All-right folks, I apologize for not writing so frequently. It's been difficult to sit down and write single blog post, and as you know it's holiday time. Here I have been stuck at home often recently with all the rain we've been getting here in northern California. So with that in mind, it seems like a good time to get a post in.
In the last post I promised I'd write about Charles Prince, and so I will. A little over a month ago, I started doing some preliminary digging on Prince, thinking that it wouldn't lead to much. Well, I was sure wrong there...
In the past I had heard from a few collectors and notes in Jim Walsh's articles that Prince was a difficult person, but I never would have expected the amount of difficulty to be discovered.
Prince around 1904.
On previous digs I found bits on Prince regarding his early days in San Francisco, as that was where he grew up.
So here's a summary of what I found:
Prince was born most likely in December of 1867, in San Francisco. In 1870 his family was living in the small logging village of Santa Cruz(it was difficult to get to this town before 1872). Prince's family had relative status to old California standards, being in the fruit packing business. They also prided themselves on being married into the famous Adams family, descended from presidents John Adams and John Quincy Adams. This is where the Adams middle name comes from. By the mid-1870's, the Adams-Prince family had moved back into SF, settling nearer to the Barbary Coast than to the "slot"(where the cable cars were to be built in just a few years). It is unclear when Charles entered in the music business, but it was likely very early on, and he played piano to start. In his mid-teens' Charles was working as a lifeguard of some kind along the north shore of the city. At age 20(1888), he married a woman whose name I could not track down. he lived with his wife and father Henry in the northern part of the city(toward the top of Larkin street to be more specific for you SF scholars).In 1892 he decided to head east to New York for better music work.
Somehow he got tangled in the new-fangled business of recording sound. It is possible that Prince knew the four Emerson brothers in SF before they all headed back east, and this may have been how he got into recording. However he got involved, he entered in the exclusive crowd with some of the major recording workers, such as Frank P. Banta and Dan W. Quinn. He made his first batch of records as an accompanist on July 30th, 1892. It's uncertain when he left recording, but it was likely within the next year or two after that first few sessions with Banta. Sometimes between 1890 and 1895 he likely divorced his mysterious first wife, and left New York to go and live in the Kansas City area. While in Kansas city he hastily married an 18 year old girl named Sadie(there is a chance she may not have been 18 when they married). By 1899, he and Sadie were back in New York, and he was working in the family business of packing fruit.
From his first experience in recording, Prince stayed in touch with the media and press around the then fast growing recording business. he was likely one of those few outside figures who had a regular subscription to The Phonoscope. His friends from the previous decade probably knew of his return to New York, keeping at the back of their minds that he was around and could be a candidate for a director's job in a studio. It took until the end of 1902 for Prince to finally return to recording as an accompanist. When he returned, he accompanied the first operatic Columbia records issued. Prince just happened to join at a very touchy time for Columbia, as Fred Hager was leading the studio orchestra, playing a regular weekly park gig, composing popular pieces, and Hager and Justin Ringleben were being mentored by the then fading studio pianist Fred Hylands. So, in summary, there was little room for Prince when he initially joined the Columbia staff. In early 1903, Hager's name was still being aptly advertised in Columbia's catalogs and supplements. It took until the middle of that year for Hager's stronghold on the Columbia lab to collapse. As with all of Hager's other ambitions, the other record companies he had in his control all came crashing down at once(this includes Columbia, Victor, Lambert and Leeds). Amid Hager's lamenting, Prince made his way in, and with that he brought in many new musicians, but also kept many of Hager's still employed.
Prince received an awfully warm reception from the old Columbia guard. Len Spencer and Henry Burr took an especial liking to him. Prince wrote out several descriptive pieces with Spencer in the first few years of his employment at Columbia, such as this one here:
You can hear Spencer's voice shouting throughout.
Prince gladly employed Justin Ring as his chief arranger and assistant, much like Hager had. He also had Hager's brother Jimmy in the band as a percussionist.
And as we know, in the next few years, Prince's band and orchestra became a respectable rival to Sousa's and Arthur Pryor's bands on records. While Prince was gaining fame in the record field, he tended to a few of the wandering record folks he employed. In 1905, Prince had Henry Burr boarding at his place, and it is likely that he also had Ring and Jimmy Hager stay there when they needed it.
Once we get to the teen's this is when Prince's personal life gets complicated again. Between 1910 and 1925, he was married and divorced several times, and when I combed through each census and other public records in this period, he wasn't living with his wife most of the time. His daughter Catherine, from his marriage to Sadie, remained with him throughout these times, but the others living with him changed frequently, but all of these folks he lived with where strategic and somewhat related to his line of work, whether it be recording or performing in pit orchestras.
In 1918, another orchestra director began making his way into the Columbia studio, much like Prince himself had nearly 20 years earlier. This new director was Robert Hood Bowers. It took until 1923 for Bowers to take Prince's place, but this didn't mean that he was gone from Columbia for good just yet. As his job at Columbia was fading out, he took a brief job at the company who made Paramount records. By the next year, Prince signed a somewhat brief contract with Victor. Prince conducted a bunch of sessions for the next year, and played piano accompaniments for singers such as Billy Murray and Ed Smalle. Prince may not have been at Victor for long, but he happened to be there at an essential time, amid the transition from acoustic to electric recording.
By the end of 1925, he was out of recording for good.
By the end of the 1920's, he was working in radio, likely due to his contact with Justin Ring, who at that time was getting steady work as a sound effects man on the radio. By the worst part of the depression, he moved back to California, settling in San Rafael with his daughter Catherine. In the years before he died, he conducted a community orchestra and worked as a music teacher. He died on October 11th, 1937.
He is buried in Colma, California. None of his wives were buried near him.
Well there ya go. Never could have expected how fruitful that dig was. Adding all this to what Jim Walsh wrote about him creates a very solid story. Walsh described him as a sporty type, being very much into baseball and horse races. He was also a prominent member or sporting clubs, the Masons, and the Lamb's Club of new York. I guess this helps to paint the picture of why he was so difficult and couldn't keep a wife for many years.
So after I did all this research and writing(this information was consolidated into an article for The Syncopated Times). I felt an aggressive obligation to pay my respects to Prince, so the day after all this digging I paid his grave a visit.
His headstone even has the signature Columbia notes on it.
So at least we know more about Prince now.
Now moving on!
At the end of the last post I hinted at a record that was coming in the mail, and it has since gotten to me. The record was listed incorrectly, but it was definitely not a disappointment! This record came in a lot of three records I won in an auction, and all three of them are stellar copies. Here is that Climax record I was talking about:
That--is--a--beautiful--record.
It looks a bit rough, and its value was harpooned by a small crack, but these things do not take from the historical importance of the record.
First of all, this is a 10-inch Climax record. Those are much more uncommon than the 7-inch Climax records. A collector told me that for every 50 7-inch Climax records, there is one 10-inch. The next thing that this record has going for it is the fact that the composer is specifically listed on the label. Only for very special occasions were the composers listed on the label. In the first few years of Columbia making disc records, they almost never credited composers on the labels. This record also has an announcer that sounds just slightly different from the usual Zon-O-phone-Climax/Columbia announcer(who I think is probably Hager). Anyway, here's a mediocre transfer of the record:
I had heard a 7 inch version of this record, but never the entire piece as it is played here. This is one of Justin Ring's very fist pieces, published in early 1902. This record was likely one of the unissued takes that was saved to be issued on the Climax label. When they recorded this, they recorded 7 take of this piece. Takes 1, 6, and 7 were overtly issued, but takes 2 to 5 are nowhere to be seen. This unusual take is likely take 2 or 3. Keep in mind that on all Climax records they left out the take numbers.
This record is a great piece of history amid the depths of my Ring and Hager project. No less were the other two records I won in this auction.
This record here, was recorded in 1900, and is basically the closest thing you an get to an E condition record of this era. It includes some of the loudest and clearest piano accompaniment I've heard of this era.
Here you go:
Other than the loud piano accompaniment, one of the first things I noticed about this record is how similar it is to the 1901 Climax recording of it. You can hear that here:
The similarities are astonishing.
This Zon-O-Phone record did not disappoint, and it makes sense why it was so much more expensive than the other two I got.
So here's the third one:
This record was made on the same day as the previous one. It has the number right after the last one. It looks to be in much rougher shape than the other, but it's actually not nearly as bad as it looks. In some ways it has a fuller sound than the other one.
Here you go:
Before I got this record, I was only able to hear a crappy transfer of it online.
Both of these Zon-O-phone records are exceptional examples of the height of their sound quality. Both of these are also prime examples of Ring and Hager's relationship, as well as their great chemistry musically. These were recorded before they really got into composing together, but you can see that the foundation for this decades long friendship was already there.
Anyway, I was going to dive into a longer subject on Columbia matrix numbers, but I don't want to get into that just yet. This subject deserves its own post.
Hope all your holidays are going well so far!
Happy holidays.
