how tater bug mandolins got their name
The Potato Museum on potato beetles:
In the 1870s the presence of the beetle was so much a part of the Eastern scene that for a brief time ladies black and yellow-striped evening capes were the fashion. And a joke of the period had potato beetles studying mailing lists of seed companies to find out who had ordered seed potatoes.
home vaudeville & circus shots
These early vaudeville and circus photos: feel like family snapshots -- just pictures of the kids, really -- but from a family of circus performers:
Barrel Full of Monkeys
aerialist #3
From 1890.
I think I'm doing this series of posts on images of trapeze artists/ tightrope walkers because the word "aerialist" is so cool.
aerialist #2
Aerialist wearing wings strapped to his shoulders and feet while suspended from a balloon
Between 1870 and 1900
aerialist
Aerial daredevils existed in the age of ballooning, as well as the age of powered flight. One assumes this woman was a circus performer who got swept up in the ballooning mania. The image itself has a surprisingly dreamlike quality, which is at odds with its inherent horror.
the GREEN HANDS
During the depression the government invented weird jobs like interviewing dead end kids about folklore on the lower east side of Manhattan. The following text is a scary story told by a child on the corner of 9th and Avenue C on December 15, 1938.
...the interviewer describes the rest of the telling:
The story continues on and on for over thirty minutes with the green hands murdering all people that come within reach. The climax comes when the green hands are trapped in a hotel where a fire breaks out and the green hands turn to ashes. Throughout the length of the narrative, the group of about thirty boys kept silent and listened avidly to every syllable and closely followed the mimicry of the story teller. Their faces registered the horror of each crime - as if they themselves were eye witness to the crimes of the "green hands". The story teller felt the spell that he was casting over them and drew the story out a little bit by putting "new" victims within reach of the "green hands".
Zither Banjo Special Relationship
This 1914 recording by the zither banjo megafauna Oakley (brit) and Cammeyer (yank) rocks unbelievably hard, like the Ventures on punk:
Here's the sheet music to read along:
Frufru banjo by Brits
Two recordings on zither banjo by a turn of the century British virtuoso named Jan Wien, courtesy of the zither-banjo web site:
And more by an opera banjo player named Joseph Bull:
Intermezzo from "Cavalieria Rusticanain"
And while you are enjoying the music, here is something whacky.
W.G. Underwood, a sailor on board H.M.S. Calypso has adopted a new style of playing the banjo aloft while hanging by his teeth. He tells me (editor Emile Grimshaw) that the tune he was playing when this photograph was taken was "Lenton Waltz". He also says that "although a simple tune, it always goes down well when played in this manner at a height of twenty feet.
How many Famous Victor Record Artists does it take take to screw in a lightbulb?
Tim Gracyk's Phonographs, Singers, and Old Records: biography of Fred Van Eps, Banjoist
Around May 1917 Van Eps joined a touring group of recording artists, called at different times the Record Makers, the Phonograph Singers, the Eight Victor Record Makers, the Popular Talking Machine Artists, and the Peerless Record Makers. He replaced Vess L. Ossman, who allegedly had not gotten along with manager Henry Burr. Surviving programs show Ossman performing in April 1917, but in the May 1917 issue of Talking Machine World Ossman's name is missing from a list of members. The group was called the Eight Famous Record Artists by June 1920, and after five members--Burr, Billy Murray, Albert Campbell, John Meyer, and Frank Croxton--signed exclusive Victor contracts in 1920, "Victor" was added to the name. Van
Incredible but true: after all those iterations the best band name they could come up with was Eight Famous Victor Record Artists
. It's like the answer to the question "How many Famous Victor Record Artists does it take take to screw in a lightbulb?"
Hard to imagine somebody putting that on the back of their leather jacket.
emo Stephen Foster
Stephen Foster's 1850 tune Ah! May the Red Rose Live Alway (mp3) is both death-obsessed and over-the-top pussy, like a Hallmark card that says "So sorry you're rotting in the grave!" Very emo.
Lulled be the dirge in the cypress bough,
That tells of departed flowers!
Ah! that the butterfly's gilded wing
Fluttered in evergreen bowers!
Sad is my heart for the blighted plants--
Its pleasures are aye as brief--
They bloom at the young year's joyful call,
And fade with the autumn leaf:
Ah! may the red rose live alway,
To smile upon earth and sky!
Why should the beautiful ever weep?
Why should the beautiful die?
The way it slips briefly from major to minor during the instrumental hook is chilling.
About the musicians here, that floaty singing is a gal named Merja Sargon. The accompanist is a fellow named Bernard Rose, who I think is using a genuine 1850 piano.
Can't say I like the famous Stephen Foster tunes. Mainly they get on my nerves. But this one is awesome.
Rocking Yukon Gold
The varmint Soapy Smith lived and died in the hellishly cold northland up by the Russian border and the Soapy blog blogs about a part of the Library of Congress subsite on the joint history of Alaska and Russia which contains a goldmine of information, artifacts, documents and photographs on the Klondike gold rush era history.
I went prospecting in there and stumbled across a a dusty reading room with cowboy-era footage from Alaska. I especially liked an Edison clip from 1901 entitled Rocking Gold in the Klondike
.
CREATED/PUBLISHED
Thomas A. Edison, Inc., 1901
NOTES
From a single-camera position, the film shows sluice boxes as they are operated by gold miners in the Klondike gold fields.
Cameraman: Robert K. Bonine; Location: Yukon Terr., Canada
Copyright H4088, May 6, 1901; 31 ft., FLA3065 (print) FRA0408 (neg.)
I though about posting the clip on Soupgreens.com, and then I thought of Marco Raaphorst's Klankbeelds, where he does a soundtrack for a photograph, and I decided to do a little soundtrack.
from frontier badman to stardom in Hollywood
I asked Jeff Smith, proprietor of Soapy Smith .net and biographer of his great grandfather Soapy, whether there was a connection to LA. Jeff said that Soapy hadn't been to LA, but Numerous friends and gang members were known to have lived or visited Los Angels
:
Of interest might be Wilson Mizner, one of the old Skagway gang members, who in 1929, had become a partner in Hollywood’s Brown Derby restaurant.
School For Scoundrels says this about Mizner:
Wilson Mizner
He worked as one of Soapy's lieutenants until Soapy was killed. One of his scams included working as a gold weigher in a dance hall. While balancing the scales, Wilson would spill gold dust onto a carpet. At the end of the week Wilson burned the carpet then extracted the gold from the ashes. In a 1905 interview, Wilson claimed that this trick resulted in a weekly yield of a couple of thousand dollars.
In "Schemers, Scalawags and Scoundrels", author Stuart B. McIver relates one quasi-comic episode in the Yukon: "In the gold rush days in Nome, Alaska, [Wilson Mizner] put on a black mask, armed himself with a revolver and entered a candy store, shouting, "Your chocolates or your life!" Though the local sheriff knew Wilson was the culprit, there was no arrest. Later he was named as a deputy sheriff!
In 1905, Wilson showed up at a horse show where his brother Addison was ensconced in a pricey box with wealthy widow Mary Adelaide Yerkes. Addison pretended not to see Wilson, but the younger brother charmed his way into the box. Thereafter, Wilson worked speedily. He spent the night with Mrs. Yerkes, reportedly borrowing $10,000 the next morning.
Mizner made his way from frontier Skagway, Alaska to boomtown Hollywood, where (according to Wikipedia) he became...
an American playwright, raconteur, and entrepreneur. His best-known plays are The Deep Purple, produced in 1910, and The Greyhound, produced in 1912. He was manager and co-owner of The Brown Derby restaurant in Los Angeles, California, and was affiliated with his brother, Addison Mizner, in a series of scams and picaresque misadventures that inspired Stephen Sondheim's Road Show.
Back to Jeff Smith's comments on Mizner:
He had known Wyatt and Josephine Earp in Alaska, probably Nome. When Earp died on January 13, 1929, in Los Angeles, Mizner was among Wyatt's pallbearers. Two other Earp gang members were also in Soapy's gang.
Wyatt Earp at 21 in 1869.
According to Wikipedia Wyatt Earp was a famous *white* hat, the polar opposite of Soapy Smith, as well as a Gambler, Lawman, Saloon Keeper, Gold/Copper Miner
:
He is best known for his participation in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, along with Doc Holliday, and two of his brothers, Virgil Earp and Morgan Earp. He is also noted for the Earp Vendetta.
Which all goes to show a weird thing that I have discovered via Soapy Smith: there was a direct connection between the old west and early Hollywood. There were people who held up stagecoaches who went on to work on movies. Nuts! No wonder there were so many westerns made.