Columbia's orchestra and Monroe Rosenfeld

Yes indeed, It has been two weeks since my last post, and for that I apologize, much of that time has been consumed by school, and studying for finals. Now that all of that is done, it's time to get back into music! For Christmas, records came my way, four early Columbia's and a Victor! All of them are in fantastic shape for their age, with dates ranging from mid-1901 to one of Leachman's last recording sessions in 1904. These records are all fantastic, and am grateful for having them now.

One of these records was by the Columbia orchestra, in fact the record was a 7 inch of them playing "Harmony Mose" which is a Cake-Walk by Kerry Mills. It's an interesting record, though it must be noted that they didn't have the best intonation. But, there's a reason for this, a valid excuse if you will. This was recorded in a brief period of Columbia's orchestra that was just before Charles Prince took over the orchestra. Prince pretty much overhauled the entire group, not considering those who had been veterans of Issler's orchestra twelve years before then. He kept some of the same people, though he didn't realise that he was bringing in rivals of the Columbia orchestra musicians, such as Frank Mazziotta, who was the sole competitor of George Schweinfest, them both being the piccolo extraordinaire for their record companies. Prince brought himself as a rival and competitor to Hylands, since they were both pianists. Of course, we know that Fred Hager was a threat to Hylands' place at the record companies, even Banta's as well. This cartoon below goes well with this statement. 

I drew this last week or so. 

It took a few years for Hager to fully take over much of the orchestra activity at the companies Banta and Hylands worked for, this took until about 1905-1906, two years after Banta died. Prince created his "new and improved" version of the Columbia orchestra in 1903, with better intonation, more musicians, traded out musicians, and slicker arrangements. Unfortunately, the slicker arrangements didn't mean for better arrangements. This actually meant for more conservative Rag-Time, which is unacceptable from my standpoint. This is exactly why I sort of hate Prince, because he rid of the Rag-Time style that the Columbia Orchestra was so well-known for in the late-1890's. Prince pretty much threw all of that away in 1903 and 1904. He not only made the arrangements less complicated, but less ragged, and that's where I draw the line, once you take the charm away from the most interesting House orchestra of the late-1890's, you've killed it. Unfortunately, that's exactly what Prince did, and it didn't help that he won the respect of both Spencer's. Winning the respect of the Spencer's meant that Len cut the final string in his friendship with Hylands, of which he had been doing since 1900, and made it worse every coming year. 
Prince did improve the intonation of the orchestra, since there were some pretty bad takes by them in the year just before he came along, but again, the Ragged aspect was dramatically diminished. By 1903, we no longer hear recordings like this one from later-1901, which is very unfortunate, since the piano playing almost leading the entire band was among the best things about them, before Prince made it his orchestra. Hylands oftentimes did what Banta did in Edison's orchestra, played different rhythms under the rest of the orchestra. The record in the link just above is a great example of this, and more of a strange one in fact. Even their recordings that weren't Ragged were fun to listen to, with their strange sound effects, shouts from the Spencer's, and the overall atmosphere is just very Columbia. The old group had a demeanor to them that was like none of the other house orchestras of the time period. You can't go wrong with their 1902 take of "The Darkey Tickle", even if their intonation isn't really the best, it's still fantastic, and classic for Columbia. Just as classic as their "The village Orchestra" from 1899. That is one of my favourite early orchestra recordings, simply from how weird and comical it happens to be. It's like they're purposely making fun of how their orchestra wasn't really that great, but then also fantastic all the same. The thing that was so unique about them was the fact that they actually went out as a group and performed at lavish functions. Now that's something that Edison and Zon-O-Phone didn't do, and as well as Prince once he took over Columbia's orchestra and band. Hope you now understand my almost hatred of Prince, since there's a lot more to dislike about him than just on the surface. It doesn't matter if he was born in San Francisco, or that he was descended from American founding father John Adams. 








Now to move to another subject, composer Monroe H. Rosenfeld:

After having a long talk with Charlie Judkins this evening, we entered into the world of the brilliant and sly Monroe Rosenfeld. There's a whole lot under the surface of this man's name on so many pieces of iconic music from the 1880's to the early 1910's, this man was extremely weird and bright, much to the likeness of Len Spencer. Many tales of his strange doings went around New York in the 1890's, and got into many newspapers, which is why so many stories about him survive. 
As it turns out, Rosenfeld was a fervent gambler, and this was actually a strange story. Rosenfeld would pitch ideas to all sorts of musical friends of his, usually younger and not so famous in the music community. Once he got the idea shoved into their thoughts, they would write down the music, and after the other man wrote it down, he would slap his name on the piece and sell it to multiple publishers in town to publish the piece. He would take half the money with him and give the other half to the man who he pitched the idea to in the first place. Just after that, he would go out to the racetrack and lose all the money on a loser horse. This was something that he did frequently, but of course, he was writing music all the time, and having others do this with him, so he always had money to go out and lose. 

But since he sold the pieces to multiple publishers in the same area, this caused fights and confusion among the firms. At some points these scams got him into trouble. Most of the time, he was able to outrun the authorities, but one of these times, he lost his head. While getting chased around by the police, he had no means of escape, his last resort came to running up the stairs of a building and jumping out of a second- story window. This didn't do him well as you could have guessed. This left him partially crippled, with a weird limp the rest of his life. Remember that this was all for selling a song that was only partially his to more than one publisher. Recall that this was the chap who coined the term "Tin Pan Alley", and he practically created the atmosphere for this era, beginning with his horrid scams and stunts. Just goes to show how much he wanted his money, just to go and gamble it. 

Rosenfeld made a deal With Len Spencer in the mid-1890's as we know, and it seems that since they were both relatively similar, they probably got along finely. In fact, it's likely they the met at an upscale club. That is the sort of places that Rosenfeld played at when he wasn't off scamming the publishers. Just the same, Spencer would be one to frequent those kinds of places, when he wasn't making thousands of rounds a week, or getting into fights with drunkards. They likely made whatever deal it was at one of these clubs, which is a fantastic thing to picture. How Rosenfeld was a strange yet interesting character. 

To close off for now, here are two different takes of Rosenfeld's "I Don't Care if You Never Comes Back" by Len Spencer and Fred Hylands. 
Notice that on both of the takes, Spencer announces the title as "I don't Care if she never comes back". That's a little strange. 
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?queryType=@attr+1=1020&num=1&start=1&query=cylinder10662

This is the take where Hylands practically quotes "The Harlem Rag" by Tom Turpin in his solo at the very end.
 https://archive.org/details/NeverComesBackSpencerandHylands1899
This take is just as interesting at the last one, just that there's not 20 second of Rag-Time at the end. It seems that Spencer could make Rosenfeld's pieces just as fun and wild as the composer. Wonder if Spencer ever sang this tune with Rosenfeld on piano...


Sorry it's been so long since my last post... There will be a post tomorrow, just to make up for the time that was passed since the last post. 

Hope you enjoyed this! 

A Zon-O-Phone dilemma and the search for more pianists

After exchanging a lot of conversation and ideas with Charlie Judkins within the past week or so, he and I have been trying to figure out more pianist names as far as these records go, of which not much luck has been had by us in this matter. Two names were found, but they were supposedly Victor pianists, which is just what we need to hear, since there was already a glut of pianists there in 1900 to 1905.  These two names were actually those of two women, unknown ladies that have no significance in Rag-Time communities and publications, which is unfortunate. These ladies are not well or highly praised, despite their mentioning specifically under a Victor section in a New York Newspaper. Nothing detailing these ladies has been found thus far after just seeing their names. Other than that, we haven't come across a treasure trove of pianist names yet. That will hopefully come later, in wherever one of us happens to find it. Victor and Zon-O-phone will remain the hardest to tell as far as pianists go with early disc records. With that, Lambert will stand as the hardest to tell with cylinders.  

Even with all this confusion, I think I have come to a realization. I was listening to a take of "The Nigger Fever" by Frank Mazziotta, which has some of the strangest rhythmic patterns I've ever heard on an early piano accompaniment record. With all of this strange left hand playing, I listened to two early Arthur Collins Edison cylinders just afterward, these two in fact:

Collins' 1898 cylinder of "Zizzy Ze Zum Zum"

and his 1898 recording of "All I Wants is my Chickens"

We have known for a while that Frank P. Banta is on both of these cylinders, with all of the evidence present on many later Victors from 1901 to 1903, and my previous explanations about this. After several listens to these records back to back, I realised that the pianist making up those strange yet very syncopated left hand things was Banta! The pianist identification on this record seemed irritatingly hard, until I inadvertently listened to the records to create the solution comparison for the issue. I cannot share the link to this Zon-O-Phone of "The Nigger Fever", in order to respect the one who shared it with me, but I will describe what is heard and why it sounds similar to the two brown waxes linked above. The strange rhythm patterns are heard primarily on the first one, "Zizzy Ze Zum Zum" in this case, which immediately caught my ears, as it wasn't identical rhythmically, but the similarities and touch to it were suspiciously present. These were all slight and strange characteristics of...

Frank P. Banta! 

(this is a sketch I did of him recently, really trying to perfect his strangely structured profile, I'm still trying to get it right...)

His attributes all check in on "Zizzy Ze Zum Zum", from that strange rhythmic pattern, that can be heard mostly at the solo sections and also at the choruses, to the fifths that Banta was known for playing on Victors. The final chord on that record involves a big and loud fifth, which really sounds like all of those early Victors, and on this 1899 cylinder with an unspecified label(this cylinder is still up for guesses on the pianist). It is still a strange and idiosyncratic thing that Banta played fifths n his left hand, since he was not a mid-western pianist nor native, which is usually where that originates from(from states such as Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri). The second cylinder listed "All I wants is my Chickens", has all of the fifths that is on the Zono of "The Nigger Fever", and even some of that strange rhythmic thing, which can be heard in the Choruses and very well at around 1:22 to 1:25. That very rhythm is exactly the same as the strange thing on the Zono of "The Nigger Fever", just played a little differently, and better yet, earlier on in the history of Rag-Time. 

What does all of this lead to? Well, it confirms that an Edison and Victor pianist played for Zon-O-phone in 1900-1902. This gives a little more insight into the queer and well-hidden studio of Zon-O-phone, but that still doesn't explain the brief period after that where Hylands worked there, but that's a different story that I have already addressed in previous posts. As always, I am not entirely sure if this pianist that I mean here is Frank Banta or Fred Bachmann, as it's one of the two. Remember that Bachmann was the only other studio pianist at Edison who moved to Victor after 1900. In this case however, it seems more likely to be Banta, since the two Collins cylinders were recorded so early on(1898), and Banta was known already to have been a Rag-Time studio pianist(so was Hylands as we know), and had several years of pre-ragtime on Hylands by performing with Vess Ossman. That don't mean anything when talking about Hylands' Rag-Time status however. In many ways, Hylands had the best amount of luck and status in the early(white)Rag-Time community. 

Since I took a few listens to "All I Wants is my Chickens" while writing this, I realised that the ending solo on it is almost identical in phrasing and feel as the Denny cylinder of "The Change Will Do you Good" on an unconfirmed label. Really take a listen! They are freakishly similar. 

We are still to yet find more names associated with Zon-O-phone, since it seems now that they had a flaming pan full of hot pianists, which included Banta and Hylands. 

With all of this said, it makes these two wild Zono's up for some more educated guesses and listening:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qi8K8iKZyXM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0u8HiXdrtI

(these were recorded on the same day, so whoever it is, it's the same pianist on both of them, one guess leads to two in this case, which helps a whole lot.)

Another matter I would like delve into is the time that Fred Hylands was actually hired to work at Columbia. it remains very hard to tell and pick out a timeframe that Columbia hired Hylands, even though the date range is early 1897 to early 1898. It can't be late-1896 since he was not really in New York until around that time, and it can't be later than early 1898 because he's mentioned in early 1898 issues of The Phonoscope, and the piano accompaniment had a polar shift in style in late-1897 at Columbia. After discussing the matter over with Charlie, we really think that he was hired by Columbia in earlier 1897, more like March of that year or so, earlier than we could have assumed, since he was reportedly working as a music director and stage accompanist at Pastor's Theater, and others as well. Since that was the case, he must have been in the studio by day, and by night was working in the pit and herding theatrical cats. The two records that have us suspicious of him working there early on are these two puzzling records: 
Billy Golden's "Uncle Jefferson" from earlier 1897

and "The Jealous Blackbird" from around the same time in 1897

The Billy Golden record listed above is still notoriously hard to identify the pianist on, until Charlie and I sorted it through, picking out small sections and comparing them to other records we heard with Hylands from several years later. The recording of  "Uncle Jefferson" particularly has many of the more idiosyncratic aspects of Hylands' style, which include the very "dotted" syncopated patterns and the heaps of tenths and twelfths. The one thing that really got us suspicious is the final rolled chord and tenth, which is something that was distinct to Hylands on Columbia records. If you're listening close enough to "The Jealous Blackbird", you'll notice that there's some of that rolled chord and tenth thing there too, which is very weird, but somehow they stick out. A record that comes to mind that has this tenth with a fifth and a chord ending is a strange 1899 cylinder by Len Spencer and Hylands of "My Josephine"(of which I can't share with you, sorry...). Spencer does a whistling chorus after the first verse, and after the whistling chorus, Hylands plays a short solo, where just at the end of it, he hits exactly the same thing as he does at several parts of "The Jealous Blackbird" with the fifth thing and ends on exactly the same chord on both records. It's starting to pull itself together it seems, as the similarities are beginning to make more sense, and are untangling just a little. It seems that the pianist on  the 1897 records of "The Jealous Blackbird" is the same as Len Spencer's 1899 recording of "My Josephine", which tells you a lot, and that that pianist had been there for a while by 1899. Much or how the pianist plays behind Spencer on "My Josephine" is actually similar to how Hylands' "You Don't Stop the World from Goin Round", was formally written believe it or not, so that really throws up a frantic red flag about the pianist here. 

The motion stands that Hylands worked at Columbia in earlier 1897, until we find something that contradicts all aspects of the statement. 

Hope you enjoyed this! Sorry about posting for so may days, school has been taxing and time-consuming this week, and hopefully I'll get to post more frequently this next week.  

More About the Columbia Orchestra

That's a fraction of the Columbia orchestra(and yes, I still think that pianist in the right corner is Fred Hylands).

I have been digging through some interesting cylinders by the Columbia orchestra, all of them just happen to be from the 1897-1900 period, with most of them including Fred Hylands on piano. They are a fascinating group, with most of the personnel lost to history, because of the destruction of the Columbia ledgers in the 1970's. It is sure that Tom Clark, George Schweinfest, and Fred Hylands(and possibly William Tuson) were all members of the ensemble, and there were several other popular musicians in the group. It's very unfortunate that these great old musicians have gone forgotten from the lost ledgers alone, and The Phonoscope doesn't even list them anywhere, only a few of the big stars in the group, like Hylands, Clark and Schweinfest. It would seem that at those exhibitions, and expensive gathering held by the Easton's at the Waldorf, that the Columbia orchestra was a popular group to the record buyers, and to the managers of the company themselves.It must have been how full their records sounded(even if Hylands was louder than many of the instruments), and the many attractive selections they did. They sounded very much different from the Edison orchestra, which had the mastery of Frank P. Banta and Frank Mazziotta(the piccolo player). This is why their records are distinct, and with the loud piano, it made them even more odd. 

Now to get to some of those records. this first one is one I believe I've  shared before, but it's a great example of very early recorded Rag-Time. It has a rather long title, but it's still great! Here's Len Spencer and the Columbia orchestra playing Williams and Walker's "I thought I was A Winner(or I don't know, you ain't so warm)" recorded in 1897-98. What did I say? Long title indeed. This is a wonderful example of genuine early Rag-Time, not something like "Turkey in the Straw" by Billy Golden that isn't actually meant to be played as a "rag". This song was composed as a "rag" and played as so. It's odd to note the two choruses that Spencer sings are done in such a way that they are almost drowned out by the orchestra, and that's meant to be that way, which is so interesting, because that was rarely done. I suppose they did it like so with Spencer because his voice was one to work with the "coon song" that it was, and also because he was loud enough to be heard at a distance from the horns while the orchestra played. It says that it was recorded in 1897 on the website that it came from, which is a reasonable guess, but if that were to be so, it would have been recorded in the August-December 1897 period. If it's from 1898, it would have been recorded early in that year. It's wonderful nonetheless, and a great example of 1897 Rag-Time(even if it's possibly recorded in 1898).

This next one is a debatable one. It's a record featuring George Schweinfest on piccolo, with the Columbia orchestra behind him. This is early Columbia orchestra though, so there are so many possibilities on the personnel. Here's "The Jealous Blackbird' by Schweinfest and the Columbia orchestra(announced by Len Spencer). The date is debatable, and that's the problem. It has the early "... of New York City." announcement, but the piano's power and very steady rhythm indicate Hylands. That doesn't make too much sense, because Hylands was just a substitute(or temporary?) pianist in 1897 at Columbia. He didn't begin coming in at all until at least August of 1897, or maybe I'm underestimating these dates. Maybe Hylands was obliged in coming around June or July of '97, but in the 1897 timeframe it's obvious that he wasn't regularly Columbia's pianist. This cylinder could have better tuning involved, as some of the notes that are played do not sound the best. Such as that little transition section at 1:05, it sounds a little broken up/or out of tune. Another indicator for Hylands possibly being on the piano here is that the piano is slightly out of sync with the rest of the orchestra. Who else other than Hylands would it be? Schweinfest is the one playing piccolo(that would mean that a sub pianist would play!). A good comparison to this cylinder is "Dancing in the Kitchen" by the Columbia orchestra, mid or late-1897(it's very quiet though!). The cylinder of "Dancing in the Kitchen" is certainly from mid-1897, as it not only has that "...of New York City" announcement, but it's got a sound very much like a Columbia from 1897, but the pianist in not determined. It has more of a tinge of Hylands in its sound and slightly ahead playing(similar to "The Jealous Blackbird" somewhat). It's a hard one to dissect, both of these are hard to anyhow. 

This next one is not much of a mystery. this one is a simple Schottiche( pronounced "shotish"), without any confusing date indicators. Here's "The Kentucky Jubilee Singers" by the Columbia orchestra, 1901. It's a very fun cylinder with some great melodies, and very audible piano accompaniment. I'm pretty sure that was Dan Quinn doing the announcement, which may seem odd, but him announcing it makes the date very exact, 1901. Quinn did some announcements for the Columbia orchestra and the Imperial Minstrels in 1901. This one just happened to be one of them. There's not much about this one that needs to be said, because it explains itself fully when listening to it. 

This last one is an early Rag-Time favourite. It's Monroe Rosenfeld's "Virginia Skedaddle" recorded in 1901(announcement and calls by Harry Spencer). Rosenfeld wrote this tune back in 1892 as a reaction to the gaining in popularity of the "cake walk", as it was beginning to be called rather than the old customary "Walk-Around". This piece was originally a lightly syncopated "patrol"(like "Patrol Comique"), with sections that were much to the likeness of early Cake-Walks of the mid-1890's. But of course, when you get Hylands in the Columbia orchestra, it becomes the "rag'' that it almost became back in 1892.

I hope you enjoyed this!