(Second of two parts. Part one is here. If you’re looking for the list of posts from the 2008 Vinyl Record Day blogswarm, click here.)
In the Pioneer Era of Recording, Irish songs and humor moved a lot of product. Dan Quinn scored several hits in the 1890s, a couple of which can still spark a glimmer of familiarity in listeners today: “The Sidewalks of New York” and “The Band Played On.” Russell Hunting recorded several comedy monologues about the adventures of Irishman Michael Casey that topped the primordial charts in 1893 and 1894. (Hunting, inevitably, recorded “Casey at the Bat” as well, although there’s apparently no connection between the two characters.) The woods were full of male singers like Quinn, Irish and otherwise, whose clear tenor voices were suited to the technology of the time, able to be recorded and reproduced well. George J. Gaskin was probably the single biggest star of the 1890s, recording hit versions of “Slide Kelly Slide,” “O Promise Me,” “Sweet Rosie O’Grady,” and “My Wild Irish Rose.” Other fabled Irish tenors included Henry Burr, Albert Campbell, Harry MacDonough, and around the time of World War I, John McCormack, the greatest Irish tenor of them all.
The biggest male star of the Pioneer Era was another Irishman, Billy Murray. A second-generation immigrant born in Philadelphia and raised in Denver, Murray started in vaudeville and turned to recording in 1903. It takes Whitburn six pages merely to list his hit records between 1903 and 1927, several of which you know: “Yankee Doodle Boy,” “Give My Regards to Broadway,” “In My Merry Oldsmobile,” “You’re a Grand Old Flag,” and “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” He frequently recorded duets with Ada Jones, herself the biggest female star of the era, including “Let’s Take an Old-Fashioned Walk,” “Shine On, Harvest Moon” and “Be My Little Baby Bumble Bee.” Jones, born in England, was a frequent duet partner of the era’s biggest male stars, not just Murray but also Len Spencer and Walter Van Brunt. Like the Irish tenors, her voice was well-suited to the technology, and her mastery of dialects made her a popular, versatile performer.
This brief discussion has regrettably ignored several other pioneers worthy of mention: Spencer, Enrico Caruso, Byron G. Harlan, Cal Stewart, Vess Ossman, and the zillions of barbershop groups of the period, the most famous being the Haydn Quartet, the Peerless Quintet, the American Quartet, and the Heidelberg Quintet. I’ve written about the Pioneer Era here and here, but the finest place to find information about this period is Tim Gracyk’s superb “Phonographs and Old Records,” which was my main resource for this post. (A good place to start at Tim’s site is “Ten 78s Loved by Our Grandparents.”) And don’t forget the marvelous Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at UC-Santa Barbara, which is the source of the mp3s posted here over the last two days.
“Shine on Harvest Moon”/Ada Jones & Billy Murray (One of many songs from Broadway musicals recorded by Jones and Murray, and one of the biggest hits of 1909. Two versions of it topped the primordial charts 99 years ago this past spring.)
Recommended Reading: Vinyl really is making a comeback, but don’t expect to find my Popdose colleague Mojo Flucke getting all excited about it. The title of his post today: “What’s So Great About Vinyl, Anyway?”
Filed under: Tracks
