From “Come Down Ma Ev’ning Star” by Henry Burr to “Tell Me Pretty Maiden by Byron G. Harlan, Joe Belmont & The Florodora Girls

 

(In Which Making Records Is Such An Unglamorous Occupation That Famous Broadway Stars Have Far Better Things To Do)

 

It says a lot about the extent to which the whole coin-operated, listening-through-a-tube-music machine industry was taken seriously – that is, barely at all – that it took almost a decade before the first song-plugger, a profession whose job description entailed singing the same song over and over again, at every opportunity, until everybody was heartily sick of it, decided that it was worth their while to transfer their skills to the recording studio/laboratory. Astonishing really, since the skills required for each – namely the ability to sing loud and to enunciate clearly – were exactly the same.

Song Pluggers may have been paid to sing the same handful of songs over and over again too as many people as possible, forcing songs into the ears of as many passersby as possible - turning those songs into earworms that the passersby couldn’t get out of their heads, and so went out and bought the sheet music - but even they had their limits. Even they weren’t prepared spend their days doing nothing but hollering into a horn. As a Song Plugger, at least they got to work outside, in the sunshine and the fresh air. As a song plugger, at least they got to go wherever there were crowds to sing to. At least they got to go to the baseball.

The singers on records on the other hand spent their days facing a horn, singing the same song again and again and again. They were required to do this because nobody had figured out how to make copies yet, so every record was a unique recording. If a song sold a thousand records, that song needed to be recorded a thousand times! Even once studio boffins had figured how to make copies, they hadn’t figured out how to make many. At first they could only make about ten copies, then up to one hundred. If a song was a hit it would still need to be recorded many multiple times in order to keep up with demand.

If song-pluggers were decidedly disinterested in recording, then those performers who were already famous on Broadway were definitely opposed to the idea. Bert Williams was a major exception. When Bert entered the recording studio for the first time, it must have been a big day.

The singers who sang on these records, who had their names printed on these records – or in the case of cylinders scratched onto the rim - were essentially nobodies. Nobodies with a talent for singing especially loudly and extremely clear. They did not need to be glamorous or charismatic, and for the most part they weren’t. Not a single recording artist mentioned in this chapter could ever be mistaken for a “pop star.”

Calling them “pop stars” would be vastly exaggerating both the levels of fame and of glamour that went with the job. This was an era in which George W. Johnson, the laughing and whistling voice heard on phonographs across the world – his promotional material claimed his records were being played in Africa! – could also be heard singing on street corners and living in a basement in Hell’s Kitchen.

If we can’t refer to them as “pop stars”, then what should we call them?

The Columbia Phonograph Company went with “Famous Record-Makers” which seems fair and broadly accurate. Amongst the small but growing number of people buying phonographic records - mostly ordering them through the Columbia, Berliner and Edison catalogues - their names and their voices were known and familiar. Within the small niche of people who cared about record makers, they were famous. But nobody was stopping them on the streets and asking for autographs.

Other people, often including themselves, preferred to describe their occupation as “hammerers,” since hammering the melody home described what they did far better than a more genteel word such as “sing” ever could.

Columbia’s use of the term “Famous Record-Makers” was part of a short-lived, or at least premature, experiment in getting “hammerers” to sign exclusivity contracts. Most “hammerers” hammered for multiple record companies, freelancing for anyone who would hire them. For Columbia in the morning, then for Berliner in the afternoon. By investing in the promotion of their “hammerers” - by printing photos of the most promising in their catalogues for example – and encouraging their customers to think of them as “stars”, Columbia was hoping to buy their hammerers loyalty. It didn’t work. It wouldn’t be until the 1920s that “Famous Record-Makers” started to settle down to recording exclusively with one record company. And it wouldn’t be until the 1920s that some of the “Famous Record-Makers” of the 1890s finally stopped being “Famous Record-Makers.” For entertainers with such a limited skill set they had surprisingly longevity, continuing to make records, and continuing to sell records, for years and years, seemingly immune to changing trends and the fickleness of public taste. Dan Quinn made big selling records all the way through to the mid-00s. The popularity of Len Spencer’s minstrel-show-in-a-can records continued through into the late-00s. And Arthur Collins simply wouldn’t go away. He’s going to continue being one of the main protagonists until about the half-way point of this book.

Part of this was due to lack of competition. And that lack of competition was largely due to their status of not-actually-being-famous. The identity of the voice singing the songs was largely irrelevant; it was all about the song. There may have been a handful of fans who specifically asked for the Arthur Collins version over the George J. Gaskin, but most weren’t that picky. And since nobody really cared who it was that was singing, there was little reason for record companies to go out searching for new, more stimulating, singers. They just kept on using the ones they had on staff. Being a “Famous Record-Maker” may not have been glamorous, but it offered high levels of job security.

Much of this was also due to the physical attributes associated with the “Famous Record-Makers” loud-and-clear skill set, namely that they needed to be portly gentlemen. The record companies had tried un-portly gentlemen earlier on, at the start of the 1890s, when they had been experimenting with different types of singers to see which would record best. That hadn’t worked out.

They had tried Will White, an English music hall performer who was trying – and largely failing - to make it in America. He recorded a tune with the vaguely Biblical sounding title of “The Third Verse Of Mary and John”, the subject matter of which is slightly clarified as being subtitled “The Lover’s Quarrel.” It’s a cheeky little waltz, relishing its risqué subject matter and filled with a sense of *wink wink* and *nudge nudge* as fitting an English minstrel recording entertainment for patrons of amusement parlours. But it wasn’t a huge success and the record companies soon settled on a more stout assortment of singers. (“The Third Verse Of Mary and John” is a 2)

Such as Arthur Collins and Byron Harlan aka The Half Ton Duo.

 But even they were not as hefty as Henry Burr, who looked like Tweedledum in a bowler hat.

Henry Burr had been the soloist at the Church Of The Incarnation and would occasionally put that experience to good use by recording religious tunes such as “The Rosary” – and then later on “My Mother’s Rosary”, although that one would turn out to be about his baby’s toes - but mostly sang the same sentimental love-songs as everyone else. Concerned that his fellow-church goers would be scandalized by his new career, Henry went incognito. Henry Burr was a stage name. His real name was Harry McClaskey (Henry’s version of “The Rosary” is a 3)

Henry specialized in slow songs. Even if the song hadn’t been written as such, Henry would slow it right down, filling the entire record with pregnant… pauses, a courageous move in an era in which records rarely went much over two minutes, and there was little time to be wasted.

 You can hear this on “Come Down Ma Ev’ning Star” on which the pianist seems to be constantly and increasingly impatiently waiting… for Henry… to catch… up… so that he can play… the… next… note. Henry Burr would build… his entire… style… on this school of… slow-motion… singing… and it would make him… one of the… most popular… “Famous… Record… Makers”… of the… era. He was still going strong – arguably even peaking – in the early 1920s.

John Stromberg wrote “Come Down Ma Ev’ning Star” for a Broadway musical called “Twirly-Whirly.” More specifically he wrote it for Lillian Russell, quite possibly the most glamorous Broadway star of the era, off-stage as well as on. She married five times, including to, on occasion, men who were already married – Edward Solomon, for example, composer of many of her musical numbers – and I’m not even including a long lasting “arrangement” with “Diamond Jim” Brady, a rags-to-riches industrialist whose love of diamonds was only exceeded by his love of eating lots and lots of food. If the diamond business hadn’t worked out for him, he probably would have made an excellent “Famous Record-Maker.” Lillian was so glamorous that Tiffany made a gold plated, jewellery encrusted bicycle just for her. Which also tells you a lot about how glamorous bicycles were at that time.

Lillian – clearly a fan of Broadway musicals with silly names - had previously been in “Whirl-I-Gig” where she’d had a hit with a “coon song” called “When Cloe Sings A Song,” all about how everything on the plantation – even the bees a-buzzin’ – stops whenever Cloe sings a song. Lillian didn’t record it of course. George J Gaskin did. Lillian was way too busy.

Also, she was a woman.

For the “Famous Record-Makers” were almost exclusively gentlemen. Female voices, it was pretty much universally agreed, were too delicate to be recorded properly. It wasn’t for lack of trying. Columbia recorded Lilla Coleman in 1895 and released the end-result for the public to buy with the following disclaimer: "suitable only for use with the tubes -- NOT ADAPTED FOR HORN REPRODUCTION." Lilla’s voice was too faint to be heard with the naked ear. Or the naked horn.

As a result of this combination of stringent physical requirements and the absence of both female and Broadway performers, there were only a handful of “Famous Record Makers” making records, their names printed in the Columbia, Berliner, and Edison catalogues, page after page, catalogue after catalogue, of the same names recording whichever songs were doing well on Broadway, or on the vaudeville circuit, or flying off the sheet-music shelves. Songs that they sang loudly, clearly, and without a single iota of acting ability, leading to a whole bunch of happy sounding records about terrible situations.*

Lillian Russell was so big that two other big names of the era – Weber & Fields - bought their own music hall, simply so they could hire her.

Weber & Fields were major players within the hugely popular vaudeville sub-genre of “Dutch acts”, a genre based on the sympathetic ridicule of – possibly confusingly – German immigrants. Or, at least, any immigrant that was vaguely northern European, but not British or French or Irish. The average-American was familiar with British, French, and Irish people, but they were far less well informed about who – or what – lay on the other side of the Rhine. Were the German and the Dutch the same? And if not, then why did they call themselves Deutsch? What – the average American could be forgiven for asking - was the difference?

“Dutch acts” were all about the immigrant experience, the dialogue filled with hilariously error-ridden attempts at speaking English, the plots full of get-rich schemes as the characters attempted to grab hold of the American dream.

“Dutch acts” were so popular that Weber & Fields - whose accents were reputedly more Yiddish than German, but again, nobody cared, as long as the sketch ended up with a fist fight – could afford to buy The Weber & Fields Music Hall, where they put on parody versions of the latest Broadway shows. These parody versions became so popular that actual Broadway shows would lobby to have themselves parodied for the publicity.

Then there were the musicals with names such as “Hurly-Burly”, “Helter Skelter”, “Whirl-I-Gig”, “Fiddle-Dee-Dee”, “Twirly-Whirly”, “Higgle-de-Piggledy” and “Whoop-Dee-Doo.” Which is where Lillian Russell came in. And John Stromberg who wrote a lot of the songs. Such as “My Girls A Corker, She’s A New Yorker”, an odd little ode full of what are supposed to be endearing compliments, but sound more like insults. His girl has legs like whiskey kegs. Her eyes are like two custard pies. Her lips are like potato chips. Her hips are like two battleships… you get the idea.

This seems to have been John Stromberg’s philosophy of pop song writing. Fill your love songs up with puns. One of his other hits - “Ma Blushin’ Rosie” – who pretty much nothing but a bunch of flower puns, including naturally, “a little bunch of sweetness,” and the inevitable rhyme of Rosie and posey.

“Come Down Ma Ev’ning Star” was different. John had promised Lilian “the prettiest song you ever sang.” How pretty? So pretty that on opening night, after her character has been informed that her monkey, Hanki Panki Poo, has gotten drunk, and after she gives a quick little speech about how the life of a society star isn’t all roses, Lilian began to sing “Come Down Ma Ev’ning Star”… and then she burst into tears…. although, actually, there may be another reason for that.

Lillian had been waiting and waiting for the song, opening night was fast approaching, but John didn’t think it was ready yet. His progress was probably being thwarted by the intense pain he was feeling from a severe attack of rheumatism.

When they finally found the song, completed, it was in the coat pocket of John’s corpse. He had committed suicide by drinking insecticide. He simply couldn’t take the pain anymore. With a back-story as dramatic as that, “Come Down Ma Ev’ning Star” couldn’t help but be a big hit.

Lillian herself had too little time and too much self respect to record it until about 1912. In the meantime all record buyers had were the “Famous Record-Makers.” Instead they had Henry Burr, recording it in his patented painfully slow and halting manner (Henry’s version is a 2) 

Most of the “Famous Record-Makers” were based in New York. Or across the Hudson in New Jersey where Victor Talking Machines, a new name on the scene, had set up their factory.

Victor Talking Machines may have been a new name on the scene, but they weren’t a new company. They had formed out of the old Berliner company which had started to gobble up market share because it produced records – thin circular records, or the kind and shape we think of when we say “records” - rather than a cylinder. Records had become so popular that Columbia started making them too. This infringed on Berliner’s patent and Berliner got mad, thereby leading to a complicated series of sues and counter-sues that we don’t need to involve ourselves with here, and ultimately to the retirement of Berliner himself, who went on to invent the helicopter. Berliner’s replacement was the engineer Eldridge Johnson, whose biggest invention was a technique for adding labels on records, thereby eliminating the necessity of a stuffy scratchy voice appearing at the beginning of every record to announce what it was. Eldridge continued the complicated series of sues and counter-sues and ultimately defeated Columbia in court. Changing the company’s name to Victor Talking Machines was Elridge’s idea of how to rub his success in. Or at least that’s one theory for why they ended up being called that.

Columbia, meanwhile, had initially operated out of Washington, so some of the “Famous Record Makers” were also based there; at least until Columbia gave up on their dreams of producing business-machines, finally accepted that they were in show business, and so moved to New York as well.

The records these “Famous Record-Makers” made were consequently also mostly available on the East Coast. Someone however had to cater to the market west of the Appalachians, and that someone would be Silas Leachman, a savvy gentleman from Chicago.

Silas had bought a house in the countryside so that he could sing as loudly as he wanted without disturbing anyone or being disturbed in turn. He set up three phonographs in his living room and started recording, doing everything – the singing, the piano playing, the announcement at the beginning of the record – by himself. He made one mistake in choosing his location though. It was near a railway track. Silas had to stop his recording every time a train went by.

 By 1895 he had produced 250,000 records, from a repertoire of over 400 songs and comic sketches. He recorded everything from songs to impersonations of “negro sermons” and “Irish wakes.” He recorded in American, Irish, Chinese and Dutch accents. If you bought a record west of Ohio in the 1890s, chances are that it came from Silas and was recorded in his living room.

If making records was so unglamorous that the biggest “Famous Record-Maker” west of Washington D.C. could make records out of his living room, then it should perhaps not be surprising that so few Song Pluggers wanted to make the switch. When a Song Plugger finally did make the switch there would be two of them. They were Steve Porter – who we have already met singing “Bird In A Gilded Cage” - and Albert Campbell, and it happened like this.

Steve and Albert were two of the Diamond Quartette. Sometimes they went as the Diamond Comedy Four. And they were song-pluggers for Marks & Stern – aka Edward Marks and Joseph Stern - two music publishers and Tin Pan Alley tunesmiths who had previously been salesmen. Edward had sold buttons. Joseph had sold neckties. Selling tunes was clearly more glamorous than buttons and neckties, and so, based on the assumption that if you can sell one thing then you can sell anything, they set up a song shop.

They put up a sign – just like Charles Harris in Wisconsin – and wrote a tragic tearjerker – just like Charles Harris in Wisconsin - based on an item in the newspaper that they read whilst taking shelter in a hotel during a storm. This was “The Little Lost Child” and it was a phenomenally huge hit that capitalized on the universal truth that songs featuring small children really warmed the cockles of late 19th century America.

“The Little Lost Child” was the story of a little girl asking a policeman to help her find her mother, who, once it is revealed that her name is “Jennie”, turns out to be the policeman’s ex-wife! Who left him one day when the girl was just a baby! They had been having a quarrel. It appears that the policeman may have been cheating on her. Anyway, it all ends happily with the mother/wife bursting into the police station looking for her child, and everybody is reconciled!! Lovely story! Lacking perhaps a death or two to make it a true-classic tearjerker but worthy of at least one or two tears.

“Little Lost Child” was a particularly huge hit because it embraced a technology far more exciting than buttons or neckties, sheet music, or even the phonograph… it was promoted by an “illustrated song”!

“Illustrated Songs” were a short-lived fad invented by George Thomas, who came up with the idea of photographing people performing the plot of “The Little Lost Child.” But black and white photos were boring, so George had them hand-painted and transferred them to glass slides. Then he organized a show where the slides were projected whilst a band performed the song. Legend has it that during the first show, one of the slides were put in upside down. George was still working out the kinks. But “illustrated songs” took off and became a part of a night out at the moving pictures, something short to slip in between the other moving picture attractions.

“The Little Lost Child” was about the only major hit that Marks & Stern had, so it makes sense for Steve and Albert to search elsewhere for their songs to plug.***  And soon they too joined the ranks of the “Famous Record Makers”, that handful of singers singing every song in the record company catalogues. That handful of singers, whose recording gradually became more and more incestuous, as they first started singing duets together – Arthur and Byron’s duets being particularly big sellers – and then started forming quartets.

A lot of singers were forming quartets at the time. A lot of that singing took place in barbershops. Then again, a lot of virtually every social activity took place in a barbershop. As the 19^th century turned into the 20th century, barbershops held a central role in many local communities. Anyone who wanted or needed to look half presentable – and wasn’t able to grow a decent beard - needed a shave every day. In many communities the barbershop was the focal point for the business of men being men and would continue to be so until a generation of men learned to how to shave themselves during the Great War.

A barbershop was a captive audience and thus the perfect place for a troupe of performers to perform, particularly those who were largely barred from performing elsewhere. That is, mostly Black folk. But by no means solely Black folk. Anyone who spent more than a little time in a barbershop would be familiar with the sound and set-up of a barbershop quartet: with lead tenor, tenor, baritone and bass, which – when all singing the same note – created a lovely sound called the “barbershop chord.”

Barbershop quartets were rather ubiquitous. One popular poem of the time, in which the author waxes enviously about Adam and the fact that he never had to deal with all the trifling irritants of the modern day, mentions “barbershop quartets”, along with “squawking phonographs.” Sousa would have approved.

So it was only a matter of time before “barbershop quartets” and “squawking phonographs” combined, and the Edison Male Quartet was formed. Made up of a bunch of “Famous Record-Makers” who were always hanging around the Edison studio anyway. Namely, S.H. Dudley, William F. Hooley, John Bieling, Jere Mahoney… although the membership was extremely fluid, and so basically just whoever happened to be around on the day.

Now Edison Records – much like Edison himself by this stage – was an old-fashioned institution, and Edison’s technology was beginning to be left behind. His records were beginning to sound rubbish compared to what was coming out of Victor and Columbia, whose records were now becoming far more popular. So, like any sensible, ambitious people, the Edison Male Quartette started to shop around, began to see other record companies.

But you couldn’t record for Victor if your name was Edison Male Quartette, so clearly a new name was required. So the Edison Male Quartette became The Haydn Quartet, naming themselves after the classical composer who had been dead for close to a century. Quite why they chose to name themselves after a classical composer, and why Haydn in particular, are questions with no easy answers. Haydn – the composer – had spent some time in his youth in a choir until his voice broke and he could no longer hit the high notes, at which point the Empress described his style as “crowing.” This is not a particularly aspirational source of inspiration for a quartet, although in this case, it may at least have been realistic. Anyway, one of The Haydn Quartet’s biggest records was their version of “In The Good Old Summer Time.”

Legend has it that “In The Good Old Summertime” was originally rejected by Tin Pan Alley bean-counters since they felt that a song about summer would have a short shelf-life. That sales would fall in the Fall. Tin Pan Alley was still a relatively new institution. They were still trying to work out how fads and fashion worked.

But “In The Good Old Summertime” is a song so nostalgic for summer, you could sing it in the middle of winter to warm you up, as you fondly reminisce about your youth swimming in the pool and playing hooky from school. Of playing "ring-a-rosie" with Jim, Kate and Josie. Of “sweet-scented breezes” that rhyme with “the birds and the trees’es.” It’s a song so catchy you could hum it as it snows. And it featured so many adorable and potentially irritating little flourishes – most notably one of the most prominent uses of the words “tootsie-wootsie” in all of pop -  that it was perfect for Blanche Ring, one of the most ridiculous stars of Broadway, and one whose enthusiasm for the song was so infectious that she had the whole theatre singing along the first night she sung it, the first time any of them had heard it.

But Blanche was a Broadway star, and – as I may have mentioned - making records wasn’t glamorous enough yet for Broadway stars.**** So the job fell to The Haydn Quartet, who were quite well suited to the task, or indeed any task that required them to sound nostalgic for the old days when things were simpler. Presumably the time when Haydn, the composer, had still been alive. (The Haydn Quartet’s version of “In The Good Old Summertime” is a 4).

The most famous “Famous Record-Maker” in The Haydn Quartet was Harry MacDonough, a serious looking Canadian with neat, precisely parted hair – so you can be sure that he spent a lot of time at the barbershop - and a mixed- Scottish/Irish ancestry that came out in his mournful honk of a voice.*****

Harry had arrived in New York from Canada via Detroit where he had briefly worked in at a Detroit Phonograph Company and cut a demo. This demonstrates two things (a) that there were phonograph companies, or at least one phonograph company in Detroit, the industry wasn’t solely New York-New Jersey-DC plus ol’ Silas in the west anymore, (b) that Harry was ambitious and had a head for business. This would serve him well..

The Haydn Quartet were the perfect group of fellows then to record a version of Irish novelty fare such as “Bedelia”, which was being promoted as “The Novelty Song of the Century”, quite a bold claim for a song written in 1903. “Bedelia” seemed to be interpolated into every second Broadway show that year, whether it made any narrative sense or not. And it almost exclusively did not. It was a song made up almost exclusively of Irish place names. There aren’t too many plots that can be seamlessly inserted into. But people didn’t really seem to care about those things in those days.

The Haydn Quartet’s vocal arrangement for “Bedelia” was surprisingly ambitious, for its time, and definitely for a novelty song.  Hooley sings his bass in a cascading chuckle, whilst Harry’s tenor soars over the rest of the boys at the end of the chorus. And what a chorus!! The whole quartet sings so loud and fills up so much of the phonograph horn that the piano player stops what he is doing to just let them hammer in harmony (“Bedelia” is a 4)

Columbia hit back with the Columbia Male Quartet and had a hit with “Sweet Adeline.” And just to prove how fluid the membership of these quartets was – and how few “Famous Record-Makers” there were that their membership would inevitably overlap – Harry MacDonough was also a member, at least some of the time. Including for a recreation of the “Funeral Service Over President McKinley”, who had recently been shot by an anarchist.

Also an occasional member of the Columbia Male Quartet was George J Gaskin. Also Arthur Collins. Henry Burr became a member in 1902. They then changed their name, rather immodestly, to the Peerless Quartet, and started recording for other record companies as well. Arthur Collins also recorded with the Colonial Male Quartet for Zonophone. The fluidity of both the membership and the names of all these quartets, would get increasingly complicated as time went by, but let’s leave it there for now.

There were many good reasons for Columbia and Victor and Edison – and Zonophone – to get all their “Famous Record-Makers” together in a quartet. The resulting records often sounded far more harmonious. Instead of having to hammer the song alone, the task could be shared across all four members, at least during the choruses. The effect was perfect for sentimental and nostalgic tunes, so obviously they headed straight for the collected works of Stephen Foster. The Haydn Quartet recorded both “My Old Kentucky Home” and “The Old Folks At Home”, with Harry attempting to sound like a Black slave picking cotton, mournful and slooooow, but still in an Irish accent (both of those recordings are 2s)

But for all of these big hit records – by this time about 3 million records were being sold a year - the “Famous Record-Makers” making them were still essentially nobodies.

Finally, sometime in 1901 or 1902 – and therefore either just before or just after Bert Williams did the same – some actual Broadway stars entered a recording studio, the Columbia Recording Studio. They were the “Florodora Girls”! The breakout stars of the London West End musical “Florodora”!! They were exotic!! They came from England!! They wore frilly hats!!!

Quite why America went so crazy about the “Florodora Girls” is difficult to explain. Or understand. America already had Broadway! Broadway wasn’t exactly lacking in showbiz pizzaz!  Neither was America exactly lacking in its abundance of frilly hats. But apparently Lillian Russell and her golden bicycle wasn’t enough, since it only took a bunch of girls with said frilly hats to cross the Atlantic Ocean for the entire country to go ga-ga.

It really is mystifying. They weren’t even supposed to be the stars of the show! They only have a minor role!! Maybe that’s the reason. For “Florodora” was cursed with an impossibly convoluted plot that was extremely difficult to follow. The main character is an evil American perfume baron named Gilfain, owner of the Florodora island in the Philippines, the source of the vital ingredient of his perfume, the Florodora flower. There was also Dolores, the rightful owner of the Florodora perfume empire. There’s a detective called Tweedlepunch – yes, really - whose job it is to sort this whole mess out, but who has gone incognito as a dodgy vaudevillian. Gilfain, the evil perfume baron, gets Tweedlepunch, the vaudevillian detective, involved in a scheme to marry his underlings off to the young island girls, compelling Tweedlepunch to play a phrenologist and convince the underlings and island girls that they are made for each other because they have compatible skulls. The underlings are not interested in marrying the local island girls however because they’ve all fallen in love with a bunch of English girls and their frilly hats. It is these, and not the local island girls from the island of Florodora, who are the “Florodora Girls.” The underlings become smitten with the idea of English girls and wonder if all English girls are like them. Cue “Tell Me Pretty Maiden”, and the question “are there any more at home like you?” The “Florodora Girls” themselves seem rather less smitten, simply shrugging “yes, I must love someone, and it might as well be you.”

That’s pretty the sum total of the “Florodora Girls” role in “Florodora”, but they and their frilly hats took over America. Many of the girls ended up marrying American millionaires, and I hope that at least one responded to a proposal using exactly those words: “yes, I must love someone, and it might as well be you.”

Naturally the record companies got their “Famous Record-Makers” to start recording versions of “Tell Me Pretty Maiden” straight away. Vess Ossman appears to have been first off the mark with a plunkin’ banjo version. He also recorded a banjo plunkin’ medley of all the “Florodora” hits. Harry MacDonough appears have been first to record a version with actual singing on it, getting together with Broadway bit player Grace Spencer, a female singer you could hear without the assistance of tubes in your ears. It’s possible that they recorded it too soon, since they sing it in such a stilted manner that I’m not convinced that either of them had heard the song before they recorded it(Harry and Grace’s version of “Tell Me Pretty Maiden” is a 2)

Over the next few months the market would be flooded with versions. Someone by the name of Frank W. Isenbarth recorded a zither solo. The Columbia Band released a marching band version. Columbia also released and recorded a clarinet solo version, a cornet solo version, and an orchestral version. And they managed to pull off the biggest coup of all, getting a handful of the “Florodora Girls” themselves to sing with Byron G Harlan and Joe Belmont. They certainly do a better job than Grace – they ought to have, they had sung it countless times, and on two continents – but not so good that it could possibly explain the mania surrounding them. It simply must have been the frilly hats. (“Tell Me Pretty Maiden by Byron G. Harlan, Joe Belmont & The Florodora Girls is a 4)

“Florodora” was the end result of about a decade long process of London being taken over by musicals in which the plot was irrelevant, and the presence of good tunes was a bonus. The only thing that was important were the girls. It was a scene centred about the sexual tastes of George Edwardes, the production manager of The Gaiety Theatre, who scoured London to find the prettiest girls to add to his shows. And also for other purposes.

It was a simple idea, and an easy one to replicate even without George’s impeccable taste in pretty maidens. “Florodora” was not a George Edwardes production, but it may as well have been. It had all of George’s trademarks. And the writer had worked with George before, clearly learning a lot from the experience.

In the years that followed “Tell Me Pretty Maiden”, Broadway musicals would become an increasingly reliable source of hit songs. Not all hit Broadway musicals were equal of course. “The Wizard Of Oz” may have been the biggest Broadway hit of 1903 but the songs were rubbish. It’s also virtually unrecognisably “The Wizard Of Oz.” Sure there’s a tornado and a Dorothy, but her best friend is a cow named Imogene.******

It was into this scene that George Cohan and his family moved to New York, bringing a short-lifetime’s worth of experience in entertaining the rubes and jays of small-town America with him.  George had seen pretty much all of America and he knew what Americans liked. Why shouldn’t New York like it as well?

They did, and George suddenly found himself the biggest hit song writer not only on Broadway, but across America! And he found that his hits became even bigger hits when they were recorded by a brand-new “Famous Record-Maker”, one who sounded many, many more times excited about the songs he was singing than any other “Famous Record-Maker” before. It was Billy Murray. Let’s talk about them both…

*Some singers did put some effort into at least rudimentary song interpretation. Edward M. Favor was a vaudeville comedian. He and his wife, Edith Sinclair, a husband-and-wife team who specialized in impersonating Irishmen, which Edward does quite effectively on “Daisy Bell” - aka “On A Bicycle Built For Two” - actually sounding somewhat-smitten, waiting for a girl to give her his answer do (it’s a 3).

By 1892 – shortly before his recording career began – Edward had become at least moderately successful on Broadway, with a major role in “1492 Up to Date or Very Near It”, a vaudeville show produced to celebrate the quadricentennial of Columbus’ voyage, and thus involving Columbus finding himself in modern-day New York. Edward was, in short, famous enough for record companies to be interested in recording him, but not so famous as to have anything better to do with his time.

** So “Dutch acts” were yet another form of ethnic humour – or “dialect humour” as it was usually described – to provide some variety to vaudeville’s regular diet of “coon songs” and “Irish comic songs”, the latter often referred to, possibly confusingly, as “Irish coon songs.” There were other forms of ethnic humour, but they were far more niche. There was a market for songs and vaudeville shows involving Yiddish humour - sample lyrics including “oi” and “oh vey” – described inevitably as “Jewface”, the face in this case being comprised of fake beards and giant noses made of putty. Largely a niche market, “Jewface” did occasionally crossover into the mainstream, including in the biggest hit of 1914. We’ll discuss that one when we get there.

*** Or, in the case of Steve, comic monologues, in the character of Flanagan, the most popular of which was “Flanagan’s Troubles In A Restaurant”, all about the freshness – or lack of – of the food. Best joke? “I said to the waiter, this fish ain’t as fresh as the one I had here three weeks ago, he said, that’s strange, it’s the other half of the same fish.” It almost doesn’t matter how bad the jokes are though, since Steve rushes through them all as fast as he can to fit them all in. Or maybe just figuring that the more jokes he told, the greater the chances that one of them would be funny. And yet still, he failed. (“Flanagan’s Troubles Is A Restaurant” is a 2)

****Blanche would eventually make a record, so I’ll tell her story when we get to that.

***** Harry was not the only Irishman in The Haydn Quartet. There was also the jolly chuckle of William F. Hooley on bass, a man who had previously mostly recorded spoken word recreations of “The Gettysburg Address” and “The Sermon On The Mount.” Both of which he performed in an Irish accent.

****** Broadway was becoming such a reliable source of hits that Harry von Tilzer – arguably the most popular writer of non-Broadway hit songs - gave it a shot with “The Fisher Maiden.” Amazingly it was not a hit. “In The Good Old Summertime” writers, Ren Shields and George Evans also wrote a musical – about a jockey called Tommy in love with a rich girl whose father won’t let them date, until the father buys a horse and Tommy wins a race for him – and called it “The Good Old Summertime.” It too was not a big hit.