Back to 33 and Levels of Preservation

It's been awhile since I've written about Hylands, Spencer and Yeager. With all that I've written about them so far, I still haven't completely exhausted all there is to know about them. It would be good to spend some time speaking of them, as I have been so buried in Ring and Hager material for the last few months. 

So, we all remember them! 

In the last few days, I have spent a lot of time thinking back to the old stories I read about them in The Phonoscope and the brief mentionings of it throughout Jim Walsh's writing. 

I observed something very curious while doing this. 

I hadn't really thought long about how Roger Harding set up a publishing house across the street from Hylands in 1900. The more I spent thinking on it, the whole thing seemed more odd and interesting. 

So just to refresh, in 1899, Hylands and Harding were the main driving forces for the Hylands Spencer and Yeager firm. Harding was essentially the fourth name in the firm. Hylands and Harding collaborated on a few songs they published in 1899, and it seems that they were working together perfectly. But, in early 1900, Harding picked up and left Hylands and the crew to set up his own publishing firm across the street from the Columbia studio. 

Something odd happened. And in this last week, I really started thinking about how odd this was. Hylands and Harding abruptly split up, and considering what came about in the time succeeding this, whatever happened couldn't have been good. But! Harding wasn't the first to jump ship. In mid-1900, it seemed that all the tight knit Columbia studio community started breaking up, all jumping ship one by one. In the few 1900 editions of The Phonoscope that I have flipped through, I noticed that slowly it seemed a lot more the community who wrote for and were mentioned in that publication were starting to split up. One of the pieces I recall  from around mid-1900 stated that Hylands himself was beginning to take jobs elsewhere, and working in vaudeville again(as he had been doing before recording).  That particular statement seems odd to me. 

There's that section!

So the "big sales" thing doesn't seem to fit too well. By mid-1900, the publishing firm thing was starting to wind down, and it was doing so quite fast. It was in that time frame that Roger Harding picked up and left, and when folks were starting to become intrigued with the new fangled Zon-O-Phone. By fall of 1900, the fine Turkish carpet he had so hardly worked for had been torn from under Hylands. Everyone had abandoned him and the publishing firm. 

But why?

For a year, the Hylands Spencer and Yeager thing was booming, and Hylands had made his way up to the top from being the deadbeat rag-time pianist Columbia hired in 1897. Keep in mind that he was a nobody when he started at Columbia in 1897, in 1898 his significance became clear with the popularity of his signature rag-time accompaniments. Something devastating happened, and I have no idea what it was. It caused such important benefactors like Roger Harding and Steve Porter to quickly take their leave before the others. 

(Harding in 1895, from a friend's collection)

(Steve Porter at the recording horns in 1897)

Whatever it was that forced these close friends to all break up so quickly, it kept them apart. Hylands still worked at Columbia, as he had to, but a lot of the crew, like Steve Porter, Gaskin, Quinn, etc, didn't work together much after 1900. For example, the Imperial Minstrels records had stopped by 1901, no longer was the old crew working in big groups like that. Everyone started going off and doing other things, such as working for other companies and heading into recording management(George Schweinfest did the latter for example). Russell Hunting left in 1899, Steve Porter left for the far east in 1902, and Spencer started working for Lambert, Edison, Zono, and more. 

Something went seriously wrong with the publishing firm, and as I said, I have no idea why, and I don't really have any good solid guesses. 

One thing that came to mind however, is that this where Ring and Hager come in. Ring started working at Columbia right as the Hylands Spencer and Yeager thing was falling apart. So of course someone like him would have been so valuable at that point. The 25 year old Ringleben was as willing to work as Banta, had no place to live, was caring for an aged father, and willing to try anything to get decent money. The coming of Ring may also have helped out Hylands put out the fires that were still burning from the collapse of the publishing firm. 

 (most likely Hylands and Ring around 1902)

As Columbia was transitioning into the 20th century, it seemed that it was perfect timing for Ring and Hager to start making their way into the lab. Hager had his ambitions elsewhere, but Ring was working for the then orchestra director Thomas Clark, next Hager, then ultimately Prince. Hylands was taking jobs elsewhere by 1901, though he was still working regularly at Columbia. I suspect tensions were high when one of the old guard at Columbia had to work with Hylands then. Someone like Spencer would have been bitter working with Hylands after 1900, but it did happen, and luckily with the new talent acquisitions at that point, Spencer wouldn't have to work with Hylands as much. 

I believe I have mentioned that based on the sequence of studio pianists, each previous pianist was to mentor the next one, as it required very specific skills to become proficient as a phonograph accompanist. Hylands likely mentored Ring for a short period of time, this time being right after Hylands Spencer and Yeager.

Anyway, I'm starting to talk about something else, so I'll leave it at that.

Who knows what it was that split up the tight knit Columbia community in 1900...The fact that it happened so quickly is tantalizing, and because of this i will continue to look for hints. There's really no way to definitively find out why this happened, but there might be hints. I hope you recall that no one talked about Hylands in interviews. So all of this Hylands Spencer and Yeager nonsense was never well documented in the first place. Folks like Quinn and Porter didn't say a word of it, even though we know for certain they were part of it.

And that is a good transition to my next topic! 

Back to some Ring and Hager research!  One thing that has always fascinated me as a researcher of this very scant area of music history is how the characters involved in the history spoke of and interpreted it. Jim Walsh spoke with the last bunch of the original recording stars, Quinn, Joe Belmont, Byron Harlan, and Hager to name a few. Quinn's writings to Walsh are among the most extensive accounts of the earliest recording business. A long while ago I did a very detailed post where I pulled apart parts of Quinn's letters. As researchers now, we have everything laid out before us, but even with that being true, we have to spend many hours decoding all this information. A lot of things are mixed up and don't exactly go together the ways that the original participants stated. A few posts ago I detailed Hager's accounts of the OkeH field recordings of 1923-1925, and how his accounts are very valuable, but present issues. 

I just got an article on Justin Ring published, and it was a very difficult undertaking. It was this way for many reasons, and I don't even know some of them. I want to write a definitive article on Hager, but there's so much information on Hager, that a single article won't do. I ran into this problem with the Justin Ring project.

(Ring in 1903 and Hager in 1895 or so) 

I spent months getting frustrated about how I could find so little on Ring in that essential period after 1885 and before 1910. This is still proving true unfortunately. So as my mind works, I started asking the questions as to why it would be so difficult to find any information on Ring in general. Hager was easy to find information on, at this point I actually have a pretty good idea of what he was like as a person, and what interviewing him would have been like. With Ring, it has always been a dead end. 

So I keep going back and pouring through the primary sources(including Hager's own papers) to see if I could get some second handed hints. While doing this, it occurred to me how much Hager loved talking about his past and the projects he was part of. He probably had thousands of papers very meticulously organized in folders, and records and books too. This becomes very clear while flipping through Walsh's writings from Hager in his articles. When Walsh started writing to him in the 1940's, Hager realized that all his memories and written history would be important, and that's where he started gathering everything, and started to spend a good amount of time writing about the history he drove and witnessed. Soon he became consumed with the joy of reminiscence and digging through his papers and books. 

(a bit from Hager's writing published in the April, 1951 edition of Hobbies)

You can tell Hager loved going through his stuff. When Walsh reminded him of something, he would go and look for it, if he couldn't find it, he'd ask others who would probably have it. Hager had taken most of Cal Stewart's material by the time he was writing to Walsh, so much of the information we have on Stewart was from Hager's own very meticulous descriptions in his letters to Walsh. So, clearly Hager was very involved in and aware of his past. He knew that what he did was important. But what about Ring?

Hager wrote so much and very much enjoyed getting buried in his past, as he had a very carefully organized scrapbook to accompany the thousands of papers he kept regarding himself and others like Cal Stewart. When Walsh was writing to Hager, he mentioned his partner Ring a bunch of times, as even then it was difficult to separate them. 

(Walsh's September 1962 description of the photo below)

(from a friend's collection)

Even Walsh described them as inseparable. It's possible that Walsh wrote to the old Ring, but he didn't get anything back. Walsh unfortunately had the same situation happen with Arthur Collins. He wrote to Collins in 1932, but never got anything back. A few years later Collins' wife Anna wrote back and told Walsh that he received and pondered on his letter, but ultimately decided it wasn't worth it to write back. 

So I'm thinking that a similar situation may have happened with Ring. Now this is where Ring and Hager were opposites. Hager kept everything, and Ring kept nothing. This is the point I was getting to here. This may be why it is so difficult to find anything on Ring. So consider how he lived while working for Hager and Prince. He had no place to live, he wasn't married, and writing arrangements and playing accompaniments wherever he could. With that frugal lifestyle, there was no way he could have kept anything. He was constantly adapting to the times, so of course he had little interest in preserving the past. 

So consider this...

If you were to go and visit Hager for an interview in say, 1953, he would so very much enjoy talking to you about history. He would gladly answer every question, and would tangent on that to tell another story, and another...and...another. He would go and dig things out as you spoke. the amount of information would be invaluable, and there would be so much of it you'd either be there all day and night or you'd have to come back for more. So the point being, that Hager would be the ideal person to interview about this stuff. You'd probably leave with a few things of his too. 

So let's say you made the trip down to mid-eastern Florida in 1960 to visit Justin Ring. You'd get to his place, and one of his daughters would answer the door. You'd be kicked off his property. Ring would quietly be sipping tea listening to the radio or thumbing through Variety, with his glasses tipped down on his nose. It would all be there...everything...all the sounds, people, words, and memories, but they were never to leave his mind. He wouldn't talk about any of it. He preferred to leave it all behind,  and being the sole survivor of his family by then, he had no business thinking about all his dead friends. 

But like the last subject I wrote about in this post, why?

Who knows?

Considering the amount of things he did, and the kind of people he had to work for and with in those 50 years, he probably had good reasons to keep-a-movin. All the way back to Hylands in 1898, he saw everything, and probably escaped death several times while all his friends were dropping dead around him, starting with Frank P. Banta in 1903, and ending with his brother Franz in 1960. 

Ring is a lot like how I'd think Banta would have been if he had lived long. Banta was perfectly content being the quiet and obedient accompanist, and likely spent little time talking about work with those who weren't in the business. He was so buried in work that many other things in life were not important. So interviewing him about recording would he difficult. 

This is why I study the neglected accompanists. They saw everything, and despite their lower reputations in the musical community(excluding issler), they got the last word. And you know what? 

Ring got the last word. 

He may not have spoke it, but he got it all-right. 

The accompanists we hear on these records were not famous in their day as accompanists, and they weren't famous in general. We always hear about these big names like Ben Harney, Eddie Foy, Anna Held, even Mike Bernard, and they were so highly regarded in their day, but, with the exception of Bernard, they aren't the ones whose voices and legacies were immortalized. It's the ultimate payback, the most neglected and overworked performers in the early studios got the last word back then, and even now. I'm talking about the accompanists of course. Issler, Banta, Hylands, Ring and the rest got the last word, the last driving notes, after the main performers finish. The accompanists and studio workers are the ones we can get to know better than even the main performers, as we hear them on everything, not on just some things. 

So, anyway, this has been a hell of a case study! Before I close out I'd like to share a pair of records that I believe are arrangements by Justin Ring. Based on the composition style compared to his accompaniments, these arrangements line up to that style. I am also thinking that after Ring and Hager split up from 1906 to 1912 or so, Ring worked for Prince at Columbia. 

https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/matrix/detail/2000138962/3405-Sliding_Jim

https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/matrix/detail/2000139001/3444-Dixie_queen_march

So there ya go folks! 

Hope you enjoyed this!

"33" and Ossman intrigue

What is meant by "33"? 

Well, when I use that number, that's what I use to refer to where Fred Hylands lived as a publisher in 1899 and 1900. In the past few weeks I've had a few important realizations about Hylands and the place that he was known for around the Columbia studio. 

When I first joined ancestry a few weeks ago, I didn't immediately go for the Hylands family, since I had already a very detailed understanding of them, and had most of the important paperwork to back up most things regarding them. The first family I went for was the Hager's(who originally spelled their name Hagar which makes sense). After a few hours of digging for other recording stars, I finally decided to test my knowledge of the Hylands family by digging a bit on them. Turns out that was a good idea. A few interesting things came up that I could never have guessed. 

So the name of this post is pertaining to 33, which was the house number for Fred's publishing firm on West 27th street in 1899. The building still stands there today as far as I know, and is currently awaiting someone to up and rent it. 

From the advertisement that Fred placed in The Phonoscope in 1899, it seems that his 33 had a few purposes, and not just limited to publishing. In his ad, we see Burt Green's name dropped in there as his main assistant. Here's a link to the ad just so you can really see it in all its glory:

https://archive.org/stream/phonoscope13hunt#page/n489/mode/2up

Just as we see often in Hylands' endeavors, he was always open to having company at his location, and remaining ever social. This weakness of his led to a lot of issues, but it seemed that this was his source of extra income while working at Columbia. I had seen the 1900 census record before where Hylands and his wife were before, but until recently I hadn't been able to see whether or not he had some interesting guests crashed there.  Fred, Marie and his father Charles were listed at almost the very bottom of the page, so only two other boarders were shown to be there, a traveling salesman and his wife. Out of my burning curiosity, I flipped to the next page to see three more curious renters there. These three men weren't your typical laborers either. 

Here's who they were:

Noble Allen, a single Draper from the state of Georgia.

Louis Crotan, a single Traveling Salesman extracted from French Canada. 

Max Packer, a single Russian ladies' tailor.

Those aren't your typical young men of that time. When flipping to that page, I half expected to see someone from Columbia, whether it be a performer or engineer, but it's perhaps more interesting to see these rather Bohemian men living there with Fred and Marie at the time. Now what can we gather from these interesting people? Well, take notice that all these men are single, and they were all basically exactly the same age as Fred(27-28), and the wife of the first traveling salesman was English like Marie. Now try and put the pieces together. Clearly this was a partnership of its time, experimental, hot, and new. With Fred's father running the place, and collecting some of the rent from the young men(not including any songwriters or performers), it makes more sense what the dynamic of 33 was. This is a very progressive idea, but it was similar to the fashionable French way of living at that time. 

Father took care of the money, so that left Fred and Marie to run loose. This makes so much more sense now. Imagine 33 not too long before then, when Len Spencer was much more invested in the business, and likely crashing there at least twice a week, and getting to work with Fred much more often. By the middle of 1900, the firm was winding down, and things weren't looking so bright for Fred's vision. So I would imagine the time around when the census was taken was a wild time for Fred, aside from being at Columbia all the time. In the succeeding months Fred would sell most of his stock to a larger publishing firm and lose most of the love and trust he had in the Columbia staff and management. 

But with all this in mind, we can now apply this suspicion to other songwriters he worked with later, and as well as the ones he worked with around the same time. Speaking of that, I have tried multiple times to track down some of these illusive songwriters that Fred worked with, but have achieved no success in digging. I tried J. Grant Gibson, and Will J. Hardman, and wasn't able to find a thing on either of them. These two objects of Fred's affections will remain mysterious until something shows up on them. I know nothing and suspect next to nothing about Grant Gibson. I only know that Hylands and Gibson were both white rats, and that Gibson had known Fred far longer than the year of their 1912 piece:

Gibson's name shows up here and there when digging into Hylands' Broadway history, which almost guarantees Gibson was a white rat that Hylands bossed around while in his leading position. 

Anyway, I hope you all get the drift here regarding Hylands. Just think of how popular experimental types of marriages were in the 1890's, and that now it seems that Fred's was no exception, and this particularly makes sense considering their theatrical line. 

Now to move on to some intrigue!

(Ossman around 1891-92)

Vess Ossman will forever have a special place in my heart, because his grave was the first of these recording stars I visited. It was particularly emotional for me to set those roses on his modest headstone, after it had been covered in dirt for decades--almost forgotten. 

Before I searched up Hylands on ancestry, I of course wanted to see what there was on Ossman that I didn't already know. Turns out there's quite a large family out there. Not only are there lots of Ossman's, but there are plenty of Ossman's wife Eunice's family out there too. That's a good thing, that means there are plenty of people to potentially talk to regarding Vess. Hopefully I'll work up the nerve to do that sometime rather soon. While it may be good that there are plenty of Ossman's out there, this can also lead to issues trying to cross reference the information to make sure everything lines up alright. There are multiple entries for Ossman, from different sides of the extended family, so it took me awhile to really get the information right. 

I had known before that the Ossman's had unfortunate luck with their children. Only four of their seven children lived to be older than 5. Yes this was common in that time, but it's still hard luck regardless. It makes sense why they were so avid with having children when considering where Eunice ended up being buried. Just today I visited the location where Eunice was buried in 1930, and it happened to be at the nicest Catholic cemetery nearest where I live. Her grave was unfortunately unmarked, but I did find the exact location. I had some time in peace to think about their marriage, and how it was similar to one that I have already tried cracking open. Thinking over the scandalous skipping of town by Ossman, it reminded me of the whole running joke that was passed around the Columbia staff regarding Spencer's love life. In Walsh's Spencer article(the longest one), it is recalled that the boys at Columbia made fun of how Spencer had run off with his first wife(Margaret), without getting the go-ahead to marry her. 

This is actually similar to Ossman. He pulled the same thing with Eunice, though in his case the girl was younger, in fact too young to legally marry him when they skipped town in 1890. The more I thought about this, the more similarities I saw between Ossman and Len Spencer. Both of them went through quite a lot to be with the women they married, and at first loved them truly. As awful as this may sound, hear me out with this...

After all the trouble they went through, they ended up fulfilling the religious rite of their wives, basically just using them. This would be in typical fashion of the time period of course. Do not assume that I am calling offense to this, as it is common to see such a thing when studying this period of time. In this case, I call for the observation of another other than Len Spencer pulling this, the similarities are astonishing. With this in mind, it becomes clearer why Ossman and Spencer were good friends for so long. 

Now let's step to some more interesting intrigue, rather than theoretical musings. While digging around on the most reliable and detailed Ossman page on ancestry, there didn't appear to be any surprises, until it seems that old Vess had a son with an unknown woman that wasn't his beloved Eunice. 

How Scan'lous!

This is exactly the intrigue that I'd expect from Ossman. While it initially came as a surprise, it made sense and didn't jar me so much. It's curious also to see the date that all this intrigue came down, which was in 1917, rather late for Vess to be fooling around. Consider that 1917 was when Vess was performing with the Eight Victor Artists along with Arthur Collins and the crew. Such fooling around I would expect from Ossman in the mid-1890's, while he was touring with Banta as his accompanist, not in the later teen's while his performing was winding down. This paints Ossman to be much like a Mike Bernard type, but a little less wild and quick to make decisions. With this in mind, we can now consider Ossman as one of those authentic Rag-Timers of the 1890's, just like many of those rag composers we love.

Whew! The analysis in this post ended up being heavier than expected...

Just to diverge from all of that, here's a great new transfer from Santa Barbara with some fantastic Banta piano accompaniment: 

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?queryType=@attr+1=1020&num=1&start=1&query=cylinder17203

The beginning and end of this record is really where it's at. Banta plays some typical schottische melodies and rhythms, but they're played so aggressively and quickly that it attracts much of the attention on the record, even more than much of Dudley's singing to be honest. It's always nice to hear Banta play song and dance tunes such as this one. His strange sense of rhythm also comes through very well in his intro on this record, with the measure counting and rhythm a little out of whack, which adds to the eccentric charm of Banta's playing on many records. 

Next post I will dig into the new Hager discoveries! Stay tuned everyone!

Hope you enjoyed this!

A Mystery Partially solved and words from Banta

Thanks to the help of Charlie Judkins and Mason, it seems we now have at least an idea of who Will J. Hardman was. 

The reason that is had been a dead end every time anyone looked for any traces of Hardman is because he was English! It makes so much sense now why there was next to nothing out there on him in terms of finding the basic biographical information. What's more, Hardman wrote a book in 1884 called A Trip to America which is an endlessly entertaining read. Just today I was sent the link to the book and powered through 80 pages of it since it quickly captivated me. 

If you want to start reading the thing, here's the link:

https://books.google.com/books?id=bZkLAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=will%20hardman&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj8j8_Ajr_bAhXRu1MKHawFAEcQ6wEIKjAA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Don't get sucked in too far!

I'm not entirely certain whether or not to connect these lines yet, if that's the same guy. It's got to be though, since he can be found in public records around the late 1880's living in Brooklyn as a printer/bookbinder. At least that clears up why he would be of use to Hylands and Spencer. After reading a lot of that book, it's really nice to get a well founded idea of what the guy was like, and that it oddly corresponds to the strange and poetic lyrics that he wrote with Hylands. Though Hardman is basically exactly the opposite kind of person I had long guessed. You can't get them all turns out... 

Hardman was described in the book as "Aggressively English"(which is a hilarious term I will now appropriate). But oddly enough he was also described in a similar way physically to Hylands, which also would be an object of attraction for Hylands. It's very clear that Hardman was a very educated man, who loved books more than anything. This is very much evident throughout the book's chapters and vibrant descriptions of New York in 1883 and of the entirety of the U.S. in that time. There's quite a bit of humor throughout his descriptions of travels, which mirrors that of his work with Hylands. Even though Hardman had been writing music here and there in the 1880's and 1890's, it still seems strange to find a man so intelligent and greatly invested in literature to reach the low point of working with such a hustler as Fred Hylands. In his 1884 book he describes the common character of old New York, the "confidence man" who so often scammed new travelers and unknowing street people. Hardman himself was taken by the arm of a few of these scammers, and they turned out to be famous lottery brokers, who tinkered with the numbers and players. To assume Hylands in a similar position, Hardman would only think of Hylands in a similar way, especially with his faux background in economic studies as a teenager. Surely Hardman was wise to the ways of Hylands, of course after he got to know the studio rambler(Hylands). Likely from the convincing grin and genuine business intellect of Len Spencer, Hardman was swayed to revive his musical talent and write with Hylands. Again, after reading through that book, he doesn't actually seem too different from what we can piece together about Hylands. 

Yes now that we know all this, it's all fine and dandy, but the basic questions still haven't been answered. We don't know how old he was, when he died, or anything else like that. I would guess he was born around the same time as Silas Leachman(1859), since he said that he was married in 1883. He seemed to have a particular fondness for the theater and the music that was played, as evident in the chapter in his book regarding New York theater society. This remains another hint at why he connected so well with Hylands over a decade later. 

What's also rather humorous is how much he had to say about New York Hotel food. He spoke of the subject matter in such great detail, and with such admiration whilst also exhibiting his clear astonishment of the portions and perfection. Such a thing hints more at similarities to Hylands. Wink wink...

We may not have the basic information we would need to piece together Mr. Hardman, but at least we know why, and how and why he was of such value to Hylands, Spencer, and Yeager. Now that I've had the chance to read a bunch of his writing, his strange lyrics to "You Don't Stop the World from Going Round" makes much more sense, and its curious origins are much clearer. 

https://archive.org/details/YouDontStopTheWorldFromGoingRoundLenSpencer1899

Now to move to something that relates to the last post. In the last post I broke down Frank P. Banta's most eccentric characteristics in terms of accompaniment. 

This time we actually have words from Banta!
I mentioned in the last post that there aren't any hints to Banta's personality, but now there's a tiny little glimpse that sums him up pretty well. 
There's a newspaper article from June of 1893 regarding the newest realm of recording for the North American phonograph Company. When reading over the little article on the dense page, it takes a little while to see the words "Mr. Frank Banta" written on the page.
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030272/1893-06-25/ed-2/seq-5/

Banta in a nutshell:
"Oh that doesn't matter...just hum it over once and I'll catch it."

Yep, that's pretty much how Dan W. Quinn described Banta. Quinn praised Banta's perfect pitch and ability to play a song entirely through after once hearing it. This very quote above to the fullest extent supports Quinn's claims regarding Banta, and why all the studio workers enjoyed working with him so much. In this situation of having a Banta quote, I should most certainly dig out that record by Banta's orchestra that likely has the voice of Banta himself in the announcement. 
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?queryType=@attr+1=1020&num=1&start=1&query=cylinder11738
That voice at the beginning has got to be him. Never has a voice so perfectly matched the appearance of a studio star. 
Also, I think that's Banta's voice because I've heard a similar one on Edison records later on records that are of sketches, such as ones by Len Spencer. 
An example of this is here:
http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?queryType=@attr+1=1020&num=1&start=1&query=cylinder7434
One of those laughing voices is certainly Banta. The timing would indicate that he's there, as well as the little bit of piano accompaniment there is on the record. The thing about those laughing voices on this record is that there's this one that particularly sticks out at the very end. It's really exaggerated, but it has that same sort of weird twang that the voice at the beginning of the Banta's orchestra record has believe it or not. 
You can hear that same voice here too:
http://www.tinfoil.com/cm-9911.htm#ch0410


So now with that input, really try to imagine that twangy New Yorker voice speaking those words from the Sun article. 
Not often do the voices of these recording stars match their appearance, but it seems Banta's does. 

That voice suits that look surprisingly well, as do the very words that we have immortalized in that newspaper article. 

Before I finish, I'd like to share a new Santa Barbara transfer that is worth mention. Us Rag-Time scholars are on the hunt for records of early Hylands, which means recorded for Columbia for certain in 1897. This record I'm sharing is one of these so important records. 

here's the record:

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?queryType=@attr+1=1020&num=1&start=1&query=cylinder14095

Just to clear it up, the title they have listed is not the correct one. 

This tune was a popular one of 1896, originating from May Irwin's outstanding and renowned performance in The Widow Jones. 

There we go. 

The name of this early coon song is "I Want'cher Ma honey". 

This particular Hylands and Spencer record is very well recorded, and that means we can hear that piano loud and clear as ever. It can also be observed that the piano being played sounds rather awful. It's not out of tune so much as it's rather beat up and in rough shape. The accuracy of the piano's tuning is hard to tell because Spencer's singing was always questionable. But one thing is for sure, that piano had seen better days. Luckily(and unfortunately), this particular record allows for this to be heard with great clarity, particularly in the solo after the first chorus. That single note that Hylands plays to end the solo is really more like a thump than a tonal note. This is a time where we can be thankful that Edison's piano always sounded good, and there's a reason for it. Banta had experience in tuning pianos and the general mechanics that go into the piano. Hylands didn't know a thing about piano tech. Without this knowledge, and no Banta to tend to the thing, their piano at Columbia sounded the way it does in this 1897 record. What's odd however is the fact that Columbia's piano sounded okay after 1898. It's only in 1897, and not even the entirety of that year in fact, that their piano sounded thumpy and stripped of most dynamic capability. This fact does help us date records such as this early Rag-Time record by Spencer, but it leads one to question why this was true. Of course there is no way to definitively know why Columbia's piano sounded to awful in that short period of time, but the fact that Edison's piano always sounded good must have something to do with Banta's constant presence. 

Technology was not Hylands' specialty, and a crappy sounding piano can be a piece of evidence for this. 

But aside from that, the crappy sounding piano rather adds to the aesthetic of the record, as Hylands does play some banjo imitation riffs and a piano that sounds like that can often evoke such a banjo sound that's more realistic. 

Hope you enjoyed this! 

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!