Thomas Lambert, Man of Mystery

This photo of Thomas Lambert accompanied his Freemasons obituary

As we mentioned in an earlier post, we are preparing a compilation of the earliest known Yiddish cylinders called Attractive Hebrews. Along with our colleagues at the University of Wisconsin, we’ve been trying to find more information about Thomas Lambert, namesake of the Lambert Record Company, which made the records in the early years of the 20^th century.

Everyone who knows anything about the Lambert brand knows about the Yiddish cylinders, although few have seen or heard one. We were hoping to find references to them in newspapers or magazines. No luck yet.

But what we have found sheds new light on the inventor, “Tom” Lambert. The biography we printed in our CD, The Pink Lambert, still appears correct, but now we’ve got some documents that help us understand Lambert’s later career and a good deal about his personality.

Thoughts on Labor Day

Here’s a treat for your Labor Day weekend enjoyment: “Everybody Works but Father,” by Bob Roberts on Edison 9100, released in October 1905. The Edison Phonograph Monthly had this to say about the number:

No. 9100, “Everybody Works but Father,” by Bob Roberts, is now being sung by Lew Dockstader in performances by his minstrel organization. This is one of the biggest hits that Mr. Dockstader has had. in years, being repeatedly encored wherever he sings It. The song humorously tells how the various members of the family work with the exception of father, who sits on the front porch all day. Mr. Roberts’s unusually clear articulation makes every word clearly understood. The Record will be found one of his best efforts and will b: one of the best sellers on the October list. Mr. Roberts is accompanied by the orchestra. “Everybody Works but Father” was written by Helf and Hager.

A favorite with record collectors, Cincinnati-born Bob Roberts (1871-1930) was a comic singer very much in demand about the time he recorded this cylinder. Victor, Columbia, Edison, and others all sought his services in the 1903-07 range, after which his output fell off sharply. Roberts recorded a lot of “coon” songs and other humorous selections, often the same material that Billy Murray was singing. In fact, Roberts famously took Murray aside when the latter was starting out, warning him not to muscle in on his territory.

Bert Williams on the Silver Screen

Tonight we’re attending a screening of Bert Williams Lime Kiln Club Field Day at the Logan Center for the Arts on the campus of the University of Chicago. Filmed in 1913 but never released, the film was thought lost by the few who even knew of its existence, and it has taken decades to identify and put together the version now before us.

Seven unidentified reels of silent footage had sat in storage at New York’s Museum of Metropolitan Art (MoMA) since the museum’s first curator, Iris Barry, had obtained them in 1939 from Biograph in a hoard of 900 negatives—saved from sure destruction, as the company was just then going out of business. Rushes from the hoard were printed on safety film stock in the 1970s, and restoration began in the 1980s. Someone noticed the existence of a film portraying middle-class pleasures being enjoyed by an all-black cast—including legendary vaudeville star Bert Williams. The only reference to the film in print that has been found is a 1914 obituary of a crew member; fortunately, it’s a match.

A still from Bert Williams Lime Kiln Club Field Day (Courtesy of MoMA)

MoMA’s curatorial team began assembling the film in 2004. They’ve taken the rushes (or what are often called “dailies,” the raw, unedited footage) and put them together, including some multiple takes, into a rough narrative. We get to see not only the genius of Williams and his acting peers from the Harlem arts circle of the early 1910s, but also—because of the rough nature of the product—the mechanics of early film-making, the subtleties of direction and acting, the humor and rapport among the cast members. Besides that, the subject matter—African-Americans depicted enjoying life carefree, independently, and intimately, with only a few stereotypes imposed on them—is a stunning revelation for its time. MoMA speculates that the film was never released because of the impact that D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation had both on race relations in America and characterizations of blacks in the cinema. That film “poisoned the well for progressive filmmakers,” reasons Ashley Clark, in an article that provides a good overview of the project. In a way, the historical record has been corrected, as the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry added Bert Williams Lime Kiln Club Field Day to its list last year.

A Word that Means the World

Happy Mothers’ Day! To celebrate, we’ve got the Columbia record of “M-O-T-H-E-R (A Word that Means the World to Me)” by Henry Burr over on Soundcloud. Enjoy!

Burr recorded it on November 11, 1915 for Columbia and again on November 17, 1915 for Victor, apparently getting pretty much an exclusive on this song. The sheet music is another story, however. Eva Tanguay first popularized the song, but you can find scores of other performers gracing the cover of the published music—including Maurice Burkhart, Marie Russell, and our favorite, the Ragtime King himself, Gene Greene. It’s very difficult to imagine Greene singing this song on stage, at least with a straight face.

Sheet music to M-O-T-H-E-R featuring Gene Greene (Archeophone Records collection)

Quinn’s Neighborhood Pride

As noted by Jim Walsh, chronicler of pioneer recording artists, if you were to walk into 312 West 20^th Street in Manhattan in the early 1930s, you would be standing in a theatrical booking agency, run by one Dan W. Quinn. But what Walsh didn’t realize was that this was also Quinn’s home. Now what we don’t know is how much space he and his family had in that flat in the days before all the apartments were cut up into smaller units. Was Quinn able to set aside dedicated space for the business and keep his home private? Or was there no real “agency” to walk into? Does anybody know?

There’s a charming bit in one of Quinn’s letters to Walsh in which he takes understandable pride in his little neighborhood, noting all the great things that had happened on 20^th Street:

I’m beginning to think that Twentieth Street is illustrious. #4 East 20 St, Howley, Haviland & Co had their famous publishing house, 29 East 20 St, was George L. Spaulding, Publisher, where “I Guess I’ll Have to Telegraph My Baby” (Geo. Cohan) was born, 41 East 20 St, Stern & Marks, held forth. Now we have Music Lover’s Guide, at 42 East 20 St. The mansion at 28 E. 20 still stands, majestic and grand—where Theodore Roosevelt was born. Gottschalk & Alpuente—the great Concert Managers, at 21 E. 20 and last but by no means the least—a-hem, Dan W. Quinn, at 312 W. 20. Now do you not think we are rather proud of Twentieth Street?
(August 27, 1934)

Dan Quinn’s old stomping grounds.

Quinn lived the better part of four decades in the Chelsea neighborhood.

Minnie Emmett: When Bad Genealogy Happens to Good People

In a previous post, we noted that Dan W. Quinn made a few duets ca. 1895 with Minnie Emmett for the United States Phonograph Company. This seems to be a fact not widely appreciated. Has anybody out there got one?

The U.S. Phono. Co. catalog says the following:

We have here two well-blended voices, producing a charming effect on the Phonograph. The work is a new and an original departure, and the duets are well adapted for general purposes. Very musical and showy, brilliant and firm in tone. Sure to be popular, both from the nature of the subjects and the reputation of the artists.

Priced at $1.50 each, the titles were “Gobble Song” (from La Mascotte), “Reuben and Cynthia” (from A Trip to Chinatown), “He’ll Love You Bye and Bye,” and “The Spider and the Fly (with Buzzing of Flies, Mewing of Cats, and Cat Duet)” (from Isle of Champagne). Emmett also did a solo with Mr. Maxwell, “Back to Our Mountains” (from Il Trovatore).

There was quite a buzz about Minnie Emmett in the industry of the mid- to late-1890s. Before she came along, no really effective records of the female voice had been made allegedly. The same U.S. Phono. Co. catalog says this of Ms. Emmett:

SOPRANO SOLOS BY MISS EMMETT.

ONLY SUCCESSFUL RECORDS OF THE FEMALE VOICE EVER TAKEN.

After a series of experiments extending over several years of record making, we can now offer to the public what we believe to be the first true records of a high soprano voice. No squeak, no blast, but natural, clear and human. Miss Emmett has a round, sweet voice, sympathetic, and under perfect control. Her records would sell on their merits, even if they did not represent a new achievement in our art. They are made one at a time.

She made “Sweet Marie,” “Somebody Loves Me,” “Little Wooden Shoes,” and “They Are the Best Friends of All.” A supplement, also ca. 1895, listed these and four others: “When You Know the Girl You Love, Loves You,” “Pretty Maggie Mooney,” “I Don’t Want to Play in Your Yard,” and “Rosie, Sweet Rosabel”—price, $2.00 each. Ouch.

Minnie Emmett (The Courier, April 22, 1904)

If you like the sound of a serious singer doing popular songs, then you’ll definitely like Emmett. If, however, you prefer your comediennes to sing in a more rough-and-ready way, stick to Ada Jones or Elida Morris. But a web search for Minnie Emmett shows a good amount of interest in her, so it’s necessary to make a few observations.

Edison’s Talking Dolls

If you’re in the New York City area, you may want to reserve a spot at the Edison National Historic Site (ENHS) for tomorrow’s talk on Edison’s talking dolls, which were made by an experimental division of his lab during the 1888-1890 period. Our friends, Robin and Joan Rolfs, owners of two of the preciously rare original dolls, will be giving the main presentation. The details can be found on the Thomas Edison National Historic Park’s Facebook page.

(Scientific American, courtesy of ENHS)

Eight talking-doll cylinder recordings still exist in one form or another today, and Archeophone is proud to have provided audio restorations for the ENHS project. Two of the original specimens, the earliest ones of all, were made of metal! The other six are made of brown wax and probably all date to about 1890. Some of the records were transferred using standard contact technology (such as the Archeophone universal cylinder playback system—not associated with us), others had to be scanned optically (using the IRENE system), and some are older recordings of the dolls actually playing their internal treasures and being recorded with a microphone.

Dan Quinn Genealogy

Revised April 30, 2015 to include new information from the Quinn family.

We’re getting close to wrapping up our Anthology of Dan W. Quinn, and something occurs to us.

One of the challenges in telling the stories of the pioneer recording artists is trying to get a sense of what they were like as people. The stars were much more anonymous than today: They weren’t (for the most part) celebrities, each new record wasn’t accompanied by a media blitz, few got biographies or biopics, and TMZ wasn’t on hand to catch them out and about. To try and learn what their lives were like outside of the studio, we have to rely on the printed material that survives (industry publications and news items) and genealogical sources.

Dan Quinn advertises his services in The Phonoscope, December 1896.

So, as far as the blog goes: there are plenty of fascinating things to share with you about the man and his life, but we should probably save some of the revelations for the final product! One item, however, that we won’t have room to explore fully is Quinn’s family. Here’s what we’ve found through our own research.

The American Talking Machine Company

As many of you know, especially those of you trying to hunt down those choice Paramount blues sides from the late ’20s, a record doesn’t have to be old to be rare and desirable. It’s just a matter of whether the maker of the record stayed in business long enough or had any kind of market reach.

Behold the case of the American Talking Machine (ATM) Company, maker of the Vitaphone talking machine and bright red-brick-colored seven-inch Vitaphone discs to go with it. This company was the second business to challenge Berliner’s Gramophone flat discs. The first, Wonder records, made in 1898 by the Standard Talking Machine Company, were obvious pirates of Berliner discs and Standard was quickly sued out of existence. Good luck finding one of these discs today. The ATM Company, however, was buoyed up by the patents of the American Graphophone Company (all licensed to Columbia)—which gave them a little more time to penetrate the market in late 1899.

American Talking Machine Record #285, “Say You Love Me Sue” by Dan W. Quinn (David Giovannoni Collection.)

 

Gauging the Popularity of 1890s Recordings, Part 2

Businesses are always in a hurry: they need to know this week, this month, this quarter, this fiscal year—is my product a success? With the mystifying exception of the latest iPhone, this is not a concern for consumers. You’ve been meaning to read Thackeray’s Vanity Fair for 30 years but only got around to downloading it on your Kindle last week. You hope to start reading it by Christmas. Or this one:

“What happened to that new fusion restaurant we were going to try out?”
“They closed six months ago.”

Sometimes businesses bend us to their will, sometimes they go bankrupt. In the case of the recording industry, for decades they’ve managed to get us to check out what’s new on a weekly basis, and trade magazines have devised popularity charts to quantify what we like—on a weekly basis. That’s not how it worked in the 1890s.

For most of the first decade of the commercial industry, the record companies had to figure out in a trial-and-error manner what kinds of records the public wanted to hear. After all, there was no roadmap, and music consumption in those days was more active than it is now: a typical household owned a piano or other instrument, and family members learned and played music. Did consumers want to hear the standards they’d played on the piano? Or the latest hits coming off Broadway? Or some kind of music with which they would ordinarily have no contact? The companies tried a smorgasbord to see what would stick.