon-O-Phone's famed house orchestra, with some of his own musicians, and occasionally plucked out musicians from other studio orchestras. The end result was the best house orchestra of the era, and his arrangements made them ever better. Of course, since he was the orchestra leader, it seemed inevitable for him to become Zon-O-Phone's main studio pianist. He took his time at Edison as a trial for his piano skills to develop, and once he had Zon-O-phone's studio, he allowed this to be his time to really improve his piano playing, particularly his Rag-Time. His style of Rag-Time was very unusual, and it sounded like a cross between Hylands and Frank Banta, and all the other Edison pianists of the late-1890's. Luckily, that's why it wasn't too hard to put Hager's name on that style in the first place. His style was still very odd, combining the straight-laced and classically trained background with a very syncopated and rhythmically superior nature. Oddly enough, he played fifths in his left hand, and combined this with whacky yet syncopated right hand. Oftentimes his right hand was out of whack, but the rhythm in the left hand was always on point. It sounded like Hager had been to performances with Hylands accompaniment, or someone like that, such as Ben Harney, or Max Hoffmann. Wherever his inspiration came from, the style he created was unique and very interesting, obviously taking from Hylands. By 1902, he was eclipsed by his own competitor in Rag-Time, Fred Hylands, because once Hylands became horribly fed up with Columbia in 1902, he entered into Zon-O-Phone's studio and was welcomed by the management. Luckily, this relatively short period became the prime of Hager's orchestra, since he wasn't always going to be the pianist when Hylands was there. Between 1902 and 1904, the best of Hager's orchestra was recorded, you can notice a spike in Hager's Orchestra performances on Zono in this time period, and the overall sound was just as great as it had always been, if not a little better in this period. By the end of the piano accompaniment era(1905) Zon-O-Phone still held on to their piano accompaniment until the end of that year, much like Columbia did, for what seems the same reason. Hager wasn't dropped like Hylands however, he was given leadership of pretty much all the Zon-O-phone sessions, still keeping his orchestra there as the accompaniment, and for occasional band recordings. They were still a superior orchestra, with the superior sound quality that was a signature for the label. By the end of Zon-O-phone as we know it, Hager was thrown out, just like everyone else who worked there. But he feared not, his orchestra became what Issler's did, an old-style orchestra who got a surprising amount of work after recording. Hager was still young by 1912, so his orchestra didn't become archaic until the 1920's. Hager wasn't able to transition to Jazz, just like Issler, but by the late-1920's, Hager had joined the radio business. In the 1930 census, Hager is listed as "program manager-broadcasting", which proves this statement. He was doing just what he did for Zon-O-Phone, just for the radio studios. It seems that by 1940, he had left this line, and retired as a music writer, and general musician. Performances by his orchestra date as far along as 1952! That's dedication. Hager's orchestra must have sounded real old-time by the 1930's, and to think that he was performing twenty years after that! He died in 1958 at the age of 84.

Hager made sure that his family didn't seem unusual for the time period, and this can be well observed in census records. In November 1897, he married Clara Decker, and soon had two little girls, none of whom entered in the music business unfortunately. Not much of his personality is easy to put together, but it's certain that he was an agreeable musician, since he was able to work for many record companies, and not create any baggage with any of them. Record companies probably fought quietly over him, and it was likely that Columbia became envious of the perfect pianist and orchestra leader Zon-O-Phone had, since none of their own staff was as extraordinary all around as Hager. Another thing that kept Hager always well liked was that he was the best-looking of the studio pianists, not seeming to fit the pianist stereotype that Banta and Issler personified to the highest degree. Hager was tall, thin, had dark blond hair, long stick-like legs, well-sloped slightly feminine shoulders, and a gloriously classical profile, with a perfectly shaped forehead to fit this. His good looks and agreeable nature were hard to refuse to the record managers, and he earned respect and admirers from this. 

Hager was a whole lot better-looking that most of these early recording stars. 

Just saying. 

Now for some records with Hager on piano! 

Here are a few examples with Hager's interesting and distinct style:

Will F. Denny's "Ain't You Ma Lulu" from 1901

what a wild record!

Collins' "Just because she made dem Goo Goo Eyes" from 1901

Ed Favor's "Everything at Reilly's must be Done in Irish Style" from 1900

Favor's "He Calls me his Own Grace Darling" from 1901

Well, there you go! Finally information on Hager! Thanks go out to Charlie Judkins for helping in finding all of this, some of the information also came from articles by Tim Gracyk and conversation with Craig Ventresco. 

Hope you enjoyed this! 

W. H. Krell and mid-1890's Chicago "Rag" scene

Since this date, January 27, was the date that Krell's famous piece "Mississippi Rag" was copyrighted back in 1897, this would be an appropriate time to do a post on Krell and 1890's Chicago Rag-Time. 

From the title of this post, I am not at all making the point that Krell was a sort of "chief" of the 1890's Chicago "Rag" society, but he was a big player in the sporty events and music of it. Krell's band was an important and popular group in mid-1890's Chicago, from the World's Fair in 1893, to playing at the big vaudeville houses with Silas Leachman in 1895. As I have briefly mentioned on a previous post, Krell was an aggressive leader who always wanted to be the best bandleader in Chicago, even if that fact was not really true. 

Krell was was in Chicago in a blossoming time of creativity, invention, and excitement. Since 1893 was such an important melting pot for so many from everywhere to experiment and learn, the many who were "stranded" in the city stayed and allowed for the knowledge to flow. Instead of becoming one of those many piano "professors", Krell skewed off to creating his own band after the fair, and wrote some music. In 1895, he wrote a handful of tunes that included a few songs, waltzes, and of course, a cake-walk "Rag". He had heard many of the early "Rag Time" pianists perform at rugged boardinghouses, and wanted to write some of it down, without too much of the realistic syncopation. 

Krell was living in Chicago when it was considered the "sin city" of it's day, with all the "rag time's"(rowdy boardinghouse parties in 1890's slang), sporting houses, prostitution, gambling, and everything else that comes from a city of that type. The young people who took part in this society of "trouble-makers" does include Fred Hylands, and Frank P. Banta, as both of them were in Chicago between 1894 and 1896. Banta was there in 1894-95, and Hylands was there from 1893 to early 1896. Banta played in saloons and sporting houses while there, and not much else. This might be why some may be curious about those Chicago Talking Machine Company records from c.1894-96, as it might be one of those two pianists behind those singers. Or not, it's hard to know. I'm sure when Ossman and Banta were on tour in Chicago, Vess split with Banta for a little while to got and enjoy himself, if you know what I mean...

Anyhow, back to Krell. With his band, he was making the rounds in the Chicago area, and making sure that his band was the best of all, even though it was getting very tough to stay on top by the time his "Mississippi Rag" was published. He came out with another rag in 1898 called "Shake Yo' Dusters" which is a better example of a Rag from mid-1890's Chicago. The melodies of "Mississippi Rag' came from black southern melodies Krell and his band heard while out on tour along the Mississippi in 1896. So in later 1896, he had a band arrangement of an un-named tune, but by the beginning of the next year, he finally had a title for the piece, which became hereafter The Mississippi Rag. 
The tunes in Rag-Time he wrote were popular at the hall dances his band played, and at vaudeville venues, as well as being played by other performers in the area(like by Fred Hylands!). Sometimes Krell had guest instrumentalists, like Harry Diamond, who was that young violinist that Krell got into a terrible argument with in 1900 and ended up hurting him badly. He must have also had someone like Silas Leachman sing with his orchestra, since he still resided in Chicago, even though in 1900 he was well engaged in making records for local companies(but not Victor just yet!). He knew somehow, that after 1905, his popularity was going downhill far faster than he had ever thought, but he didn't admit if fully until the mid-1910's. By then, Chicago was no longer that Rag-Time powerhouse of the mid-1890's. 
It was a place that was described in many accounts, 1890's Chicago(post world's fair), described in negative ways, and positive ways, certainly a fascinating period of time in that area.





Now I mean to get into some records for this evening. Some of these records I have here are ones that I could have shared a while ago, but I haven't for some reason. 
Now this first one is a Victor disc from 1901 by Len Spencer. The question though, lies on the pianist identification. Here is that record:
Will Marion Cook's "On Emancipation Day" by Len Spencer
After a few listens, I really think I know who that pianist is. For a long time, this was just as confusing a record as any Victor for knowing the pianist, but now that I have really figured out the distinctions, that pianist on this is...
FRANK P. BANTA:

Yes indeed. 
From my post a little while back where I listed all the studio pianist attributes, it would seem that Banta fits into this one quite well. Pretty much every one of Banta's stylings are present on this record, and it is a Victor from before 1904 anyhow, so it's probably Banta. It is a fantastic example of early recorded Rag-Time, and Rag-Time by a black composer other and Bert Williams and George Walker. 


This next one is a record I just found this evening, and it's by a performer I don't think I've ever spoken of on this blog:

Charles D' Almaine. 
The violin extraordinaire on all of those Edison, Columbia, Victor and Berliner records in the late-1890's and 1900's. 
Now this record I have here, is an odd one, with questionable piano accompaniment, but a revealing date somehow. Now here you go with Charles D'Almaine's version of "Donkey and Driver" recorded in April, 1904. Since it was recorded in 1904 that rids of Banta from the guesses, but there are still three others it could be. I could be Fred Bachmann, Christopher Booth, or Fred Hylands. The one thing that makes me think it's more likely to be Hylands is how loud and jarring the fifths in the left hand are at the section starting at 0:46, also that he's not exactly playing the tune as written. Hylands was, anyway, the primary pianist for Victor in that short period of time after Banta's death in 1903 and the end of the piano accompaniment era in early 1905.
Speaking of D'Almaine, I just recalled another record from many years before, that just also happens to have Hylands on piano. 
Here's "The Mockingbird" by D'Almaine and Hylands, c.1898-99.
Now this is a weird record. Hylands is absolutely crazy on this one, and when I say that, I mean it! He's even more frantic than he is on any other record I've ever heard with his accompaniment. This is one of those few records where one would have to wonder what kind of drug Hylands was on when he did this take. There are a few more examples of this, but this one is a rare one from before 1900. 

I hope you enjoyed this!