Prince and new records

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:

https://archive.org/details/DestructionOfSanFrancisco

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:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h_euXSsWVe3W_bxFydigZkI2DipxQ6ln/view?usp=sharing

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:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h_euXSsWVe3W_bxFydigZkI2DipxQ6ln/view?usp=sharing

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: 

https://soundcloud.com/john-schulien/climax-62-intermezzo-sinfonica-cavalleria-rusticana-mr-fredrick-w-hager

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:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oC4S3PH5mSGBCggJFr22s_VFUN1f9qtf/view?usp=sharing

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.

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!

The studio pianist speaks and more new transfers

In the last week, I got a few interesting items in the mail. I had some issues with Ebay a few months ago, so I spent a bit of a hiatus away from Ebay. The sheet music market proved quite fertile in my time away, as I kept hearing of wonderful pieces of sheet music and records for sale. Nothing soul shaking for me luckily. Nothing like a pristine copy of "The Darkey Volunteer" or "Handsome Harry". 

So, I finally have gotten back into getting things on Ebay, and this last few weeks' items are very interesting. For a little while now, there have been a few postcards from the 1900's featuring song lyrics floating around on Ebay. recently, it was brought to my attention that a few of these cards had a particular publisher's name at the bottom. 

A few of these cards were published by Helf and Hager!

(well yes of course I chose that one)

I had no idea that these were made! Imagine my surprise upon seeing this. So, with this new found knowledge, I am wondering which songs of theirs were used for these cards. Recently I went digging through copyright records to see what oddities could be found, and should keep the eyes peeled for. There were lots of interesting pieces present, including some unexpected names!

To go on a bit of a tangent for a moment, my theory of Hager always having an arranger is closer to being proven. Just from all the digging through copyright records, there seems to have been an arranger for at least 90% of his pieces I have seen so far. I still have more things to dig through to definitively prove this, but it's looking good so far. While on this recent dig, Herbert Clarke made a few appearances as Hager's arranger! That got me curious about Hager's connection with Victor. Thanks to bits of Hager's own scrapbook(I do not own it), he saved a few clippings regarding his special trips to Victor in Spring of 1903. So we know he stuck around at Victor until at least the late fall of 1903, but how connected did he really become with Victor? Maybe when he became a publisher all the record companies jumped at him. His already high status must have been heightened when he became Mr. Helf's secretary. 

Anyway, i hope to snag some more of those Helf and Hager cards. Now that I know they exist, I'll be looking through most piles of old postcards at antique stores until I find another. 

So what's the highlight of the recent finds? Well, it's definitely an OkeH record! Now that I have been studying bits of Hager's personal collection, I have been anxiously searching around for OkeH and Rex records. There's actually a lot of material I find interesting and fit for my collection on OkeH, especially now that I own the physical evidence of Hager's involvement in the field recording projects of 1923 to 1925. So what is this record I got? It's a record I have heard about for awhile actually. Before all the deeper digging into OkeH and such, I saw this record listed and wondered what it would sound like. Well here ya go:

Seems simple enough. 

I had no idea what to expect from this. The performer listed is what is most attractive here, as it is something that is uncommon, though it paints Ring out to be the star. Well, considering my ever growing love for Justin Ring, this record seemed a perfect addition to my collection. 

But holy crap! When I played this thing I just about passed out! I couldn't believe my ears. That voice...the voice at the beginning. It can't be...but it must be! 

Listen here:https://drive.google.com/file/d/16PBlrdd2SkLrXMKldYx7grzDWTuCznG-/view?usp=sharing

The pianist speaks! Yes indeed folks, that is the voice of Justin Ring. 

(Ring in 1903 courtesy of Jason Sanders)

Now this record other than Ring's(quite pleasing I might add) voice at the beginning, isn't too special. Most of it is a celeste solo, which is pleasant, but not outstanding. But of course because this is my collection we're talking about, this record is invaluable. It holds the loud and clear words of Justin Ringleben, a significant rag-time pianist and composer, and important background figure on thousands of recordings. 

So how could this be used in relation to other records? 

The first thing that came to mind was that 1902-ish piano solo on Columbia. You know, that one I highlighted in a post a little while back? 

So after a few more months of studying Zon-O-Phone's and Columbias back and forth, I think I may have unlocked the mystery. When I did the post on this record awhile back I really was thinking the pianist was Hylands. But after more close examination of Hylands' whereabouts and Ring's invariable presence at Columbia, this is seeming more of a confusing mess. The most important thing to note about the 1902 record(0ther than the piano playing) is that announcer. In the post about this Columbia piano solo, I broke down the announcement, word by word, with the dialect dissected. 

Here's the record to refresh the mind of it:

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?queryType=@attr+1=1020&num=1&start=1&query=cylinder14515

That announcer really stands out. It's not someone recognizable to a collector of Columbia's of this period. It's not Harry Spencer, Joe Belmont, Tom Clark, or Quinn. Now that I have a very clear example of Ring's voice, I have been doing comparisons like mad to try and figure it out. I am really not sure what to say, as the announcer is almost definitely the performer. This has been itching at me or the last few days, as these two records should technically have the same voice at the beginning, but I am really not sure at all. This has been a great source of conflict, now that the perfect example of Ring's voice is in my hands. 

Anyway, if any of you have input about the comparison between the 1902 and the 1922 records, please comment! I'd love to read your input. 

After that OkeH came in the mail, I went searching for more example of Justin Ring's playing on that label. There's a fair amount of it that was issued luckily. The more I dig for them, the more I seem to find. It seems that later in his days in the studios, he became a better accompanist. He evolved, and that's a good thing. His odd sense of time became smoother as times changed. One particular record captured my heart. It's been awhile since I fell in love with a record in such a way, but this one did it. It seemed so generic, but it was heavenly. (I'm learning this is a pattern with the OkeH records I am going after).

https://archive.org/details/78_la-la_nathan-glantz-justin-ring_gbia0004086a/La+La+-+Nathan+Glantz+-+Justin+Ring.flac

Luckily they really had some of the best recording technology there, so the piano comes through astonishingly well. Ring's old sentimental style comes through on this one. Compare with this 1900 Zono:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By7WuiOUrg7YcDBSVEhGRDBFdnZYYmVhdXVXR3IxMVZ0aWNZ/view?usp=sharing

His sweet playing remained the same, which is nice for me studying his accompaniment style. What's interesting is that his rhythmic playing was still just a little bit out of whack in the early 1920's. Not nearly as eccentric as his early records for the Zon-O-Phone, but the soul is still there. 

Anyway, before I close, I'd like to share another new transfer. This one is another Spencer and Hylands! Yes I have been face deep in Ring and Hager studies, but I still return to the classic Rag-Time pair of Spencer and Hylands when Ring's eccentricities prove too much for me. 

This particular record is an early one for Spencer and Hylands, 1897 in fact. These early ones are the most essential for pinpointing when Hylands began working for Columbia. 

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?queryType=@attr+1=1020&num=1&start=1&query=cylinder16698

The piano sound is that signature terrible tone of 1897-1898 Columbias. There are some interesting bits the accompanist plays here, including bass heavy inversions of chords in the left hand at the vamps. Naturally, I would assume that in itself to be a Hylands characteristic, and logically it would be, as I have heard him play that often. In my last post I highlighted a 1902-ish take of "the Laughing song" by Johnson, and how the vamps are lumbering, as they were on previous takes by Johnson, and this is similarly present on this 1897 Columbia. 

Here's that 1902-ish Columbia from the last post:

https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/matrix/detail/2000135596/211-The_whistling_coon

Similar accompaniment style overall. And I am CERTAIN that the pianist is Hylands on that 1902-ish "Whistling Coon". Despite all that I have been learning about Ring and Hager's involvement at Columbia around that time, Hylands was still there occasionally. Of course when that happened he thundered in and pushed aside Ring and Hager with a domineering heave, as they were slowly taking his place. 

Anyway, that 1897Spencer and Hylands is fascinating, even though there isn't a piano solo at the very end. 

Hope you enjoyed this! 

Recent Research Travels

In the last week and a half, I have been on quite a journey, to Southern California. 

Just over a week ago, I returned from a 5 day trip via train to Santa Barbara and then to Los Angeles proper. I mentioned at the very end of my last post that i would be visiting UCSB, and that's exactly what I did. In the weeks leading up to my visit, I spent hours combing through the lists of what Santa Barbara's library holds in terms of early disc records, picking out things I wanted to see when I visited. The requests kept piling up, until I had about 40 records to listen to when I called. The amount of records were astounding, so many things that ought to be beautiful, and how they were. After a day of frustrating but in the end pleasant train travel the previous day, I finally found my way to where the special collections are kept on campus, I was led to their modest reading room overlooking the beautiful mountains. I was entirely at peace, sitting there in the quiet listening to these 40 or so records, and writing notes down on each one, it was heavenly. 

I don't want to share every single image I
took of these records, as it's quite a few, but these are a few of the standouts from the little collection I requested:

(yes I took pictures of every record I requested, just for my personal reference)

(Keep in mind that this is nowhere near everything else I heard from the stack)

So...why did I go through so much to do this? What would be the point of doing this if i couldn't take the transfers with me? Well, as I stated above, I took very detailed notes on each record, more particularly the Zon-O-Phone's. The reason I went though as much as I did to come and see these records was to study two dozen early Zon-O-phone's to try and build a better foundation for the 2(or three) pianists that worked for Zon-O-phone from 1899-1907(or so). For example, when I picked out the records to listen to, I specifically chose a few doubles of the same song by different artists, but on the same label. The most telling example I chose were 2 versions of "strike up the band, here comes the sailor". The versions I chose were both recorded on Zon-O-phone in the same year, but by Edward M. Favor and Billy Heins(I posted a picture of the Heins version above). One thing that became very evident about these takes was that it was certainly the same pianist on both of them. But what does that mean?

Well, I am recalling now how I described one of the takes in my notebook, one take was much more precise and took stranger risks at the times for solos. The take I was previously more familiar with was the Heins take, with the familiar and extremely well executed "sailor's hornpipe" at the very end, the Favor take had this ending also, but somehow they found the time to place the same tag in the middle of the record!(very hastily and sloppily I might add). You can hear a not too great transfer here: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eNE07ozZ38

This take is the better one overall, much better composed and thought out, the accompaniment anyway, Heins was always great. The two choruses of "sailor's hornpipe" seemed very improvised on the Favor take as I'm recalling now. But it's assuring to know that it's the same pianist on both, which isn't entirely surprising, but good to know. 

So did I come to any conclusions? Well, not really. I was hoping that hearing 35 more early Zon-O-phone's would solve my issues with Zono's accompanists, but it really didn't in the end. But there were some interesting things I observed about two records in particular. 

These two were particularly fascinating. I went back and listened to them perhaps half a dozen times each because of the accompaniments. The first one i would immediately assume to have the so-called Hager style accompaniment, and the second to have the Justin Ring accompaniment, and yes they did. But what about them made them so fascinating? 

Well, the first one is definitely the most unusual Zon-O-phone I've ever heard in terms of accompaniment. Denny sings the song very slow, and the accompanist follows in the most unusual and playful way, here are the notes I wrote about it:

Record 16--Goo Goo eyes by Denny, 1901 etched Lyre Zono. very funny and exaggerated intro and very playful as well as dynamic accompaniment. sung very slow by Denny, definitely an outstanding accompaniment...That pianist has got to be Hager: so dynamic, playful, humorous, adventurous, and full of odd syncopation as well as fifths and chords in the left hand for extra emphasis. rolled ending chords, can't forget the absolute precision and daintiness! 

So you can probably observe that I think that pianist is Hager. I am really starting to think that that strange and very distinct early Zon-O-Phone pianist is Hager, and thanks to a few passed down accounts of Hager's accompaniment, I am becoming increasingly certain of this. All of these characteristics seem to fit perfectly with what I gather of his personality, which is also quite nice. So, what about the second one above? That one was also just as good as the Denny from 1901, despite it being from the very end of the piano accompaniment era(1904). Already, the song proves for some good accompaniment to be expected(that's why I chose it!). If you haven't already heard it, here's a 1904 Columbia of it also by Bob Roberts:

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu/search.php?queryType=@attr+1=1020&num=1&start=1&query=cylinder10595

This song is already bluesy and well composed, so the accompaniment on the Zon-O-Phone I heard was no less. This record especially stood out because of the repeated use of many different early blues motifs(and this was recorded in 1904). It was definitely not the same pianist as the 1901 Zono I paired with it. The pianist is very similar, but it's not the same person. This pianist is the other familiar Zon-O-phone pianist, with the less dynamic and more aggressive touch that was common on many later Zono's with piano accompaniment. For this 1904 Zono, here were my notes:

Record 17--Wouldn't it make you Hungry by Roberts, 1904 brown 9-inch Zono. Very bluesy accompaniment exaggerated syncopation, every core blues motif present. This is likely Justin Ring! There are also bits of walking bass, very similar syncopation to that of Ring's "sweet potatoes" and "jovial Joe". 

Yeah, that pretty much sums up the pianist on later Zon-O-phone's. So I think that pianist is Ring, just logically, and considering his own rags and arrangements written around the same time. When I got back, I made sure to cross reference all the Zono's I had heard before with the corresponding labels, and pianists I think are the same. 

For the Denny record, I used these for cross reference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ITot33CDuo

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

And for the Roberts I used these: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVP33Ix8sp0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaTarCSS6gc

The accompaniments pretty much line up quite well with the assumed accompanists. The different styles fit pretty solidly into the periods that I associate them with. Occasionally I have heard standouts from this pattern, as I have heard a Zon-O-phone from 1901 where the pianist really sounds like the Justin Ring pianist, and I have heard teal label Zono's from 1902-03 that have that Hager accompanist on them. Naturally this would not be the case all the time, just thinking of this logically. Of course Hager and Ring would cross over often, it wouldn't always be Ring at a certain period of time, or vice versa. 

So aside from the majority of Zon-O-phone's I studied at UCSB, the few Berliners and Columbia's I chose were beautiful as expected, I listened to George Schweinfest play "Sand Dance" a dozen times, as it was so loud and clear, as well as catchy as hell. The melodies are so nice in that seemingly modest piece, but they are haunting. I have bits of that record run through my head still. I should say in referring to a popular 1890's song, "her smile haunts me still", Schweinfest's playing haunts me still. To keep an even amount of space to tell the gist of this long tale, I will move along to the next phase of my travels. I will come back to some more of these records I saw and heard at UCSB in the next few posts. 

The following day, after another 3 hour train ride, I got into LA proper, met with a friend that evening and was beyond excited for the day ahead. The next day I went to visit John Levin. I listen to brown wax every day, and a large percentage of these brownies are from the collection of Mr. Levin. So with this in mind you could imagine the overwhelming anticipation and excitement this brought me. I can barely describe the amount of extraordinary things I saw in his collection. I am still remembering little details of my 8 hour visit over a week removed. I only took two pictures from this visit, as it seemed I had no time to take out my phone, and out of kind courtesy I remained disciplined and intensely focused on the cabinets full of priceless brown wax. When he gave me the tour, there was drawer after drawer of every shade of brown, channel rims, and handwritten slips of every kind. he has two cabinets and three drawers full of Issler's orchestra records. There was a drawer of Kansas City Talking machine records, dozens of original wooden cases of U.S. records, and record boxes of every kind, some I could have never even conceived of existing. 

Here's the one crappy picture I took of any brownies he had. Look at that beautiful channel rim!

he allowed me to choose any bunch of records I wanted to hear, and those records I chose were:

"Echoes from the Snowball club" by Issler's orchestra(1898)

"La Paloma" by Issler's Orchestra(c.1895)

"Dora Dean" by Leachman(1898)

"The Cocoanut Dance" by Ossman(c.1893)

"The Cocoanut Dance" banjo solo by James Dunn of Kansas City(c.1897)

"African Wedding Dance(cake-walk)" by Issler's orchestra(c.1894)

"The Cat Came Back"(The singer's name escapes me now) North American record(1893)

That's quite a bunch! I had always wanted to hear Issler's "african wedding dance", as I assumed it to be a cake-walk or negro dance of some kind, an important thing to look for in studying early rag-time. To add to the significance of that particular record, Len Spencer does the calls as usual, and at the beginning Spencer states, "all ready for the cake walk!". 

There ya go folks, that's one of the earliest authentic references to the cake-walk on a record as far as I've heard. Why is it not surprising that it comes from Spencer? 

In keeping with my formula for studying pianists through cross referencing, I naturally chose two versions of the same song by different banjoists, I'm referring to the takes of "The Cocoanut Dance". Recently this particular piece has become especially interesting to me, as it's a great example of a dynamic and well composed negro dance, the direct predecessor to Rag-time. This piece was written in 1891 by Andrew Hermann, and was recorded countless times since that year, recorded as late as 1907. The Ossman version was interesting because it was a very early take, recorded almost certainly before 1895. I have been wanting to study more of Ossman's early recordings, as I would like to think that he dragged Banta into the studio to make them. Also, I think that Ossman played very slightly differently in his earlier days, his playing seemed a bit smoother and technically more odd. 

But the Kansas City "Cocoanut Dance" was something very different. I had never heard of James Dunn, but of course the label and banjo playing was entirely attractive to me no matter what. Those Kansas City records were all originals, so each one sounded superior, and this particular "Cocoanut Dance" was nothing less. It was swung and ragged in a way that one could expect from a record made in Kansas City in the mid-1890's, pretty much already sounding like Rag-Time, despite the piece being published several years before. The accompaniment was quite modest from what I remember, but there were points where the pianist followed with the swing quite well, but others where it kind of broke down(in a bad way) and got out of whack. 

The Leachman was special. It was one of those so highly prized brownies he made at home in the 1890's, but this particular far surpasses even the "Wedding of the Chinee and the Coon'' that's transferred online. https://archive.org/details/ChineeandtheCoonLeachman99

Well, for one thing, this other Leachman wasn't nearly as messy as the one in the link above. I recall that his own accompaniment on this "Dora Dean" brownie was fantastic, eccentric, and ragged as usual. Despite Leachman's handicap of being barely able to read any music, his piano playing is about as close as we can ever get to hearing an authentic itinerant Chicago pianist of the pre-ragtime era. Aspects of his playing are reminiscent to those of the rags of William Krell and even the accompaniments of Fred Hylands. I cannot stress enough how significant Leachman's accompaniments are, if you could hear how I would be passionately speaking about this it might help. 

Soon I will be able to very well dissect and study Leachman's accompaniment on his "Dora Dean". For now his odd humming chorus is forever going to reappear in my mind. That song is awfully catchy. 

After we got a few things transferred, he took me downstairs to see his disc record collection. Several hours earlier I spoke to him of my mission to dissect those two(0r three) Zon-O-Phone pianists, he took note of this as we poked around in the basement. As he began searching for a stack of Zon-O-Phone's, I was standing by attentively hypnotized on all the records surrounding, and he ever so modestly handed me a stack of about 15 5-inch Berliner's, like it was nothing.

"Here--look through these while I find the 7-inch Zon-O-phone's"

5-inch Berliners! The first commercially made disc records in history. 

Soon I spied an oddly shaped green box I had never seen before. 

The box looked like this:

(of course on the 12 hour train ride back I drew a cartoon that included this little box)

Yep, that's what it was, a Zon-O-phone record case. This case was intended for 9-inch records, and it was a nice shade of green. 

In this case, there were a handful of Zon-O-phone's that we listened to, including the one below:

Of course, pandering to my odd feelings about Hager's violin playing. But that aside, this record was fascinating, as it's quite upbeat compared to the other material Hager recorded violin solos of. So logically the pianist on that would have to be Justin Ring, right? Well yes, and actually, I must say that the accompaniment had similar aspects to that aggressive accompanist that I associate as Ring. 

In this bonus Zon-O-phone stack, there were a few Rosa Chalia records, despite those being operatic, I am very much interested in those, as I am almost certain that the accompanist on those(her Zono's that is) is Hager. It can't really be Ring, as Hager spent a few years in music school to study every kind of music, opera most certainly included. Keep in mind that I still do not know what Ring was doing in the late 1890's, but it's quite possible the two met while both in music school. 

Here's the best example I've heard so far:

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

It helps that Chalia was a great singer, and luckily since these ones I heard were on Zon-O-Phone, the piano was well recorded, but quiet as usual for them. 

There were a few Hager's and Zon-O-Phone orchestra records in this little stack, each one good as expected, and luckily all of his Zono's were in great shape, so each one sounded nearly new. 

When I got back to where I was staying, I was drained mentally and emotionally. It felt like I was recovering from an 8 hour long high, as it was so much to process. I'm still processing all that I saw that day. 

Anyway, there's a lot more for me to talk about from the last few weeks, but it's getting late as I'm writing this, and I would like to finish this post in one shot. In the next post I will speak of the illusive Eddie King, and how he's becoming a more significant figure in my studies each day. 

Hope you enjoyed this!