Another minstrel group, 1840
razyn
sale in 1978, in The Old Print Gallery SHOWCASE, Vol. V, no. 6.
Haven't noticed it in the literature, so I'm just posting it FYI.
(Probably infringing some copyright; but the late Jim Blakely of that
Georgetown, DC firm was a friend of mine, and I was at the time a good
customer there, so I don't think they'd care.) The original of this
music may be in some public collection -- in which case one could read
the names of the performers, study the instruments, etc.
I couldn't figure out how to change the name of the file, though I
have done that in the past. So the picture currently appears in the
Files area (if you are viewing this site in Beta) with some lengthy
Scan number, generated by my scanner.
Colporteur
While she was there I went to the Lilly Library to look at their Starr
sheet music collection. (I mentioned that I was going to Indiana to
George Wunderlich, and he put me on to the library, and asked me to
find some music for a specific composer.) It is a goldmine! I've
attached a text file listing all of the Minstrel composers and groups
for which they have sheet music See (Lilly - Starr Collection).
Unfortunately they have not scanned everything yet, nor do they have
an on-line catalog of all of the sheet music. They are willing to
make copies of music for 30 cents per page. They do affix at the
bottom of each page a warning that the reproductions are for research
purposes only, and that you shouldn't make copies.
You can use the following link to find the listing:
http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/starr_section2.shtml
There were quite a few sheets there that are not in any of the other
on-line sheetmusic resources. If you want copies of anything I would
suggest that you instruct them that you don't want any blank pages or
duplicate songs. In some cases I found 3 or 4 different arrangements
of the same music, but sometimes I found 2 to 3 copies of the same
piece of music.
It was interesting that on one piece of music (a piano arrangement)
the owner had penciled in banjo fingering marks above the notes. Here
is some proof that banjo players actually bought the piano scores and
played from them.
GCA
> It was interesting that on one piece of music (a piano arrangement)
> the owner had penciled in banjo fingering marks above the notes. Here
> is some proof that banjo players actually bought the piano scores and
> played from them.
Sounds like a great trip! I'd love to know more about which song it
was as well as the fingerings.
Thanks and congratulations!
Greg
Colporteur
The piece was "White Mountain Serenade" by Ossian Dodge. I can't post
the music because of Lilly's restrictions, but you can find this
particular score on-line under
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/mussmhtml/mussmTitles515.html
John
razyn
this stuff.
Not to hijack my thread back to why I started it, or anything, but --
the 1840 date is more or less the point. The illustration shows a
grouping of instrumentalists that was supposedly invented in 1843, way
down south in New York. Not that I think it was invented in Boston in
1840, either; but a sheet music cover illustration of it was printed
there, then.
You may find verification of the Harmoneons' 1840 date at this link to
a portrait of the violin player, L.V.H. Crosby:
http://content.wsulibs.wsu.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/butler&CISOPTR=316&REC=6
There is also an 1845 edition of almost the same music cover, but by a
different publisher. This link (to a much sharper image than I
posted, of a copy autographed by Crosby) was sent to me by a forum
member; but he did it off-list, and has not yet chosen to discuss the
matter on the forum:
http://www.cowanauctions.com/public/demo/past_sales_view_item.asp?ItemId=24105
At least one of the original, 1840 publishers (J.P. Ordway) continued
to write songs for the minstrel show business for twenty years or so,
and several groups using his name may be found on the bibliography at
the Lilly Library, in the first message on this thread by Colporteur.
Colporteur
--
> the 1840 date is more or less the point"
Razyn, sorry I missed your point. Every reference I can find for the
Harmoneons is after 1845. I sure would love to take a closer look at
the original of the music. I'm also curious if there is any kind of a
history available for the Harmoneons. They seemed to have performed
for quite a number of years, and their music seems to have stuck
around. From what I was reading, Edison recorded one of their
numbers on one of his cylinders.
I have a complete theatre listing for New York throughout that time
period. I'll see if I can find any reference to them. Does anybody
else have information on them?
razyn
date the Harmoneons 1845 from the publication date of other known
tunes with that cover illustration, published by C. Bradlee & Co.
However, if you click on the picture I posted (in Files), and also
click on the cowanauctions link to a Bradlee imprint of 1845 (two
messages up) -- thus opening two windows side by side -- you can see
that the vignette of the group is the same; but the title (most
noticeable in the scrollwork above MON in HARMONEONS), the commercial
data under the vignette (see especially the word ARRANGED), and the
corner decorations (absent in the earlier imprint) have all been newly
engraved.
L.V.H. Crosby was apparently only sixteen or seventeen when he began
his career with the Harmoneons. It was a long and pretty successful
career. Google him. The personnel list I found (on some Library of
Congress site I couldn't really open) was, from left to right: Js.
Power as Toney, M.S. Pike as Fanny, L.V.H. Crosby as Pomp, F. Lynch as
Gumbo, and Jno. Power as Sambo.
Also, you might try theatre listings for Boston, if the Harmoneons
don't show up in the Big Apple. Not everyone toured, surely?
On Apr 2, 9:42 pm, "Colporteur" <mascia...@comcast.net> wrote:
> Razyn, sorry I missed your point. Every reference I can find for the
> Harmoneons is after 1845. I sure would love to take a closer look at
> the original of the music.
>
razyn
Francis (Frank) Lynch, a Boston native who is described at some length
in one of the supplements to Col. T. Allson Brown's "Burnt Cork
History," as edited by William L. Stout. This work has been
previously cited (but not linked) on this forum by Dan'l. The passage
about Lynch begins,
"There was in our troupe a remarkable character by the name of Frank
Lynch, who played the tambourine and banjo. He and the celebrated
Diamond had been in their youth among the first and greatest of
dancers. Too portly now to endure sustained effort with his feet, he
was yet an excellent instructor and I was constantly under his
training."
This was in about 1852, in a touring minstrel company under Johnny
Booker that picked up the author (Ralph Keeler, then twelve years old)
in Toledo, Ohio. Look for the whole 1874 article, "Three years as a
Negro minstrel," at the following interesting web site:
http://www.circushistory.org/Cork/BurntCork2.htm
Tim Thompson
I'm totally guessing, but it would at least be logical for someone to
date the Harmoneons 1845 from the publication date of other known
tunes with that cover illustration, published by C. Bradlee & Co.
However, if you click on the picture I posted (in Files), and also
click on the cowanauctions link to a Bradlee imprint of 1845 (two
messages up) -- thus opening two windows side by side -- you can see
that the vignette of the group is the same; but the title (most
noticeable in the scrollwork above MON in HARMONEONS), the commercial
data under the vignette (see especially the word ARRANGED), and the
corner decorations (absent in the earlier imprint) have all been newly
engraved.
Warning! dating sheet music because of similarities in title pages is
practically useless. Publishers used a plate called a "passe partout" with a
'cut-out' area in which an actual title, or other printed or engraved plate
section could be inserted. The same basic title page plate could be used
over and over, bought, sold, (between publishers) for any number of
different titles. Likewise the copyright information, which normally
appeared at the bottom, would simply be burnished and re-engraved (or not,
leading to other dating errors - nineteenth century music publishers
frequently did not respect copyrights).
If you're going to do a lot of work with sheet music, you should probably
start with:
Wolfe, Richard J.
1980 Early American Music Engraving and Printing. University of Illinois
Press.
Tim T.
razyn
sheet music in question. Feel free to look for the originals and
redate it for us all, if the 1840 bothers you. It's confirmed by an
independent source, so I just did a Dan Rather and chose to believe
it.
Ole Bull
Rice and White. If I recall they began as an imitation/parody of the
Hutchinsons as the Albino Aeolians in whiteface and switched to black
as the Boston Harmoneons or, just, Harmoneons. The core of the group
was Marshall Pike and the Powers brothers who specialized in harmony
singing (in the fashion of the Hutchinsons) and they featured a wench
impression. If you wish to focus on the date, these same references
place them mid to late 1840's, but mention earlier activity in
individual performance.
razyn
and try to make sense of that chronology. Anyway, he has seen the
1840 piece of music (with the picture of the five piece group), which
however he implies was a duo in 1840; and he suggests that Frank Lynch
(who is named in the 1840 picture) joined the Harmoneons at the end of
1845. And so it goes.
I really don't care deeply about these people, but have only meant to
assert that there is pretty good evidence that the New York based
publicity machine of Dan Emmett & Co. was blowing smoke when it
claimed (for him, and for New York) the innovation of something in
1843 that is shown in print, in Boston, three years earlier. Also,
the Boston picture may antedate the introduction of the squeeze-box,
by whatever name -- anyway that 1840 group didn't have one, and
several of the slightly later groups did. It was a pretty new toy, in
that era; but I assume the dating of diatonic accordions is of little
interest here.