Picture analysis and deconstructing Frank Banta's style

Now that we have a much clearer picture of Fred Hylands, it be time to go back and look at the studio pictures with unknown pianists and pick him out. That infamous Columbia picture now makes much more sense because of that clear picture of Hylands, because we can now all come together in seeing that the pianist in the background is indeed Hylands. 

Despite now being able to fully see that the pianist is Hylands, we still can't yet answer how he changed so much from that time to the time of the exhibition picture: 

Even with that rather amazing change, we still cannot answer the question of how. I guess we can call this dilemma one of the many Rag-Time mysteries that us record scholars and Rag-Timers have to solve. We know that he looked pretty rough toward the end of his life, thanks to the two new pictures, and I guess such awful times while at Columbia would be a reason for this. More and more we are realizing that Hylands was truly an 1890's character, despite the "second-wind" he caught in the 1900's performing on Broadway and in Vaudeville. We know also that this second go around he had after 1900 slimmed him out over time, which is good, but this slimming down was forced on him by illnesses and constant touring(he toured in the mid west starting in 1905 and ended around 1909). It must have been a great help that he was a theater director in this period of time as well. 

Just to really get into finally proving this thing once and for all, here's a detail of the picture:

Now that we're pretty certain his hair was vibrant red, we now look to the more minute details. 

Notice the same long sloped ears on both pictures(it's hard to see in the c.1897 picture...)

Take note of the flushed areas around the cheekbones, there appears to be that in both pictures. In the 1897-ish picture the shadows are at just about the line where these flushed cheeks would be visible, and despite those dark shadows, we can still see signs of variation in color. One thing I've been trying to figure out in the handful of weeks I've had this new picture drawing new cartoons of Hylands, is whether those flushed cheeks were speckled with freckles, which they may very well have been, but thanks to re-touching we can't tell. 

It's been a part of my descriptions of Hylands since the beginning, that crooked mouth he had, and it truly was a sight to behold it turns out(it's especially weird in the exhibition picture for some reason).The few times he spoke on records he was hard to understand, and since he did do some singing(if you at all are skeptical of this, think of his role as a Broadway performer, this would require that he sing, and occasionally do some tricky footwork believe it or not), his voice(the one we assume to be his)carried surprisingly well for an early recording star. In the 1897-ish picture we see the "better side" of that weird mouth, but if you really look at both pictures it's the same awkward structure. This really leads me to think he had some kind of Winston Churchill like speech impediment, especially if one side, as can be observed, drooped downward. It's rather funny actually how clearly that droopy side of his mouth can be seen in the exhibition picture in exactly the same way in the 1912 picture. 

Now I don't think I need to say anything about that curious nose, it pretty much explains all that needs to be said in the pictures. I must say though, that curious nose of his looks much better in profile(1897 picture). Again, he had a really weird profile. Of all these performers I draw in cartoons, his profile is the weirdest looking of them all, I have yet to see a profile as magnificent as well as comical as Hylands'. 

Thanks to the picture of his sister Etta, we know that those pleading droopy eyes ran in the family.

Etta had a little bit of that weird mouth thing, but at least it manifested rather gracefully on her, rather than a little out of whack with Fred. 

It's still hard to beat those desperate looking eyes, even though they look made to wear strong gold pince-nez glasses. He looks like his eyesight was crap. Not often do people look like that have bad eyesight, but when you can see it, you know it. With Hylands, it appears his bad eyesight was ever visible. With those likely ocean blue eyes sunken in shadows, usually they would be exaggerated by glasses, as for example the way they are in the exhibition picture. You can see the shadows over those wide eyes in the 1897 ish picture that are ever present in the other pictures definitively identified as Hylands. 

I guess there's no more need to debate who that pianist is in that 1897-ish studio picture, even with the baggage of change of his figure from that to the exhibition picture, we can now be assured that he worked for Columbia some time in 1897. Now that we are assured this, we can go on to say that he worked at Columbia during the day and did his shows and management at Pastor's theater by night. Recall that he lived across the street from Pastor's in 1897 and 1898, so he was conveniently located for sure. 

Now to move to a similar subject matter, Frank P. Banta. 

Such a kind and warm face...

Within the past week or so, I've been digging into Santa Barbara's new transfers, as there are so many new ones it's entirely overwhelming. There's one in particular that has been sparking new ideas about Banta's playing. I've said a lot about Banta's style in the past, since he's more well known, and has a distinct style that's near as outstanding as Hylands'. Before I get into the analysis, here's the specific record I'm talking about: 

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?queryType=@attr+1=1020&num=1&start=1&query=cylinder17123

It's an outstanding example of brown wax rag-time, just need to get that out first. This record is a classic example of Banta's entirely solid and well-founded syncopated style. It helps that the performer is Billy Golden, so then it is assured that the song will be folksy and full of itinerant aspects. This particular selection brings out the weirdest of Banta, and not would I have thought I'd be saying that about Banta. According to most records we've heard with Banta's accompaniment, they're pretty restrained and not nearly as wild as those rough folk characteristics of Hylands. This particular record is outstanding from other Banta records because of a significant mistake he makes. 

WHAT! 

Yes indeed, Banta makes a few significant mistakes here. 

These mistakes are actually the same issue had more than once. Only three times have I heard Banta make this mistake he makes on this record. On this record, he completely gets stumped by Golden's adding and subtracting of measures. This is no a bad thing however, it's not something to look at in a negative light. This sort of thing is what adds eccentricity and uniqueness to Banta's playing, even though(in this case), it may be the fault of Golden rather than of Banta. The song itself is really simple with melodies, and has little variation in chord changes and melodic progression, so that already is a sign of its folk classification, and Banta luckily does nothing but enhance the nature of this song. The first half of the record is not nearly as interesting as the second half. Most interesting part is perhaps what Banta does in the extended vamp between the whistling solo and the second verse. This is where the big mistake lies. Banta had likely assumed the vamp would only go for a certain number of bars, an even amount, but Golden elongates it and audibly throws Banta off at 1:40-1:45. Notice how the melody and chord changes are different this time around from the first time. There's the mistake. It's unintended variations, but if you sit down and really try to dissect it, it's actually really interesting, despite the jarring break in the nice steady rhythm. Also note how Banta plays non-syncopated riffs in his extended vamp before the melodic mistake, and how he stays on a "drone note" in the bass. That means that he's only playing a single note throughout the beats of the entire vamp. I have heard Banta do this before, which is curious, because it somewhat corresponds with his written music. This "drone note" concept is something that was unique to Banta, in terms of studio pianists, and it's a really telling characteristic. I'm not exactly sure where he would have acquired this odd habit, but it's likely a manifestation of the long-standing banjo imitation paired with his entirely itinerant musical upbringing. 

Take his "Ragged William" for example. There are hints of his "drone note" tendency in the piece, as well as his weird counting of rhythm and measures. So could it be possible that Banta was, at his musical core, more itinerant than Hylands? They all said that Banta was truly gifted(Dan W. Quinn for example), with perfect pitch and the ability to play anything having heard it once, and in any possible key. These are characteristics that yield a natural musical talent that would require little training from the start. Yes, Banta must have had some training, but in his case, he likely had little of it and he refused to rid of oddly acquired habits. Where's another example of this?

Just to point out another example of this extra measure nonsense, here's a 1901 example with Arthur Collins: 

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?queryType=@attr+1=1020&num=1&start=1&query=cylinder5245

The issue is at exactly the same place as the Golden record, the vamp between the first verse and the chorus. 

Now this whole thing may just be an example of the singer and accompanist just disconnecting for a moment, but the combined nature of Banta's overall music writing and common tendencies, it actually opens up many more possibilities that we normally wouldn't think about with Banta. 

In keeping with the theme of hot Banta records, Santa Barbara recently put up another great take of "Go Way Back and Sit Down" by Denny:

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?queryType=@attr+1=1020&num=1&start=1&query=cylinder5275

Both takes are absolutely fantastic, but the second one is the new transfer recently put up online. In this new alternate take, it seems Banta almost embodies the slightly exaggerated and pushy melodic style that was characteristic of Hylands and his Indiana style. Now it seems that like Hylands, Banta's style could change here and there, and why that is I would be afraid to say. Unlike Hylands, Banta wasn't an alcoholic. Banta was clean living as far as anyone knows. With the amount of respect I have for Banta, I'd hate to throw around any theories assuming such habits. This is especially so when considering his horrid asthma and weak stature. If anyone has any ideas as to why Banta's playing varied here and there, please throw in your input in the comments! 

As much as we know about Banta, he's still pretty mysterious in many aspects. We have no idea what he was like as a person. And there are no hints either. At least with Hylands we have a few letters and quotes to work with to piece together a hyper-intelligent eccentric who was rather egotistical, or a typical theatrical-artistic type if you will. With Banta there is nothing to work with, all we have are technical descriptions of the guy, and hundreds of records with only accompaniment. That sweet smile of his though must be a hint that he was a pretty kind and loving man, and this can be supported with the amount of praise studio workers had for him and how much open mourning there was when he died. He was obviously well respected, and someone like Edward Issler would have found much merit and charm in him, especially in the both of them being part of musicians' unions. 

Before I close out, I'd just like to say that it's interesting that Banta and Hylands had those inward poking cheeks. Usually when I see that I think back to that picture of Georgie Emerson, looking all beat-up and drug ridden. 

Usually such a characteristic leads me to assuming a bit of a drug dependency. With Hylands was know this is true, as he died at 40 for a reason. Banta was already not well-built physically, so maybe Banta needed something to mellow out that rigid intensity...

Sit on that for a while.

Hope you enjoyed this! Sorry it's been a month since the last post...Summer has begun, so hopefully that means more posts.

That "unknown" Columbia Pianist

Well, it may not be perfectly clear what Fred Hylands' birthday is, but the day that we do have as a guess is February 28th. So in honor of that date(which is probably more likely his wife's birthday), I feel obligated to do a post on him in some way or another. 

Like any birthday post, it's hard to determine where to begin with Hylands...Of the three-four years I've done studying him, I've gone from just a single small bio in The Phonoscope to almost a complete picture. There are still so many missing pieces of vital information, which is to be expected, as it's hard to know what the man was really like. Before I get to the bulk of this post, I'd like to share what I know of how Hylands was in terms of character, and just a general outline of him...

It's clear that from a young age that Hylands lived in the typical mentality that being a musician could never be a life-long career. With that mentality, his parents refused to keep him from only pursuing music, despite being pushy about his talents by having him tour around as a child musician. Fred was bright from a young age, and by age 15, he was thrown in business school(likely by his father), and probably learnt a few things about business sense while there. With this foundation, he had confidence in himself in no matter what he went for, and was self-driven. With all of this, moving to Chicago got him his first serious job in the theater business. His success in Chicago and absorbing of new syncopated music got him the confidence to move out of the mid-west that he was used to, and he followed the lead of the other young "rag" pianists and performers(like Ben Harney and Max Hoffmann). 

Hylands entered New York with striving confidence and excitement. At this time(1896) he was tall, kind of handsome, and slim, certainly he would have assumed himself "soubrette bait". Once he had a seat at Pastor's theater, being surrounded by younger Rag pianists built up his status in the music community, particularly the budding Rag-Time community. Once Columbia took him in 1897, all bets were off, and most outside gigs of his were too. Once at Columbia, that's where he was practically imprisoned almost every hour of the day, playing one take after another of rounds, and dealing with more singers than he could have than at Pastor's as music director. He soon became weary of this studio work, and it changed him greatly, out of some strange mix of things. We know that he was no longer slim by 1898, for whatever reason, and working at such a sedentary job couldn't have been good for him, with the combination of little sleep(making the switch from actors' hours to the opposite), drinking more often, and just generally losing any sense of self-care, he changed dramatically, and likely seemed not the same person as he was when first getting to New York in 1896. He hated the work at Columbia, as he stated, but of course deep down he loved the theater that he experienced every day at work, particularly from tragedian studs like Len Spencer and the morality lectures from Dan W. Quinn. With the work taking a horrible tole on his body and health, he decided to go into publishing in late-1898, failing at that, but then determined, trying again in early 1899 with his studio idol Len Spencer. His relationship with Spencer seems much more complicated than it was on the surface. Starting in 1897, they saw one another at work almost every day(every day certainly by early 1898), and found that their musicalities had similar chemistry, with that, this is why their records sound a little more perfect than the other recording partners of the brown wax era(like Quinn and Banta). Spencer's vocal style fit with Hylands' weird piano style perfectly, and in a different sort of perfect as Edward Issler's did in the years before that. It didn't help that Spencer's family had roots in the same region as Hylands' birth...

By 1899, the second publishing endeavor was good to go, with Hylands' foundation in business, and Spencer's higher education status in business, it seemed a perfect combination to satisfy Fred's desire to be social with theater freaks. Spencer's beautiful logo sealed the deal on the publishing firm and did just what Fred desired, caught the attention of performers from all around. As his advertisement stated, it was clear that one intention of having this firm was not only to gather up all the recording stars so they could rely on only him for music, but to gain the praises and friendship of many other prominent performers. Among those performers that Hylands, along with his assistant Burt Green attracted to their "33" were Byron Harlan, Ada Jones, Barney Fagan, Fred Hager and J. Fred Helf, and Sallie Stembler. Hylands took a specific liking to each of these performers that Burt and Spencer told him about, since he was not there himself often to greet them when they called. Though the regulars at "33" soon were featured on several sheets of Fred's. A particular interest of Fred's was Sallie Stembler, who was on quite a few of his sheets in the relatively short time he published successfully. 

She was already a rising star at the point that she corresponded with Hylands and Spencer. Now nothing definitive can be said about Hylands flirting around with Sallie, but considering the aggressive charm he and his sister Etta had, it wouldn't come as too much of a surprise if he messed around with her a little. His Marie was always gone at night, solely on actors' hours for the most part, and would be getting home from work just shortly before Fred would have to go to work(at Columbia). Without exhibitions at night, Fred had a little more time on his hands he was not intending on wasting...

To add to the weirdness of the Sallie and Hylands thing, Sallie got divorced in 1900 not long after she was being pictured on Hylands' sheet music, and the charge was abuse and infidelity.  

Let that sink in for a moment...

When the publishing firm collapsed in the fall of 1900, Hylands held a grudge with all of the fellow managers, and wrote a scathing letter out to them all, expressing his displeasure with them. Even with the unreasonable anger, Hylands still had to continue to face Spencer very often at work(Columbia), and all the other recording stars involved with the publishing endeavor. From this tale, we learn that Hylands was overly ambitious and confident, but unable to keep commitments, as the power he held corrupted him and therefore burnt bridges he built with his closest Columbia friends. Even with the heartbreak of the firm, he continued onward at Columbia, and soon back again into the theater where he really belonged. 

(in this show, Hylands played the part of one of many New York character stereotypes, which type, I have yet to find out)

He flirted with the idea of joining a union as early as 1901, as he was surrounded by progressives that expressed their dissatisfaction with their work since the mid-1890's. Issler, Will J. Hardman, Art Young, then later the budding White Rats. After his failed attempt at another publishing firm and a union, he gave in and joined the White Rats. His faulty leadership skills came around again as he rose up in the White Rats, his desire to run around and flirt against the rules ended up being his downfall in 1911-1912. After being a high up leader in the White Rats, being an aggressive leader, his desire to move around and flirt against the rulebook is what condemned him to court in 1911 and got him thrown out of his leadership position of the union's then large network.

His shows outside of the union stuff were sort of successful, as all the big Broadway people seemed to know he was a  toxic musical freak to get involved with. They all knew he was an outstanding accompanist, but was full of himself and overly confident with his skills outside of improvising popular songs on piano and violin. His performance skills outside of recording and accompaniment were never really highly praised, but his charm was always what kept him on level with everyone else. 

Hylands may not have been the best publisher, or union leader, but his records are really where it's at. When we listen to his records, we get a sense of familiarity out of knowing it's him back there on piano, doing his strange accompaniment that we all know and love. He probably resented working for Columbia for so many years, and was likely ashamed of all the strange and rather horrible things he did while there(as we can well observe that this is the origin of where his health failed him), but it's what physical evidence we have of his footprint in the history of North American music(and recording sound in general). He was not the first studio pianist, nor the first studio pianist to play rag-time, but he brought a style to the recording horn that had never been heard before and hasn't been replicated since then. Like all the other brown wax era studio pianists, he suffered for the sake of making a mark on what we can still hear today as record collectors(though that wasn't really in the mindset of all recording stars at that point in time). He shortened his life by 20 years by working at Columbia, but what he left us is fascinating, as there's no context and stories to accompany the days he sounds different from others, and why he played so strangely sometimes. 

We all know about Banta, with his goodness and morality, and his praises from being a tragic story taken from the world too early, but in reality, Hylands was similar in a lot of ways. 

Tragic indeed, the story of a fantastic musician intended to be a businessman who strays away from this to become a theater manager, then at the height of success is pulled out to the lowest kind of work for a musician in the 1890's, the recording studio. The studio changes him from a funny country jay to a drugged, greedy, bitter young city rat. he tries to escape this life after the era of piano accompaniment fades to join back in theater, and rises high up once more in the advocation for his fellow performers, but his fatal attribute leads to his downfall. This attribute is adventure and habit. The downfall is deepened at the death of his father and he ultimately finds himself dead in another nation in the middle of a reviving tour. 

what a story!

Just as tradition, here are a few records with Hylands accompaniment. There are so many out there, I cannot even begin to choose some, here are a few good ones anyway:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxo1FJev4G4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHmVsMEosdo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTdww5jHU-E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cXPziKyIEA&t=94s

https://archive.org/details/TheyAllFollowMewHylands1898

https://archive.org/details/TheLaughingSongJohnsonHylandsGflat

https://archive.org/details/DarkeyVolunteerOssmanwComposer1898

Hope you enjoyed this! 

Two Indiana women and more discoveries

*I'm back!*

Who's this lovely lady? 

Well, thanks to the great-nieces of Fred Hylands once more, they dug up this fantastic photograph of Fred's sister from around 1912 or so. Just as expected from Etta, she looks so much like Fred, or just a better-looking female version of her brother. She's very pretty, and it now is clear why she had marital issues, and why many men tried to get at her in a rather short period of time. She even has the messed up teeth that Fred had! No glasses though, that's all-right. 

Another thing, she appears to be rather tall, which makes sense. After  seeing this picture, not only do I have a better understanding of what the two siblings looked like, but also makes me want ever more to hear her play piano. Of course, she couldn't have been too different from her brother, since they essentially had the same musical background...though with her it's more likely that she gained better skill in technicality, since I would assumed her to be just enough more disciplined to gain more essentials of the basics. Though when I say that, I'm not saying much, since it's obvious these two were stubborn, according to the lives they lived.  

Her hair appears to be just as wild and curly as Fred's was, according to the picture below:

Of course, due to the issues we often have with black and white photographs, I'm not safely sure what to say her hair colour is. I want to say light brown to red, but I'm not sure. Whatever it is, it's the same colour as Fred's. Hmm, so maybe his hair was red? or at least kind of red. Wish we could figure this out better. One thing is for sure, long straight profiles ran in the family, and so did being tall and curly hair. 
This fantastic picture of Etta was not the only thing that the sisters sent me, that also sent a link to a professional picture of Fred's wife Marie.
This picture is dated 1912

So now that I'm able to see pictures of the two women in Fred's life, I actually have to edit something that I said a while ago. This picture above would indicate that the picture on Fred's sheet music from 1899 is actually who I thought it was initially. 

That's Marie, not Etta. It makes sense now.
Something that you might notice about the picture of her from 1912 that I though was kind of funny is hoe she's wearing lots of makeup. You can see that there's none in the 1899 picture of her. But that's not surprising at all, since she was a typical gaudy Broadway star of the era. Yes, now that I said that, her husband goes into the same category. She still looks like the type that would cause a stir with the boys at Columbia. 
She and Cal Stewart's wife must have done this when the boys brought them to outings they had, such as Steve Porter's yacht races, and those trips to the Waldorf in May of 1898 and 1899. 
Either way, it would be great if we could hear Etta play, or Marie sing, since they were pretty popular at what they did. 




This brings me to the other Indiana woman I was to discuss. 

This lovely lady is Verdi Karns. 
She was born in 1882 in Bluffton Indiana. Where's Bluffton? Well, actually it's right next to Fort Wayne, where Fred Hylands was from. So with that being said, we would expect her music to sound similar. This is entirely so, in fact, it is to the point of where it sounds exactly like if I were to transcribe any of the records Hylands improvises on. After reading up on her recently, she was essentially another Fred Hylands, a child prodigy, who did everything herself, writing her first rag at age 16, only to create the cover all herself, and publish all her pieces as well. She played in local orchestras and concert halls from age 13, becoming a popular favourite by age 17.Her most popular rag(if any were to be considered as such), was "The Bluffton Carnival Rag", composed in 1899, and written in the signature Indiana style, that just so happens to sound identical to Fred Hylands' playing. Since she attended the namesake of this rag, it's likely that Fred and Etta Hylands played there in the late-1880's when she was a little girl. With that, she probably heard Fred play violin or piano, in that strange and Ragged style he did. So it's no wonder that her rags sounded so much like Hylands' playing. Since I keep talking about it, here are two of her three rags:
"The Bluffton Carnival Rag"

"Ragamuffin"

To illustrate this point, listen to three recordings where Hylands sounds like the composition of these rags("Ragamuffin" particularly has that feel):
(of course there are plenty more examples out there!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgqBFQGXWEc&t=49s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxo1FJev4G4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cXPziKyIEA&t=1s

See! They're so similar! Of course, things like this aren't too surprising, since Karns and Hylands were from the same region, and were literally from the next town over from each other. This is something that us collectors come across rather often, so it doesn't come as a surprise, though how often do we get to hear a pianist from a certain region from sheet music, and get to compare it with a recording star from exactly the same time? Not too often does this happen, particularly as early as the 1890's. It seems little strange however that Karns played the same way that Hylands did, at exactly the same time, and Hylands had been removed from Indiana since 1892 by the time he was recording. Not to mention that Karns was ten years younger than Hylands, and had only been playing piano since about age 7 or so, which would have been since 1889. I guess it makes sense. It's not far removed from Hylands' style that developed only a few years before that or so. That means that this distinct style must have been deeply rooted in the area of northeastern Indiana and western Ohio, so much so that even two musicians born a decade apart in the area would sound almost exactly the same. 



Also! I have been meaning to share this interesting recording for a long while, and it's a real good one to study! It's a 1901 Climax record of a medley of Coon songs by Ruby Brooks, or that's what it's supposed to be anyhow. It actually turned out to be recorded as something really different than that. It turned out to sound more like a piano solo with scant banjo accompaniment. Since this is a Climax record(technically Columbia), that pianist ought to be Fred Hylands! 
Here you go:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By7WuiOUrg7YamN3RzZnazBLMkp3aV9YNFprNFREVFU2aFJJ/view?usp=sharing
Where's the banjo? That's the point here.
I don't think they meant for the record to sound this way, but it just happened to turn out that way. 
Anyhow, this recording is really significant because it's the closest thing we've got so far to a piano solo by Hylands, of course, that's only true if none of those other solos we've heard aren't actually of him playing.
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/mp3s/12000/12956/cusb-cyl12956d.mp3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wjzWHXShCI

I really want to think that the first one is an audition record for Columbia in 1897. Of course, it's not likely, but anything's possible on these terms. These piano solos scattered around all over the place are interesting to listen to, because oftentimes they are actually some of the best-made recordings out there, all the more reason to debunk the misconceptions people have about recording the piano in the brown wax era.  These unknown solos are often the most unusual sounding things to us, since we're not really used to hearing just piano on these records:
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?queryType=@attr+1=1020&num=1&start=1&query=cylinder12994

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?queryType=@attr+1=1020&num=1&start=1&query=cylinder13135

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?queryType=@attr+1=1020&num=1&start=1&query=cylinder13166

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?queryType=@attr+1=1020&num=1&start=1&query=cylinder9145

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?queryType=@attr+1=1020&num=1&start=1&query=cylinder10638

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?queryType=@attr+1=1020&num=1&start=1&query=cylinder10620

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?queryType=@attr+1=1020&num=1&start=1&query=cylinder10626

Most of these aren't very good, but there are occasionally ones that get us wondering about their origins. Some of them sound like commercial recordings, like the "Greater San Francisco" march brown wax. Which was actually recorded around 1906, as per the date of publication of the piece. The recording of "Sobre Las Olas" is just as nice, and well recorded as well. These are important strange recordings to study, even though some of them are less than mediocre. Luckily, the good ones in the mix a really good!

Haven't too much to say, but I'm sorry about taking so long of a gap since my last post. It's been real busy and stuff. 

Hope you enjoyed this! Next post will be longer and won't be so long awaited. 

Pianist progressiveness and background analysis

We recognize all of these funny faces. 

These are the primary studio pianists of the brown wax era. from Ed Issler to Chris Booth, they ruled the piano accompaniment on all of those recordings from 1889 to 1905. It has been well-established over the years that Edward Issler was the first studio pianist, which he certainly was, and he just happened to set the best example for what a studio pianist should be. Issler's perfect nature as a studio pianist can make him out to be the most historically interesting of the early studio pianists. He linked the old ideology of Victorian music with the new syncopated music of the 1890's. Despite Issler's age, he was able to illustrate that he not only had a perfect sense of time, but also that he understood the melodic and rhythmic structure of syncopation, better than Fred Gaisberg ever played on records(and Gaisberg was almost twenty years younger than Issler!). Issler was more progressive for his age than some of his succeeding pianists who were nearly twenty years younger than he. Issler could have(if he worked toward it) played syncopation as smoothly as Banta did, and Banta was self-taught in this style, unlike Issler who had to sit down and really figure out how to play syncopation. 

Oddly enough, Charlie Judkins threw me a fantastic idea that I had never truly considered about these pianists. He stated that the most "modern" of these pianists overall(not including Issler as an anomaly for his age), would have to be Banta and Hager. No mention of Hylands at this. Banta had a style that was very 1896-97, and Hager was similar, though he sometimes played a little more like 1898 and 1899 published pieces. Where's Hylands in all of this? Well, if you really get right down to it, Hylands played an older style overall than the others, in some ways, seeming more archaic than Issler's, which is really strange. Really think about it, Hylands was considered up-to-date in 1896-1901 or so(that's the second half of the brown wax era!), but sounded like and older pianist after 1901, the way to really learn this is to listen to a bunch of records with Hylands playing from the early Columbia disc era(1901-1905). 
Here are a few gems:
"By the Sycamore Tree" with Bob Roberts, 1903

"The Ghost that Never Walked" with Bob Roberts, 1904

"My Castle on the Nile" with Arthur Collins, 1902

"Everybody Works but Father" with Lew Dockstader, 1905

"Uncle Quit Work Too" with Lew Dockstader, 1905

All of these are prime examples of why Hylands would have been considered an outdated pianist, even by as early as 1904. That seems strange, but his style was really that of a folk pianist in the late-1880's and early 1890's. The one tradition that Hylands kept longer than Issler, and it's more obvious that he did, was the banjo imitation style. This not only kept him from seeming modern and progressive, but also kept him from moving forward to the extent that some of the other pianists did. 
Think of it this way, even as late as 1909, Hylands was being noted in papers as "[rendering] a correct imitation of the banjo" as an opening to a show at the Majestic(the name of the theater he managed since 1905 I believe). This little blurb can seem as though Hylands was behind the times, despite his management at many major theaters(which should yield a fully up-to-date mindset musically). Any Rag-Time scholar would know that the idea of banjo imitations was a 19th-century notion, regardless of what the papers say. As early as 1909, Hylands was being considered archaic musically, though his demeanor would likely have indicated otherwise. Hylands would have been 37 in 1909, still rather young for a composer and pianist, though the roots and tendencies of his playing could be similar to that of Ben Harney's from around the same time(though Harney did progressive dancing acts at this time, so he was not completely out of style yet). 
 So in summary, Hylands' playing was based on the ideals of mid-19th century folk music, played on the banjo and fiddle(both of which he probably played before he got to piano). This can be compared to Banta's, that wasn't clearly based on folk music, but was to a certain extent. The fact that Banta got started playing piano completely on his own, and likely had strange tendencies when playing(that instructors probably attempted to beat out of him), since that's what happens when you're self-taught to any degree, is what connects his style to Hylands. Just like Banta, Hylands probably picked up strange and unconventional musical and technical tendencies, and when being formally trained probably had the crap beat out of them because the instructor would not accept such weird anomalies in playing. Of course, the beatings would have done nothing for them, and they likely still played these strange things when their styles developed. We can see that Hylands kept much of these tendencies, since his playing overall was strange, and his first published pieces are odd in general, when compared to others from the same time. 

So with all of that about Hylands, his formal musical training probably went similar to what is stated above. Here's a summary: he was trained for a couple of years(not that many in this case) got all sorts of lectures and beatings for his incorrect tendencies, eventually getting to a point where he was exhausted of it, and simply quit. Probably looked something like this:

Consider his nature in dealing with commitments later, it wouldn't be too surprising if the same pattern was so with his musical training. Though in this time, he probably learned the basics of music theory and such, and after quitting the training, he took what he learned and ran with it. Certainly he was musically intelligent, in theory and in his ear(though his style indicates his ear and natural feel dominated his overall musicality). It's likely that his sister Etta received similar training, though, being a little girl(except for the fact that she was also stubborn), probably retained more of what the instructor taught and emphasized. Just as a side-note, it seems Etta was more complete as a person than Fred, though the both of them were as much of a pain to everyone else equally, recall that Etta couldn't settle her marital problems, therefore marrying several times. 

Banta was probably trained in a similar way, though he wouldn't have quit half-way through, since he seems the type who wouldn't disappoint his parents. Also, just a side-note on Banta's parents, his father was 45 years old when Frank was born, which if you know anything about that time period, that's very late in life for a son to be born. Frank was the middle child with his oldest sibling being born in 1868. It's just unusual for a parent to be over 40 when their child is born in this line of study, and in general when looking into the Victorian era. Frank's father likely allowed his son to enter in music, but certainly wouldn't want it to be his sole livelihood. 
I must have looked a little something like this:

(a cartoon I did illustrating Banta's musical upbringing)

 Eventually Frank's parents got him musical training, but it must have taken a few years before this happened. It's likely that Frank already had developed musical habits and characteristics by the time his formal training began, since as stated earlier appertaining to Hylands, Banta had characteristics that could really only have been developed from being self-taught even just a little.

 Now we know about those two pianists, since so much research has been done on them(well one of them anyway, the other has only been my digging and a few friends as well), but what about Issler and Hager? We know how strangely interesting Issler's playing was, since he is often considered the best overall musician of the early studio pianists. This is without a doubt true, his rhythm was unequalled, and his improvisation skills were especially well-established for a pianist trained in the 1860's-70's. Just to put this into perspective, let's say Issler began his musical training at age 7, well that would have been in 1863. That's two years before the end of the civil war, and he would have been old enough to have begun musical training, which would officially place him as beginning at the end of the first syncopated music era(1830's-about 1869). Who knows that he could have heard in that time from 1863-1876, since that was so early on, and such a mixed stew of music time wise. He also would have likely became a music teacher around the mid-1870's, which is(what some scholars say) likely where he was first exposed to black music, or clearly syncopated music. While a young struggling music teacher and musician, the need to understand syncopation likely came his way. He took this knowledge with him when he began his parlor orchestra around 1885, and it seemed that his piccolo and flute player also had a similar mindset when it came to playing syncopation. Their similar mindsets when it came to music in general is why they were so trusting enough of each other to record piano duets. Recall that Issler and Schweinfest were the first commercially recorded pianists in history(yes there were piano solos recorded before 1889, but they were not commercially recorded to be sold). We still have yet to know if any of these dozen or so recordings exist, and as always, there's a possibility(there's more of a possibility of these existing than those supposed Buddy Bolden cylinders). 

The most progressive of these pianists overall(chronologically) would be Hager:

Still the most handsome of the early recording stars. 
Hager was not only progressive and strange musically, but also in his mindset it seems. He appeared to have been open-minded, and not obviously prejudiced in racial terms. He had much of the liberal side that Russell Hunting had, minus the indecent humor and possible bisexuality. Hager was much more decent, and reserved it seems, though is playing is the strangest of all the early studio pianists. Hager was born in Pennsylvania, not an expected place when examining his style. His style combined the tendencies of Arthur Pryor's Missouri-Indiana style, and that of the showy style of Mike Bernard and Banta. Hager played with lots of octaves, which was characteristic of a Texas Rag style, lots of fifths, similar to the Missouri-Kansas Rag style, and jolty syncopation, which was similar to Mike Bernard and Banta from New York. Something about Hager's playing made him the most creative and technically brilliant of these pianists, and it doesn't help that his background can back this up. He was a youth violin virtuoso, given all sorts of awards like Ossman was for banjo, and these awards eventually got him into music school. He studied at the school that Dvorak helped to found in New York in 1892-ish. 

Now consider this, Dvorak was Czech, and had never come to America before 1892. When he wrote his New World Symphony in that year, he pieced together the music of the Americas, and what he wrote for the American south was a syncopated banjo imitation. He had no preconceptions of North American music, and did he write for it, syncopated folk music! This was Dvorak's mindset, he knew little about American music, and with the little exposure he got in a relatively short period of time, he took in that syncopation was popular, IN 1893. His foundations were African and Native American music. With that, it is likely that young virtuoso Hager at 19-20 was taught under these principles. 

THAT, is my explanation of Hager's musical mindset. 

Though that only explains the foundation of Hager's music and style, everything else sort of grew on him in the years that came along, from 1895-1902, since his style did vary sometimes, even from year to year somewhat. His playing in 1898 sounds rather different from how it did in 1903, though we know it's the same pianist from the basic foundations of the playin being the same. 
Such as these three recordings with Hager on piano(all Zon-O-Phones of course):

from 1900(also for St. Patrick's day!)

from 1901

1902

and 1903.

There are certainly similarities and differences from year to year, but it's certainly the same strange pianist. 
Now compare Hager's playing to two records with Banta:
From 1900 on Berliner.

and 1901 on Edison.
They are very different, but have the same sort of progressive and ragged nature that didn't seem archaic like Hylands' playing did. Hylands' playing was much more folksy(though that Berliner has some real rough sounding playing in there!), and sloppy, as Charlie Judkins calls it, which is very true. Banta is loose at some points, but clung to a slight stiffness always. Hager was stiff for the most part(much like Banta), and it didn't help that he was almost constantly playing octaves, even when improvising. With all of this, we have a place to start when thinking over all of these fascinating pianists. Knowing all of this is very important to knowing record companies, dating records, and kinds of sorting that goes into these early records. 

Hope you enjoyed this! 

By the way! If you want to see more of my cartoons, check out my Deviant art page. Here's a link: http://ramonasidneybaker.deviantart.com/ enjoy the esoteric humor!