(In Which We Meet Billy Murray, The First “Famous Record Maker” To Have A Discernible Personality. And George M. Cohan, The Broadway Genius Who Discovered Patriotism, And Teddy Roosevelt, The President They Probably Both Voted For!)
In 1903 a new “Famous
Record Maker” arrived.
This was a
relatively rare occurrence at the time. Since the songs were far more important
than whoever’s name was on the cylinder – or very rarely, actual records - The
phonograph companies didn’t spend a lot of time searching for new talent. They
were happy to stick with the handful of hammerers they had.
But Billy Murray was different.
According to the advertising
blurb, Billy’s voice was “unusually clear.” He had “distinct enunciation.”
“There (was) never any doubt about the words of a song when Billy sings it!”
Which is a useful talent to have, to be sure. Thomas Edison – who was going deaf at the time – particularly appreciated it.
But Billy’s appeal went further than that. Listening to Billy
Murray was an enjoyable experience. Listening to Billy Murray was fun. When you
listened to Billy Murray you could tell that he was having fun. This was not
the impression you usually got from the other “Famous Record Makers.” This was
not the impression you got from… Henry Burr for example.
When Billy hammered, he hammered
with enthusiasm. Billy sounded as though he actually enjoyed his job. He seemed
to take pride in it, even though it was he who decided that “hammerer” was the preferred
occupational title for whatever it was that he and the rest of the “Famous
Record Makers” did. It was also – or so legend has it - Billy who gave Arthur
and Byron their Two-Tonne Duo nickname.
Billy considered himself a bit of
a jokester. Whilst the other bellowing voices belonged to men who looked like
bank managers, Billy looked like a cheeky shoeshine boy with a twinkle in his
eye. He exuded almost Broadway-diva levels of bluster and self-promotion. Most
famously he claimed that the reason Thomas Edison made no effort to
commercialize the “phonograph” until 1887 – despite having invented it a decade
before - was because Billy wasn’t around to sing on them. The cheek of the kid!
Also, his theory made no sense: Billy didn’t have his first hit record until
1902! For most of that intervening decade and a half Billy had been struggling
through the minstrel scene.
Billy grew up in
Denver, Colorado, where he and his friends had a bit of a song and dance act
that made fun of backwards country folk, or “rubes.” This, as we have
established, was a popular minstrel show topic. Soon – after begging his hesitant
parents for permission - he became part of a minstrel troupe, travelling all
over America – but mostly The West - clog dancing in blackface for a decade but
not really getting anywhere. At one stop, in San Francisco in 1897, he found
himself making a recording for some small-time distributors of Edison
cylinders. He seemed to be quite good at it, so when he found himself in New
York a few years later, he popped into the Edison studio.
Billy Murray wasn’t necessarily the first cylinder singer to have a personality. Will Denny – whose biggest selling cylinder was “Any Old Place I Hang My Hat Is Home Sweet Home To Me”, a huge and jaunty jingle in 1901, sung intentionally out-of-time, out-of-tune, and with an Irish brogue (it’s a 3) – hit his punchlines hard, with a wink, and a kind good natured nod. Maybe he just came along too soon.
Maybe, like Billy, he should have sung more songs by George M. Cohan.
George M. Cohan was the star and composer and seemingly everything else of a multitude of hit Broadway musicals. Having spent his youth in vaudeville, criss-crossing the country countless times - and at 26 years old he was still pretty young – George M. took all of vaudeville’s energy, all of its fast movement and single-minded dedication to ensuring that the audience didn’t get bored for even a second… and he transferred it to the Broadway stage. A George M. Cohen musical was packed with the kind of non-stop energy that perfectly captured the zeitgeist of turn of the century New York, where everything was becoming faster! Taller!! BIGGER!!!
George M. Cohen was born on the 4th
of July. That’s an important fact to know. It explains a lot about the man
whose songs would define the next decade or so. What’s even more important to
understand is that it wasn’t strictly true. Already anxious to get going, George
M. popped out a couple of hours too early. Close enough though to become part
of the George M. Cohan legend. The fact that he lied about such a thing, that
he wished, so very much, that he had been born on the 4th of July… we’ll that
just makes him appear even more patriotic!
Patriotism was George M. Cohan’s
brand.
George also insisted that he was
named after George Washington. The man was truly desperate to prove that he was
the most patriotic man in America.
George M.’s America was a country
where if you were proud to be American, America would be proud right back at you!
A philosophy espoused perfectly in the open verse of “Yankee Doodle Boy”, the
song that pretty much defined George M.s persona from that point on. “I'm a
Yankee Doodle dandy, I'm glad I am” at which point everyone standing by cried
out “So’s Uncle Sam!” George M. was so proud of being American that Uncle Sam
was beaming in pride right back at him! And no wonder. George M. was doing more
to instill patriotic pride in American hearts during the Teddy Roosevelt
administration than all the marching bands in America combined!
The “Yankee Doodle Boy” in
question was the titular character from “Little Johnny Jones”, the tale of a
jockey sailing to England to compete in the English Derby. Like George M.
“Little Johnny Jones” also claimed to have been born on the 4th of
July. And in this case, it was true. Then again, he was a fictional
character. If that wasn’t enough, he names his horse “Yankee Doodle” and claims
that he’s going to win the Derby Cup, not for himself, but for America!
“Little Johnny Jones” was in love with a “copper heiress” from San Francisco named, what else but, Goldie Gates. Now, Goldie Gates has some doubts if Johnny truly loves her, so she disguises herself as a man and follows him. Naturally, things get complicated. At one point Goldie gets kidnapped by a man who runs a gambling den in Chinatown and who tries to convince Little Johnny Jones to throw the race and is upset when Little Johnny refuses. He loses anyway. And then has to convince everyone that it’s just a coincidence.
“Little Johnny Jones” was a hit. Such a big hit that Vess Ossman recorded a banjo-medley of its biggest show stoppers, namely “Yankee Doodle Boy” and “Give My Regards To Broadway.”
And George became not only the hottest composer, director and star on Broadway, but a rags-to-riches story that everyone could appreciate. Not only had he made himself a success, he’d brought the aesthetic of the vaudeville troupe – the culture of the non-New Yorker American masses – right into the middle of a city that still largely believed that the best and most sophisticated musicals came from London. Nobody – certainly not the critics – could mistake George for being sophisticated, and certainly not for being subtle, but as for the best… well, the American people had spoken. For George had found the one thing that the average American man or woman on the street could agree upon: that America was the best country in the world.
Critics thought all this
flag-waving was a bit much. Populist garbage and all that. So he did what any
self-respecting populist would do. He doubled down on it with his next
production, “George Washington Jnr”, and particularly “The Grand Old Rag.”
The plot of “George Washington
Jnr” centred around – what else, but? – arranged marriages and inheritances. George
is being pressured by his Senator father to marry the daughter of an English
Lord. But George is having none of that. He would never marry an English girl,
and besides, he has fallen in love with an American girl by the name of Dolly,
who also happens to be the daughter of his father’s arch nemesis. Naturally
this results in a confrontation between father and son both of whom end up
disowning each other, with George making the ultimate patriotic gesture of
renaming himself George Washington Jnr.
And then he marches across the
stage, holding the flag high on a pole, and sings “The Grand Old Rag.”
Now calling the United States
flag “a rag”, even a grand old one, was not bound to go unnoticed and was bound
to be frowned upon. And frowned upon it was. All of a sudden people were asking
a question that nobody had ever thought to ask before: was George M. Cohen
patriotic enough?
It seems hard to believe that
someone who’d spent much of “Little Johnny Jones” making arguments about the
relative superiority of the American apple pie to the French pastry would not
be beyond reproach, but there you go.
Billy Murray, irreverent as
always, went with “rag” for his version, and “by gum!” does Billy sound as
though he’s having fun. Almost as though he’s “off his noodle”!
Everybody involved in Billy’s recording of “The Grand Old Rag” seems to be having fun. It’s difficult to tell whether a marching band is having fun, but if it is possible to smile and play a trombone at the same time, they almost certainly are. Patriotic pearl-clutches aside, this is what a love of freedom sounds like. (Billy’s version of “The Grand Old Rag” is an 8)
Both “Yankee Doodle Boy” and
“Grand Old Rag” - or “Flag” or whatever - were designed much the same, with
little snippets of patriotic and other well-known tunes – “Grand Old Rag”
suddenly veers at one point into a line of “Auld Lang Syne” – connected
together by melodies seemingly designed to be sung in a saloon as much as at a
theatre. “Yankee Doodle Boy” goes off on a “Star Spangled Banner” tangent for a
second, and of course a snippet of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” It’s basically medley
of patriotic favourites pasted together by a summary of the plot points. It’s
utterly shameless, and when the time came for Billy to record it, he sang it
without shame (Billy’s version of “Yankee Doodle Boy” is a 6)
Critics could have been forgiven for making jests that the “Little Johnny Jones” hitmaker was riding a one-trick pony when George followed “George Washington Jnr” up with “Yankee!” and its hit tune -another song about America! - “The ABCs of the USA.”
As in “Little Johnny Jones”,
“Yankee!” involves an American in London, by the name of Percy, falling in love
with another American, in this case a millionairess named Evelyn. But Evelyn
has already been promised to an English Earl, who only wants to marry her for her
money. It’s basically “George Washington Jnr” in reverse. Cue all sorts of
hijinks as Percy outsmarts the Earl to take Evelyn as his own.
Given all the other cocked hats
he wore – writing the plays, writing the songs, producing the plays, directing
the plays, quite often starring in the plays – it should probably be no
surprise that George M. didn’t have the time, nor the inclination, to record
any of his songs. Not until 1911 anyway, when his star was beginning to fall,
and he recorded “Life’s A Funny Proposition After All.” Fortunately, there was
a “hammerer” out there who could take his place. Billy would be his proxy on
the phonographs.
They were, after all, very
similar characters.
They were both of Irish descent.
They both came from vaudeville
and had a deep-seated love of entertaining people, a love they had felt from a
very young age. In George’s case he didn’t need to beg his parents for
permission to join a vaudeville troupe, since they were already in one. They’d
also both spent at least part of their vaudeville career performing in
blackface, although by this point that probably goes without saying.
Billy was the perfect “Famous
Record Maker” to sing George’s songs about how much he loved America. After
all, he had seen a lot more of it than most. And also when George M. finally
recorded the sort-of-spoken, sort-of-sung philosophical musing of “Life’s A
Funny Proposition After All” in 1911, it was revealed – to all of those who had
never been able to see him on Broadway – that his singing voice sounded an
awful lot like Billy Murray (“Life’s A Funny Proposition After All” is a 4)
Sometimes it seemed as though they were practically the same man.
Billy Murray and George M. Cohan
never formerly worked together. It’s not impossible they never even met,
although that would be a little bit odd. And rude! I mean, they lived in the
same city!
George never wrote his tunes with Billy in
mind. Even once Billy became a “Famous Record Maker”, largely due to singing
George M.s songs, he was never invited onto the cast of one of his hit Broadway
shows. Compared to the fame and glory of a Broadway show, Billy Murray records
– even when they were the most popular records in the country - were still
small fry.
The apple pie populism of George
Cohen, magnified by the optimistic swagger of Billy Murray, reverberated across
the popular song industry. American chest-thumping was suddenly big business!
The same year as “Grand Old Rag”
– or “Flag”, or whatever - hit, “The Good Old U.S.A.” was also a hit, with
Byron Harlan encouraging his listeners to be proud of the land of Washington,
Jackson, Lincoln, Grant & Lee “the men who made up what we are” (it's a 3).
One of those men apparently –
although he isn’t mentioned in the lyrics – was newspaper magnate William
Randolph Hearst. The song was dedicated to him.
Hearst was in the process of doing for the newspaper world what Tin Pan
Alley was doing for music, expanding the appeal of the medium by encouraging
his reporters to write about the sort of things that Tin Pan Alley songwriters
wrote about: sex scandals for example.
By 1906, when “The Good Old
U.S.A.” was becoming a hit, William had gotten into politics, being elected to
the House of Representatives as a Democrat. He failed, however, in achieving
any of his key political goals of being elected President, Mayor of New York or
Governor of New York. After not getting support from the Democratic party
machinery during the Primaries - although he did come second – for being too
pro-labour and for wanting to bust monopolies, a refreshing change from the
news magnates of today – William started up his own party, the Independence
Party. But that didn’t do too well either.
One possible reason for William Randolph Hearst failing to become President, was that there was already a publicity-hungry monopoly-busting celebrity in the Oval Office.
This was after all the era of the Teddy Roosevelt administration, a President so popular that they named a toy bear after him! For Teddy, so the story goes, had refused to shoot a bear when it had already been tied up for him to do so. Just to be clear, President Teddy had planned to kill a bear – he was on a hunt after all- he just wanted to be fair to the bear. So he asked someone else to shoot it for him. What a man!
Inspired by the story, Teddy Bears became an absolute phenomenon. By 1907, “Teddy Bears Picnic” had been composed – although it would only be an instrumental for a couple of decades – and Billy Murray would be having a big hit with “Be My Little Teddy Bear”, sung with Ada Jones – who was accomplishing the previously thought-impossible by having an on-going “Famous Record-Maker” career whilst simultaneously being a woman – and which does indeed include a mention of a teddy bear’s picnic. Although the song was written for Ana Held – about who more soon – and was recorded by Ada Jones, both of whom were in their mid-30s, the girl in the song clearly has a teddy bear, takes it everywhere, and has never been with a man before.
Like George M. Cohen and Billy
Murray, Teddy Roosevelt and William Hearst had a lot in common. They both
possessed public personas filled with boundless energy and confidence in what
they and – by extension – America could achieve. They were both labelled as
“progressive” politicians, largely due to being in favour of the breaking up of
trusts and other monopolistic institutions. They were also against such
extreme-capitalist practices as putting addictive drugs like opium and morphine
in food. The fact that a law needed to be introduced to specifically forbid
drugging your customers, tells you everything you need to know about capitalism
at the turn of the century.
Roosevelt and Hearst certainly
weren’t radicals though; and these songs barely register as protest songs.
Despite the political turmoil of the era, these were songs that did everything
they could to ensure that no listener could possibly be offended; “The Good Old
U.S.A.” even urges the listener to be proud of a Confederate General, so as not
to miss out on sales from “The South”. Also Andrew Jackson.
President Teddy was a man who
believed that unless America went off to war once every few years, the country
would get sluggish and flabby. He was a man who hated weakness in himself, and
in others, a philosophy that came from his own life experience growing up as a
wimp who everybody used to call “Nancy Boy,” but who transformed himself into
the epitome of American masculinity through a diet of coffee with seven lumps
of sugar in each cup (!) and constant action. One of his biggest concerns was
that America was becoming “effeminate” and he considered himself the man with
the plan to prevent this.
The Spanish-American War and its
sequel – the Philippine-American War, or as some might say, massacre – were a
couple of years in the past. But “Grand Old Rag” - or “Flag”, or whatever 0 and
all the rest, generated the same feeling of excitement and anticipation of
adventure that war was supposed to bring. There was a reason that, a few years
later, when Irving Berlin was trying to think of a lyric to really capture the
epitome of excitement, he would settle on “like you want to go war.”
Speaking of war, Tin Pan Alley liked to write songs about how great it was to be a soldier, the most notable of which was “It’s Great To Be A Soldier Man” - which started off as it intended to go on: “he’s the pride of all creation, the defender of our nation” – written by Theodore Morse with Jack Drislane on the lyrics. This was the same team that wrote “The Good Old U.S.A.” It seems that George M. was getting some competition. Billy recorded it of course, but it’s no matter how much “Yankee Doodle” whistling and military drums ratatat-tating they put on it, it’s no “Yankee Doodle Boy” (“It’s Great To Be A Soldier Man” is a 4)
Billy Murray’s success wasn’t purely due to George M. patriotic songs. Billy Murray’s voice and name had already been found on big selling popular records for a couple of years, and he was already arguably the most famous of the “Famous Record Makers” before he ever recorded “Yankee Doodle Boy.” His biggest successes seemed to be with optimistic tunes about how exciting the 20th century was going to be. And nowhere was anyone quite so excited about how exciting the 20th century was going to be than in St. Louis, where they were holding the St. Louis World Fair. “Meet Me In Saint Louis, Louis” was essentially an advertisement for the St Louis World Fair.
The St. Louis
World Fair was all about the future. It featured the Palace of Electricity,
seemingly the most sparkling auditorium of the whole fair, where Alexander
Grahame Bell was launching the “wireless telephone”, or as you may know it as,
the radio. And if the Chicago Columbian Exposition had introduced Wrigley’s
Juicy Fruit and the chocolate brownie to the world, then the St Louis World
Fair introduced Dr Peppers. Also, quite possibly, peanut butter. And also
ice-cream in an ice-cream cone – ice-cream had already been around for a while,
but not in a cone – a combination mentioned in “Meet Me In St. Louis, Louis”
itself.
What with St.
Louis being the crossroads of America a lot of people turned up. It might not
have had quite the same effect on popular song as the Chicago Columbian
Exposition had ten years earlier but it was still a big deal. John Sousa’s Band
turned up of course. And being the home of the hottest ragtime scene in the
country, “Meet Me In St. Louis, Louis” was inevitably recorded by both Vess
Ossman (it’s a 5) and Arthur Pryor (it’s a 6). But it was Billy Murray’s
version of “Meet Me In Saint Louis, Louis” that brought the tune into the
living rooms of America, at least partially because he recorded it for
virtually every major company that asked him to: Edison, Columbia, Victor. But
Billy kept it fresh by recording different versions. Noticing that the verses
were written in a limerick-friendly structure, and embracing his
inner-Irishness, at least one version, for Victor, features Billy throwing in a
limerick about a man who falls asleep in a church (that version is a 4)
“Meet Me In St. Louis, Louis” had been written by Kerry Mills who we’ve already met as a “composer” of ragtime tunes he overheard as they were being played by Black performers in the South. This one however, he may have come up with himself. “Meet Me In St. Louis , Louis” was more than just an advertisement for the fair, but a demand from a disgruntled wife, Flossie, who informs her husband, obviously by the name of Louis, that things are too slow for her there, and that she’s taken a ride to the fair, where she promises to be his “tootsie wootsie” but also to dance the “Hooche Koochee”, a rather sexy belly dance popular at the time, if only he would go and have fun with her. Louis is not particularly happy about these developments. He cries. And seemingly not with glee.
“Meet Me In St
Louis, Louis” mentioned many of the multitude of comparatively small
technological wonders – such as ice-cream cones - that were making their debut
at the St Louis World Fair. But give Billy a song about a truly exciting
technological marvel and he really came into his own.
Being a
new-fangled invention itself – and consequently purchased by households who
could afford new-fangled inventions – the phonograph leant itself well to
futurist fare, with “Come Take A Trip In My Airship” being a particularly
zeitgeist capturing composition, and the kind of song that Billy Murray seemed
to have been made for.
“Come Take A
Trip In My Airship” was written by Ren Shields and George Evans, two vaudeville
minstrel comedians, who had previously written “In The Good Old Summertime”,
the song that Tin Pan Alley bean-counters thought wouldn’t be a hit because
summer was over and who wants to hear a song about summer when it’s cold? That
one. Ren and George made it a hit anyway. That showed them! Clearly these two
vaudeville boys were visionaries.
Ren and George
were such visionaries, so ahead of their time, that they wrote the first great
big futurist 20th century anthem. Much the appeal of “Come Take A Trip In My Airship”
was to make futuristic air travel feel just like a summer memory; and to focus
on the most important aspect of such technology, which, obviously, was the
opportunity to kiss and to spoon. Also to visit the Man In The Moon. And to be
proposed to whilst watching the Milky Way. Rare was the Tin Pan Alley tune of
the 1900s that didn’t end with a marriage proposal.
Billy’s version
of “Come Take A Trip In My Airship” does it’s darndest to sound like the
future. I’m assuming that’s what the sound of cascading clarinets that tootle
around in the background are supposed to represent. It certainly didn’t reflect
the typical behaviour of an “airship”, which largely just floated, lazily,
around the sky. Or, as one of the lyrics notes, it “idly drifts along.” (Billy’s
version of “Come Take A Trip In My Airship” is a 5)
Billy Murray was
the perfect person to sing a song like “Come Take A Trip In My Airship,” even
though it is written from the perspective of a woman.*** There were so very few
women making records – what with their delicate voices and all – that Billy
Murray, and especially Bryon Harlan, had to perform their roles. 1905 was a
year in which space travel was seemingly more easily conceivable than the
recording of the fragile female voice.
Billy Murray was
the main singer of hits about new-fangled inventions, but he was not the only
one. Len Spencer’s Rueben Haskin’s character, fresh from a ride in a Cyclone
Auto the year before, had his own trip in an airship! One that travelled around
the world!
“Reuben Haskins'
Trip Around The World In His Airship” is a comic monologue and – being a Len
Spencer record – a quite an extravagant production. It comes complete with
crowds cheering Reuben and his son Henry off, as well as cheering them home
when they return. Along the way they fly over Ireland – identified as “fellas
in green britches clubbin’ the life out each other” – Scotland – complete with
“Scotsmen hoppin’ around with their bagpipes” – they almost smash into the Alps
and then… then they pretty much skip most of Asia due to time and well-known
cultural stereotype-constraints, and before you know it they’re over the
Philippines, where they wave at the boys fighting for Uncle Sam. When, less
than a minute later, Rueben and Henry arrive back at home, Rueben asks him
“aint you glad to be an American?” Henry responds in the affirmative. The
record finishes with “three cheers for the grandest country in world!” Having
not actually visited anywhere, it makes you wonder how they’d know. “Reuben
Haskins' Trip Around The World In His Airship” is not only a time-capsule of the
optimism of the era but of the exasperating nature of American exceptionalism
(it’s a 4)
Only slightly
less exciting than an airship trip to the stars, was an automobile. Or as you
may know it, a car. An Oldsmobile had just won the first transcontinental
automobile race. The race was basically between two Oldsmobiles, so they
couldn’t lose.
The Oldsmobile
that won the race wasn’t the first automobile to cross the country; two men and
a pitbull driving a Winton - an early automobile manufacturer that never really
took off – made the crossing in 1903. At least one of the men was clearly a
Jules Verne fan, for he had taken up the challenge as the result of a bet that
he couldn’t get from San Francisco to New York in 90 days. They did it in 63
and a half days and that was without even crossing the International Date Line.
But it was
Oldsmobiles and not Wintons that were on Gus Edwards and Vincent P. Bryan’s
mind when they wrote another of Billy Murray’s hits, “In My Merry Oldsmobile,”
a song which demonstrated via an endless array of double entendres that
possession of an automobile was a sure way to your tootsie-wootsie’s heart.
The couple in
“In My Merry Oldsmobile” – Lucille and her beau Young Johnny Steele - “love to
spark" in the dark old park. Lucille shows off her knowledge of mechanics
by declaring that the “sparker” is awfully strong. And in case you think that
“sparker’ was not a double entendre this is clarified by the sequel, the
non-brand specific, “Out In My Automobile” in which “the motors are sparking
and you ought to know, you must do the same, or she’ll think you’re slow.”
Mostly however, “Out In My Automobile” is about another popular theme, which
proved that whilst a lot of people were excited that all of this new technology
existed, they were also frequently frustrated that a lot of this new technology
seemed to rarely actually work. “Isn’t it nice when the motor breaks down?” it
starts. And then later: “Isn’t it great when you fall of a cliff?”
As sexually
charged as “In My Merry Oldsmobile” was – at one point Johnny lets Lucille
steer which has just got to mean something naughty – it still all ends in
marriage, as they drive off to church in the final verse.
Billy Murray’s version
is not a smooth ride. The marching band plays it jerky, as though the crank
hasn’t been wound up properly. It also features occasional car horn tooting,
which would turn out to be an indispensable feature of any automobile
themed-tune. It would be used again in “Out In My Automobile.” Such ubiquity does not make it any less annoying. Neither does Billy's use of the word "automobubbling." And yes, that is the word he uses; I checked.
All of this promotion for Oldsmobile – both the race and the hit song – didn’t really help them in the marketplace. Oldsmobile had been the biggest selling automobile manufacturer before the song and the race but within a couple of years everyone was buying a Ford instead.
This would not be a problem for
Billy. We’ll be bumping into him multiple times over the next few chapters –
hell, over the next half the book or so – including when singing a bunch of
other tunes about technological marvels.
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