Saturdays at Berliner and Little Swirls

Within the past few days, I've noticed some curious things. After doing some digging through Berliners, it is becoming more apparent that this label was the most accomodating for its artists. Despite rusty old Berliner himself presiding over the studio often, the days without Gaisberg were basically a mess. Gaisberg left the U.S. toward the end of 1898, and he rarely returned to the old studio, doing so perhaps twice a year at most after then. 

Amid the Berliner studies I've done recently, the specific Berliners that are of the most focus are the Berliners that Spencer made. As most of us know, Spencer joined the Berliner team rather late, as that was the first time Spencer associated with a non-Columbia affiliated Company. Most of his fellows joined with Berliner at the very beginning, that being around 1894 and 1895. Spencer was too busy running errands for the Emerson's and two timing with Columbia and U.S. to join when everyone else did. he didn't get on the Berliner boat until 1899, which is right near the end of their official existence. Hist first Berliner session was April 15, 1899. You can see what he recorded in the link below:

http://victor.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/date/browse/1899-04-15

This was a pretty nice session, as I have heard one of the records he made that day. The first one was a nice one to start off with. 

Okay, yes he may have had his first session there Mid-April 1899, but he was there with the others of the Columbia staff the previous year, as that's what this picture documented: 

They all took a visit to the Berliner studio, and luckily we have hard evidence that Spencer was there, even if he did not record for them at the time, and didn't actually do so until a year later. 

Now here's the thing about Spencer's Berliner's that are interesting. The bulk of his Berliner records were made on Saturdays in April of 1899. It's strange to notice this odd pattern, and luckily with Berliner, all of the ledgers are left so we can observe this. A few of them were made on Fridays, and after April, but in general, he wasn't there too often. He made just enough Berliners to be considered a regular for at least a month. 

But why Saturdays?

And why April?

Well, the first question leads us into the theory world. One theory I discussed with a friend is that the Berliner staff was very slim on Saturday evenings and at knowing this, Spencer took advantage of this to come in and make bunches of records with his faithful accompanist Fred Hylands. The reason this was hypothecized is because of how strange and out of whack his Berliners are, they're quite different from his Columbia records recorded around the same time(if not some of the same days). They're much less tame than the Columbia's. That's saying quite a lot in terms of Spencer and Hylands. Those Berliner's are rather wild, and are strange in balancing. The balancing usually varies record to record, which is also unusual. Many Berliner records are strange in these same aspects, but the Spencer Berliners are especially interesting. Here's why:

His singing is not particularly the best on these...

The piano playing is all over the place.

Spencer doesn't seem to do the usual moving back and forth to balance the tones of voice. 

The piano playing is very pushy and sometimes out of sync with Spencer. 

Spencer dramatically changes his tone of voice through the course of one of them I've heard. 

All of these factors make the theory of slim staff plausible. These records may actually be the best examples of how Spencer and Hylands sounded when they were pretty out of it. Spencer was already not the best singer on the earliest records, but on these Berliners, his limited skill shines through like chimes on brown wax. The accompaniment is almost certainly Hylands, because of specific characteristics of blending with Spencer, though the style is a little misleading on a few of them, since it's Hylands at his weirdest. I've heard quite a few questionable Columbia's of theirs, but all the Berliners are far beyond those. 

Imagine it, the two of them(remember that they were publishing partners at this time) stumbling into Berliner's back door(in the picture above) after recording most of the day at Columbia. They greet Mr. Berliner, or whoever was there at that time, already a little tipsy from work earlier in the day, ready as ever to record a handful of hot coon songs. 

It's interesting that most of what Spencer recorded on those Saturdays at Berliner were coon songs, there was very little room for anything else. That further points to the pianist on those being Hylands. Even though it rarely happened, to a certain extent, many of these artists had to cater to the accompanist, even though they were basically just slaves to the performers and record consumers. When Hylands was still relatively new at Columbia in 1898, we hear a whole lot of records where he's practically featured behind one of the singers. Artists with so much adoration for Hylands, like Spencer, would have catered to Hylands' distinct style as well, Spencer's Berliners being the perfect example of this taken to a different level than his Columbias from the same time.  To add to the catering point, there are plenty of examples of this happening with Banta, such as on Denny's 1901 Edison of "Go Way Back and Sit Down". 

It would seem incomplete if I just spoke about all of these records and not have any of them here to listen to. 

I'm just going to list a bunch of them here:
"Hello Ma Baby"
(notice how pushy the piano playing progresses to by the end of the record)
"Whistling Rufus"
"You'll get all that's-a-coming to you"
(one of those other voices has to be Hylands) 
"You don't stop the World from Going 'Round"
These are all coon songs. All of the others I've heard are also coon songs. 
There are others, but I can't share all of them, and haven't heard all of them. That's a goal though at this point, hearing all of his Berliners(that were issued). Since he didn't make that many, it's possible to hear them all. The overall quality of the music varies so much from record to record that hearing all of them would be fascinating. 

One more thing to note, while speaking with a friend about the Spencer Berliners, it also was brought up how much inspiration Spencer took from George W. Johnson. Not at all had this crossed my mind before this conversation. It makes so much sense. What's good about Spencer is that we can often tell exactly who he's imitating on certain records. Throughout listening to him, I've been able to catch Ben Harney, May Irwin, and DeWolf Hopper. The distinct way that Spencer whistled(that you can hear on the record of "Whistling Rufus" above) is very similar to how Johnson whistled on his records. It's interesting to hear Spencer's inspiration, directly on the same record labels around the same time. Not too often do we get to hear the performers' inspiration in the brown wax era. At this point it makes more sense why Spencer really started performing early "coon songs" around 1894. Before then, most of his records consisted of popular, comic, and sacred songs. It wasn't really until he joined forces with Quinn and Johnson that he really started performing coon songs as we know them. Also, keep in mind that the era of the coon song began around this time as well. By 1895, Spencer was known as the premier "Ethiopian delineator" on records. It's curious to see such as close friend of his and fellow recording star being partially the source of his inspiration. 




Now onto something rather different...
Digging through that 1888-1893 book of handwritten ledgers has been a recent obsession. While searching around in that book for the first George W. Johnson recording dates, I was bound to get stuck in something else amid the pages. That's exactly what happened...I noticed a few curious things throughout the pages, and it has to do with the handwriting on them. 

From session to session, the handwriting on the pages seems to vary here and there, depending on who's actually in the studio that day. What I noticed going through those ledgers is that the handwriting is specific to who's in the studio, which can indicates a few things. Most of the time this would point to a certain person's handwriting being all over the place in the book, after a certain point in time. After flipping through months of seeing that mysterious Henry Geisemann(it was spelled a few different ways throughout) as solo pianist and accompanist, by August 1889 we see Issler mentioned almost every day consecutively. 
These pages are fascinating, and the handwriting on many of them, while it varies in quality, is always the same person on each page that Issler is mentioned. 

The neatness of the handwriting varies from page to page. Here are a few various ways that Issler was signed in the ledgers:

What a cast of writing!
These were all written by the same person, but who that is exactly is what I'm wondering here. The writing is all over this book of ledgers, and since Issler was often running the studio when he was there, it wouldn't surprise me if that just happens to be his writing. One thing I noticed about this writing, is that it has that lefty look to it, much like George Gaskin's or Len Spencer's. It may depend on the way that he had to write the information, say at an awkward angle, but the smudges are often suspect. Issler was certainly one I would put as possibly a lefty. He was brilliant enough, and enough of a maverick to be put in this very special category. It's somewhat funny how much the handwriting varies from page to page, sometimes being very neat and well drawn, but other times looking a complete mess that's nearly indecipherable. 

Oh the days of the rounds, it seems even the handwriting in the ledgers shows the wear and tiredness. 

So now that there's the possibility of Issler being a lefty, it seems he joins the group that Spencer fit into. We know Spencer was a lefty naturally, and later at heart. Spencer's known signing of other people's names also becomes evident when seeing the names of George W. Johnson and Ada Jones looking in that weirdly slanted kind of out of whack style. Considering Spencer's status, it's likely he wrote with his right hand much more often, but when signing for others, he switched around. Also, it's interesting to note the similarities that lie in the names that were written on Hylands Spencer and Yeager music to that slogan on their logo:

Forget that I ever said all of that extra weird writing on the logo was Hylands. That was all Spencer it turns out. All of those beautiful little wind-like swirls and the little flying heart(or whatever that is) is all Spencer's hand. 

There are those little swirlies!

Well there ya go. That solves the mystery of who was responsible for that funky slogan as well as the little pen sketches that we know so well on Hylands music. Spencer was weird, as we already know, and seeing those little pen sketches in greater context puts that into perspective. This is really making me hope that he did more pen sketches...
Thinking of how adventurous he was, that wouldn't surprise me. 

Anyhow, those little swirlies are just lovely. 

Hope you enjoyed this!

First families of the Phonograph business

A rather common thing among these early recording stars is the fact that more than one sibling worked in the business. It usually began with one family member getting into the business. Most of the time the single misfit of the family got into the business, but occasionally, more than one of the family joined after the other did so. It's strange that this seems to be a pattern in the early business of recording, more so than many would think at first. The Spencer's probably come to mind at first, but there were more families with misfit children who joined recording early on. Sometimes it ended up being husband and wife in the business, but most of the time it was siblings following each other around in the studio. 

The most famous of these families in the early business is the Spencer's. 

Len 

and Harry(the taller one here)

These two brothers were all over the early recording and film business. It seemed natural for brother Harry to catch the bug that his older brother Len got in 1888. Harry came into the business in 1895-1896, more as a salesman and repairman than his brother. He was more of a film enthusiast when he began, which sets him apart from Len. 

(an advertisement for Harry in 1896, from The Phonoscope). 

It seemed inevitable for Harry to tag along with Len in the business, as he had been interested in the technology since 1888 like Len, but he was too young to join back then. He waited until he was 20 to set up his own shop and experiment with film and projectors. While Len was doing the frivolous work in the studios, Harry was working with machinery. Their wives must have been alone at home a whole lot, and probably often became tired of their frequent absence. The lady to really wonder about here is Len's wife, since it's hard to imagine him being married, with children. It's said that Jim Walsh interviewed her, but of course we can't all see those fantastic articles he wrote. 

By 1897, Len and Harry were both working in the same studio, doing the same work at the studio as well. They often took turns announcing takes and handling sound effects, which Harry had to learn how to do from Len. They almost never worked on the same recording early on, which is a little strange, but makes some sense. It seems as though they new that they sounded almost identical on recordings, so both of them speaking on a single recording would get confusing rather quick. After 1900, this occurred a little more often. There are recordings such as this one that help us in trying to distinguish the brothers, but make us realize why they weren't on the same recording very often. Oddly enough, Harry's speech is often a little harder to understand than Len's, with a sort of lisp, accompanied with a dialect thicker than Len's. Some of Harry's announcements sound a little strange with this factor. After 1900, Harry was the chief announcer for the Columbia orchestra, essentially doing what Len did before 1900. Pretty much all of the Columbia orchestra announcements were by Harry from 1901-1905, with occasional anomalies, occasional takes announced by Dan Quinn or Joe Belmont, which doesn't make much sense, but it did happen. 

One of Harry's strange announcements sounded like this:

War-shington Pos' Ma'ch, played by Sousa's band-- fo' Columbia Phonograph com'pny of New Yo'k an Loondon

Yep, that's about right. The only reason I haven't the link shared to the recording is because it's one of those links I cannot share publicly. That's the closest I can get to writing it out exactly as he said it, because the lisp he had is very hard to write out. It's much like how he and Hylands sound on this 1898 cylinder. It's very odd, but interesting all the same, because Spencer's announcements were not nearly as weird, such as his on this late-1897 cylinder.

If I were to phonetically decipher Len's announcement in the cylinder just above, here's how it goes:

I thought I was a winna' , er I don' know you ain't so wa'm--played by Columbia orchestra,  fo' Col' umbi' Phonograph company a New Yo'k an Paris.

It's still a little queer, but it's not nearly as much so as the announcements of this brother. Also, the rest of the recording in the link just above is great, please listen to the rest of it! It's a very early piece of authentic Rag-Time, from 1897. Other than the two dynamic Spencer's, there were also the Emerson's who dominated Columbia's studio at the same time. 

Victor Hugo Emerson entered the recording business in 1890, when he was working as a telegraph operator. He began as a helper of Columbia's newly formed company in Washington, but the next year he became the manager of the U. S. Phonograph company, of which he kept up until 1896. In 1897, when Columbia moved to 27th and Broadway in New York, he was their studio manager. We may know of Victor as the infamous studio manager for Columbia, but his brothers George and Clyde were also running around that studio at the same time. These boys were a bunch of misfits, beginning with Victor, who was the second of the four Emerson boys. Victor and Georgie(as they called him) took turns running daily recording activity at Columbia in 1898 to 1900, with George more often than not the engineer on many of the brown wax Columbia's that we listen to. 

(a cartoon I did of Georgie Emerson)

Victor may have been strange and disliked, but George was more highly regarded by the Columbia staff, especially since he was a better engineer and was much less tightly laced than Victor. The studio stars felt more comfortable around him than Victor, because Victor was high in the management, George wasn't, and seemed more rebellious and interesting then Vic. In a few editions of The Phonoscope, George was mocked for being rebellious and the polar opposite of his brother. This makes the Emerson's ever more interesting, because it seems that Victor wasn't the black sheep oddly enough, despite him being the first to enter the phonograph business. It must be noted that George was born in Oakland California(yay! not far from me!), and that he was the youngest of the Emerson boys, so there's a reason that he didn't join the business until 1897. He was 21 when he joined Victor and Clyde at Columbia. 

When Victor was running the studio, the stars had to behave themselves, but when George or Charles Carson were there, it was work just as usual. Victor must not have been proud of his brother George straying from the good name of the Emerson's, though being involved in recording was the first step in doing this, George escalated this fact. The Emerson's remained together in the recording business until the early 1920's, when Victor was running his own label, the Emerson label. 

We are well aware of the Berliner family being involved in early recording, not just Emile being the only one who did this. It began with Emile, making his label seem more like a family business, with the studio being managed by a bunch of misfit teenage boys. Their family to-day are advocates for spreading the history of their family, and keeping the history alive. This is much like the Quinn family, who are continuing to do just the same as the Berliner family, even if it was relatively recently that they began doing this. 

Since Berliner hired a bunch of misfit teenagers, it seemed inevitable for him to dig up Fred Gaisberg, as well as his brother Willie, both of whom worked for Berliner. Willie was a few years younger than Fred, but they both worked for Berliner from 1893 to 1898, and the both of them went out on quests that took them around the world for the sake of recording. 

Another group of brothers who dominated Columbia's studio in the 1890's were also involved in its management--the Dorian's. 

 Frank Dorian(in the center) was Columbia's first studio manager, beginning this job in 1889. Frank remembered recording Len Spencer in the earliest days, when Spencer had to do everything himself, and when he was coming in just to take parts from machines to repair his father's office phonograph. The other two Dorian's helped around with Frank, since he was running Columbia's studio in that period of uncertainty in 1892-1895. When Frank was sent out to Paris in 1897 to run Columbia there, brother John(seen at the left in the picture above) went with him, and also went on other voyages with fellow recording stars who were performing in England and France, such as Russell Hunting and Burt Shepard, and later Steve Porter. Marion(at the right) was not as involved in these ventures, though he helped out Frank in his management job out in Washington DC, and later went out to Paris to do the same. The Dorian's more specifically Frank and John, remained in the recording business into as late as the Emerson's did, if not a few years later, since Frank lived into the 1930's, he had a million stories to tell, and it's great that Jim Walsh was able to interview him. Dorian was surprisingly sharp when Walsh interviewed him, much like when Quinn wrote his letters to Walsh around the same time. Dorian seemed a little bitter though, more so that Quinn, who was the optimist, clearly observed from his letters. Thinking of the fact that Dorian was Columbia's manager in the early days, it's not surprising that he seemed a little bitter later in life, all we can say to that is that it's good Walsh didn't interview Emerson. 

Whew, that would be rough going. I almost don't want to imagine an interview with old man Emerson. Same goes for Edward Easton. 

Before I finish, I have to share this FANTASTIC early Rag-Time brown wax that was newly posted on Youtube last evening. 

Here's Len Spencer and Fred Hylands' "Get Your Money's Worth" from 1898. 

What a cylinder! My god! 

The sound of the piano(from what we can hear), is absolutely perfect! It has that perfect sound that only a few Columbia's I've heard have, and it's a sound that really defines what the 1890's sounded like on recordings. 

That's the cover to the music, it's dated the year before this recording, 1897. 

In a way, this can seen a like a motto for the Columbia Company at the time that this was recorded, with the Rag-Time adding to the realistic nature of this statement. I just cannot get over how much I love the sound of the piano on this recording, it's got a similar sound to this J. W. Myers cylinder from the same year, that probably means that these "rounds" were recorded not too far from each other. 

Also, if you look up the sheet music to this song, the lyrics are actually really kind of funny, one of the lines in the first verse reads thus:

you had to be a ragged coon to enter in the hall

such a bunch of ragged japs I neva' did saw

As horribly racist as that is, it's pretty funny, and Spencer singing it is ever better.This is another one of those recordings that Rag-Time freaks and pianists really should take note of, since it's a fantastic example as far as these early brown waxes go. It's not surprising that this is coming from a Spencer and Hylands brown wax, like most of these examples turn out to be. 

That's all the families I'll speak of for now, since there are more, but that will make this post unmanageably long and hard to navigate, more than it already is. 

With that,

Hope you enjoyed this!