modern-music-through-the-ages

[modern-music-through-the-ages]

Gertie Millar (1910)

Gertie Millar rose to fame in Edwardian England as the leading lady in a series of a successful musical comedies, many penned by her first husband Lionel Monckton.

The hits dried up during the First World War however – Monckton turned his nose up at ragtime-inspired compositions and other "noisy numbers" that were more attuned to contemporary tastes.

Millar last performed on stage in 1918. Her husband, in ill health, died six years later in 1924. Later the same year, she married the 2nd Earl of Dudley, best known as a colonial administrator in Ireland and Australia.

The mill worker's daughter, born in Yorkshire in 1879, was now Lady Dudley, residing in Dudley's aristocratic estate in Surrey. She outlived her second husband, who succumbed to cancer in 1932, by 20 years.

[modern-music-through-the-ages]

Aristide Bruant (1908)

Immortalised (so far) by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, part-time publicist and pal, Louis Armand Aristide Bruand has become synonymous with belle époque Paris... at least Toulouse-Lautrec's poster commissioned by Bruant (Bruand's stage name) has. This iconic image shows Bruant in his trademark outfit – a black hat and cape, with a red scarf and shirt.

Other distinctive promos for the Montmartre cabarets where Bruant performed, including one venue (Le Mirliton) the singer and songwriter owned, have also become emblematic of an age which rejected bourgeois morality while embracing commercial opportunities. Montmartre had just been swallowed up by Paris as the voracious capital grew.

Bruant was born middle-class but seemingly took readily to working class culture after slipping a few rungs down the ladder when he was 15 – his father died (some say), or squandered the family wealth.

Either way, this immersion provided the raw material for his chansons réalistes, portraying the underclass in its own language to the well-off, well-fed cabaret patrons who were slumming it downtown.

This new genre, pioneered by Bruant, remained popular in France for decades afterwards, through to the end of the Second World War.

[modern-music-through-the-ages]

Zez Confrey (1920s)

In 1921, a cat belonging to Edward Elzear Confrey's grandmother walked across her piano keyboard. That inspired Zez, a classically trained pianist, to write his best known work, Kitten on the Keys, sparking a decade-long craze for novelty piano (AKA novelty rag) in the process.

At the time, Zez was working for QRS, then and now, one of the biggest producers of piano rolls - the rolled-up perforated paper that player pianos or pianolas can read to make music.

Gimmicky novelty tunes - too challenging to be commercially viable as sheet music - were ideal for self-playing pianos. These sold well throughout the 20s but sales never recovered after the 1929 crash.

More Zez-penned novelty rags followed. As industry and his personal fortunes waned in the 1930s, he switched to music for jazz bands.

Kitten on the Keys, which Zez played at the famed 1924 Experiment in Modern Music concert (billed higher than Rhapsody in Blue), endured. Bugs Bunny, with a mouse, gave his own rendition two decades later in the Warner Bros short Rhapsody Rabbit.

It is the third-most recorded rag of all time, after Maple Leaf Rag (Scott Joplin) and Twelfth Street Rag (Euday Bowman).

[modern-music-through-the-ages]

Ladd's Black Aces (1922)

Ladd's Black Aces - occasionally promoted by their record label as Black, even though none of them were - was one of the pseudonyms used by early jazz grouping the Original Memphis Five. The quintet recorded 26 discs as Ladd's Black Aces between 1921 and 1924.

[modern-music-through-the-ages]

Art Hickman (on drums) and His Orchestra (~1919)

Arthur Hickman's Californian dance ensemble - the first professional band to incorporate trace elements of jazz, some say - landed their first gig entertaining the San Fransisco Seals, a baseball team, at their training camp in 1913.

That led to a stint at the St Francis Hotel after the hotel manager heard the group play. They performed in the Rose Room, which would lend its name to Hickman's best known composition.

Here, their reputation bloomed, leading to a gig as the house band for the San Fransisco World Fair in 1915, and eventually paving the way for prestigious outings to New York four years after that.

Hickman returned to California in the early 1920s, playing in San Fransisco (including a return to the St Francis Hotel) as well as Los Angeles. Ill health forced him to step away from his band in the latter half of the 20s however, eventually claiming his life when he as 43 in January 1930.

[modern-music-through-the-ages]

Dan Kildare (centre), with Club Clef players (1915)

Born in Jamaica but able to forge a career in the US after claiming American parents, Dan Kildare led popular string bands for dance clubs in New York and London, playing syncopated rhythms that were forerunners of jazz.

Kildare found fame recording and performing in New York. For a time, he ran the pioneering Club Clef booking agency/social hub, supporting and then taking over from New York's most feted Black bandleader at the time, James Reese Europe.

Later, Kildare also made his name in war-time London, overseeing the house band at the trendsetting Club Ciro after decamping to the UK in 1915.

Neither Club Ciro's temporary closure (due to serving alcohol after-hours), nor the departure of several band members to fight in France, hindered Kildare's ability to make money in the UK. It didn't last long.

In 1920, two years into an already disintegrating marriage, 41-year-old Kildare shot himself, but not before shooting and killing both his estranged wife - Mary Rose Frances Fink, a young widow with her own pub - and sister-in-law. The tragedy was widely reported by the newspapers in London.

[modern-music-through-the-ages]

Lionel Belasco

[modern-music-through-the-ages]

Clarence Williams (on piano) & His Orchestra (~1925)

The restlessness and entrepreneurial energy that would drive this prolific jazzman - one-part musician, one-part businessman and one-part hustler - were already apparent when Clarence Williams was 12, running away from home to join a traveling minstrel show run by popular comedian Billy Kersands.

That started a remarkable journey from New Orleans to Chicago to New York that would see this one-time honky-tonk pianist, vaudeville showman and cabaret manager - plus songwriter (including some that weren't really his own), music publisher, theatrical producer, A&R man and Harlem Renaissance convenor - play with some of the best, notably including early recordings by Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet and Bessie Smith.

Clarence Williams was supposed to retire in 1943, having sold his back catalogue (of more than 2,000 songs) to Decca Records for US$50,000. He was soon back in business however, running his own used goods store, The Harlem Thrift Shop. He continued to write songs until he lost his sight in 1956, after being hit by a cab.

[modern-music-through-the-ages]

The Wolverines (1924)

The Wolverines name lives on largely because jazz wunderkind Biz Beiderbecke played and made his first recordings with the group when he was on the cusp of fame, for around a year between 1923 and 1924.

Originally Dudley Mecum's Wolverine Band (they played Jelly Roll Morton's Wolverine Blues so much that they appropriated the name), the group first performed in 1923, having moved to Hamilton, Ohio from Chicago.

Mecum, a pianist and songwriter, didn't like learning the polkas, waltzes and tangos that club owners wanted (like the rest of his ensemble, he couldn't read music), and soon left.

His former ensemble kept their iconic name however - one that has been re-used by revival bands ever since.

[modern-music-through-the-ages]

Sara Martin with Clarence Williams (1923)

Sara Martin was already in her late 30s when she signed to Okeh Records in 1922 - part of the surging demand for blues divas following Mamie's Smith's breakout hit, Crazy Blues, two years earlier.

Martin, already experienced in vaudeville, switched to jazz and blues, becoming a fixture on the theatrical circuit as well as in the studio. She toured and recorded with some notable musical standard bearers, including Fats Waller, Clarence Williams, King Oliver and Sylvester Weaver.

Commercial interest in a singer once billed as the Famous Moanin' Mama faded in the 1930s, however. Martin switched genre again, this time to gospel, before leaving the music business for good.

The one-time blues sensation moved back to the town where she was born - Louisville, Kentucky - where she opened a nursing home. She still sang, in the church choir.

[modern-music-through-the-ages]

Sophie Tucker (1920)

...He's gotta love his big fat momma, He'll get no chance to fight! And my name isn't Sophie Tucker If that guy don't fall tonight!...

Sophie Tucker, born Sofiya Kalish, underwent her first name change - to Sophie Abuza - when she was less than two years old. Her family had emigrated from the Russian empire in 1887, to start a new life in America.

Her surname changed yet again after her parents insisted she marry Louis Tuck, a delivery man the rebellious youngster had eloped with when she was 17.

Tuck became Tucker after leaving her husband (the first of three failed marriages) and a son (who was raised by her sister) - as well as Hartford Connecticut, the town she grew up in - to seek her fortune in New York.

After treading the boards in minstrel shows and vaudeville, Tucker's break came after being ejected from the Ziegfeld Follies, the storied revue show, in 1909 - reportedly because some headliners were jealous of her success.

That brought Sophie Tucker - who was already incorporating deadpan comic twists into her act - to the attention of theatre owner (and future talent agency founder) William Morris.

Tucker's distinctive delivery would go on to influence a host of female entertainers, during her life and afterwards, notably including her theatrical heir, Bette Midler.

In 1911, two years after exiting the Ziegfeld Follies, Tucker had a recording deal, releasing her signature song, Some Of These Days, on wax cylinder.

Ten years after that, in 1921, she teamed up with pianist, Tin Pan Alley songwriter and on-stage verbal sparring partner Ted Shapiro, in what was to become a lifetime collaboration.

[modern-music-through-the-ages]

Alberta Hunter, right (1920s?)

Alberta Hunter was 87 when she recorded her last album. That was in 1983. Her first 78 came out in 1921, more than sixty years earlier.

Hunter hadn't planned on making any more records but she had been forced out of nursing - which she adored - following mandatory retirement at the age of 70. What the authorities didn't know that Hunter was already 82, having lied about her age after enrolling on a three-year nursing course when she was almost 60.

Hunter's remarkable musical journey began in 1911, singing in a Chicago bordello in her mid-to-late teens. She had run away/relocated with her mother (depending on who you believe) to escape a gruelling life in Memphis four to five years earlier. Either way, her mother - with whom she remained close - joined her soon after.

Alberta progressed to bars and clubs, ultimately landing a spot and a road to stardom in the storied Dreamland Cafe, which also hosted King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band (including Louis Armstrong and soon-to-be friend Lil Hardin).

Over the following decades, the Sweetheart of Dreamland ended up on stage in Broadway, London and Paris as well as in New York and London recording studios. She also wrote songs, notably including Downhearted Blues, which Bessie Smith turned into a hit.

Hunter finally stepped out of the limelight (or so she thought) after her mother died in 1957. Little did she know that a musical renaissance, and even greater fame, were yet to come.

[modern-music-through-the-ages]

Vesta Victoria (1890?)

...Here's the very note, and this is what he wrote, 'Can't get away, to marry you today, My wife won't let me'...

Yorkshire-born Victoria Lawrence made her theatrical debut at just 6 weeks old (some say), appearing with her father as Baby Victoria in January 1873.

Baby Victoria's life was soon devoted to the stage, maturing into Little Victoria by the time she had moved to London, when she was almost 10.

She became Vesta Victoria (naming herself after the match) sometime in her teens, adopting a cockney persona while expanding her repertoire of clog dances and impressions to include comic songs.

That shift transformed her life. By the time she was 20, Vesta Victoria was a star on both sides of the Atlantic, cementing her success with an eight-week run in New York for renowned impresario Tony Pastor.

She retired in London after World War 1, having been one of vaudeville's highest-paid stars.

She subsequently lost large chunks of her fortune to unscrupulous suitors and thieves but stayed wealthy until her death from breast cancer in 1951.

[modern-music-through-the-ages]

Blind Blake (1927)

"He made [the guitar] sound like every instrument in the band - saxophone, trombone, clarinets, bass fiddles, pianos - everything. I never had seed then and I haven't to this day yet seed no one that could take his natural fingers and pick as much guitar as Blind Blake." - Big Bill Broonzy

Arthur Blake was Paramount Records' best-selling blues artist, right until the company went bankrupt, recording 80 tracks for the label between 1926 and 1932.

Until recently, almost nothing was known about this guitar virtuoso before and after those dates. Research published in 2011 laid some rumours to rest however, confirming a birthplace (Newport News, Virginia in 1896) as well as a cause of death (TB in 1934, after being hospitalised for pneumonia the year before).

[modern-music-through-the-ages]

Andrew & Jim Baxter (1920s)

This father and son duo performed both blues and country - a reminder of a time before recorded music, when genres described songs rather than musicians. Andrew the father, born in 1869, played the fiddle, while his son Jim played the guitar.

A notable studio session in North Carolina with occasional collaborators the Georgia Yellow Hammers - a white string and vocal quartet - included an integrated recording, a rarity at the time in 1927 and for decades afterwards.

The two groups recorded their contributions separately, apart from one track. G Rag, a band favourite, featured the Georgia Yellow Hammers playing with Andrew Baxter on violin.

[modern-music-through-the-ages]

Daddy Stovepipe (1924)

Johnny Watson, aka Daddy Stovepipe, was already 57 years old in 1924 when he found himself in a recording studio for the first time. He could be the earliest-born bluesman to make a record.

Watson's career (as far as we know) began in Mexico at the turn of the century, playing in early mariachi bands. He went on to tour the southern US with The Rabbit's Foot Minstrels, the popular travelling tent show, before heading north to work as a street musician, mainly in Chicago.

Most of his recordings were duets with Sarah Watson, aka Mississippi Sarah - a talented singer and jug player and also Mrs Stovepipe. Her death in 1937 pushed the 70-year-old Daddy Stovepipe back on the road, returning to Mexico, the southern US and Chicago. He made his final records in 1960, at the age of 93.

[modern-music-through-the-ages]

Papa Charlie Jackson (1927?)

While relatively little is known about him, Papa Charlie Jackson - born William Henry Jackson in New Orleans (in 1887 maybe) - is now recognised as the first bluesman to be recorded, signing to Paramount Records in Chicago in the summer of 1924.

His go-to instrument was a distinctive six-string banjo tuned as if it were a guitar. In addition to a successful solo career he accompanied jazz bands and also duetted with blues singers such as Ida Cox and Ma Rainey as well as musicians Blind Blake, his idol, as well as (possibly) Big Bill Broonzy, his friend and sometime protégé.