tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248979.post2495562030010827948..comments2024-03-26T22:40:26.729-04:00Comments on Music You (Possibly) Won't Hear Anyplace Else: 1914 mandolin club 78 is over-the-top amazingLee Hartsfeldhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15378950382643333359noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248979.post-36382847902516267502010-03-18T12:44:23.937-04:002010-03-18T12:44:23.937-04:00Lee, I'd for sure be interested in what you fi...Lee, I'd for sure be interested in what you find out! Not only is my dad a Williams alum also, but my great-great-grandfather was a well-known blackface minstrel (based in Boston, but he toured nationally), just before the Civil War. So I've got a lot of white-blacking-up in my family already. If you feel like dropping me a separate line about it, you could at jtenney@earthlink.net and I'd be very much obliged! My dad is still living (he's 90) and I think he'll get a kick out of the Mando Club!<br /><br />best,<br />John Tenney in CaliforniaAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248979.post-5659981717113894352010-02-09T17:48:27.572-05:002010-02-09T17:48:27.572-05:00Bill,
Mine, too!
Evelyn,
It's unusually fas...Bill,<br /><br />Mine, too!<br /><br />Evelyn,<br /><br />It's unusually fast and (what's the word?) vibrant for the day. It doesn't have a mainstream sound. I wish the disc (which is in decent shape) wasn't so noisy, but it's partly the technology combined with the lack of high freqs in the instrumental combination. There's nothing to compete with the hiss (though I just managed to make a better file).<br /><br />Bill from Illinois,<br /><br />Yes, mandolin clubs and orch.'s were a major trend on and off campus. To what extent they were an imitation of African American styles, I don't know--a lot, I suspect, given that blacks made the massed-mandolin genre their own circa 1900. I just know that, in this particular instance, the sound is highly African American, and I can picture white college kids of the day doing a lot of these kinds of selections, as in, ragtime-inflected Sousa. (Some of his stuff was pretty syncopated to begin with....)<br /><br />What I need are concert programs and other such documentation. I want to write Williams and ask if they have any archival data on their group, but I couldn't find a useful link at their site. I may have to resort to snail mail.Lee Hartsfeldhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15378950382643333359noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248979.post-81314140898240513692010-02-05T21:19:43.906-05:002010-02-05T21:19:43.906-05:00Hi Lee -- This is indeed a good one, and intriguin...Hi Lee -- This is indeed a good one, and intriguing too. What a lucky find -- thanks a lot for sharing it! I'm especially pleased to have it because I'm an alum of Williams myself! Unfortunately, that doesn't give me any additional insight into the questions you asked. I just did a very quick search and found reference to a Williams mandolin club (and also a banjo club) as far back as 1894. There was also reference in the NYTimes in 1912 to a mandolin club from Cornell. And curiously, a banjo club was again mentioned in the same sentence. Which makes me wonder: was there a college fad around the turn of the century for musical groups imitating African American idioms? I don't know about Cornell, but Williams did have a few black students back then -- but only a very few. So it seems extremely likely, as you said, that these were all-white ensembles. But I'd love to hear if you or anyone else finds anything to the contrary. <br /><br />Again, thanks!Bill from Illinoisnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248979.post-17467911518161555292010-02-03T10:44:09.052-05:002010-02-03T10:44:09.052-05:00Thinking Sousa and George M Cohan, it sounds very ...Thinking Sousa and George M Cohan, it sounds very true to the era, when staccato and sharply punctuated music was all the rage for dancing and listening. Pretty interesting stuff for the technology - it's surprising that the strings are as sharply defined as they are. Never heard of a mandolin group, then or now!Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05585386070479822412noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13248979.post-56155858429904298712010-02-03T09:17:30.635-05:002010-02-03T09:17:30.635-05:00Thanks...that's my kinda music!
--BillThanks...that's my kinda music!<br /><br />--BillAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com