78 RPM - Harry Spencer - The Arkansaw Traveller - Columbia - USA

78 RPM Record

Artist:	Harry Spencer
Label:	Columbia
Country:	USA
Catalogue:	21
Date:	1901
Format:	10"
Collection:	I Own It I Want It
Community:
Price Guide:	$33
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PRICE GUIDE

$33

Track	Artist	Title	Composer	Rating
A	Harry Spencer	The Arkansaw Traveller		Rate

Notes

Descriptive Talking [with violin accompaniment]
Artists are most probably Harry Spencer (speaker) and George Schweinfest (violin).
Many masters recorded and used for pressings with this [matrix/catalog] number between 1901 and 1908.

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Comments and Reviews


fixbutte 2nd Apr 2016		This is actually one of the first Columbia record discs, first released in 1901 and the earliest Columbia recording from the huge collection of Tom Kelly (you can buy it for a favorable US $2.95 right now on eBay). As already mentioned in the notes, it was re-recorded several times between 1901 and 1908, and different takes were used for this catalog number. The label displayed here is from 1904 or 1905 anyway, with the "Grand Prize St. Louis 1904" imprint and nothing about the Milan 1906 award, see 78 rpm Record Labels - Columbia. Here is something about the recording artists who were, like often then, not listed on the label of the one-sided record, from The Columbia Master Book Discography by Brian Rust and Tim Brooks, as quoted by DAHR: "This famous routine, in which a rube cracks jokes at the expense of a passerby while playing snatches of 'The Arkansas Traveler' on the fiddle, was a best seller in the early 1900s. Len Spencer recorded it for Victor and Edison, and many researchers assume that the Columbia versions, which were generally uncredited (or credited to 'Spencer and Schweinfest,' without specifying first names), were by him as well. However a 1907 Marconi catalog confirms that the most common take (10" take 12) was by Len's younger brother Harry, who made many spoken word recordings for Columbia; lists compiled by Helene Chmura from now-lost Columbia files also give the artist as Harry Spencer. Based on the forgoing, as well as aural evidence, the compiler believes that most if not all Columbia versions were by Harry Spencer. George Schweinfest, a multi-talented instrumentalist, presumably played the violin, while Harry Spencer mimicked both the rube and the passerby."

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Linked Releases

USA - Oxford - 1911