The Four Musical Hodges

 

Press Play

 

There's no business like show business,
Like no business I know.
Everything about it is appealing,
Everything that traffic will allow,
Nowhere could you get that happy feeling,
When you are stealing that extra bow.

There's no people like show people,
They smile when they are low.
Yesterday they told you you would not go far,
That night you open, and there you are,
Next day on your dressing room, they've hung a star,
Let's go on with the show!

Thе cowboys, the wrestlers, the tumblers, the clowns;
The roustabouts that move the show at dawn;
The music, the spotlights, the people, the towns;
Your baggage with the labels pasted on;
The sawdust and the horses and the smell;
The towel you've taken from the last hotel.

There's no business like show business,
Like no business I know.
You get word before the show has started,
That your favorite uncle died at dawn,
And top of that, your pa and ma have parted,
You're broken-hearted, but you go on.

 

 

 

There's no people like show people,
They don't run out of dough.
Angels come from everywhere with lots of jack,
And when you lose it, there's no attack.
Where could you get money that you don't give back?
Let's go on with the show!

The costumes, the scenery, the makeup, the props;
The audience that lifts you when you're down;
The headaches, the heartaches, the backaches, the flops;
The sheriff who'll escort you out of town;
The opening when your heart beats like a drum;
The closing when the customers won't come.

 

There's no business like show business,
Like no business I know.
Everything about it is appealing,
Everything that traffic will allow,
Nowhere could you get that happy feeling,
When you are stealing that extra bow.

There's no people like show people,
They smile when they are low.
Even with a turkey that you know will fold,
You may be stranded out in the cold,
Still you wouldn't change it for a sack of gold,
Let's go on with the show.
Let's go on with the show!

 

There's No Business Like Show Business
from "Annie Get Your Gun" (1946)
Composer / Lyricist: Irving Berlin
Music recording from the 1954 movie of the same name.

 

 

I don't know if Irving Berlin (1888-1989) ever met this musical group, but he certainly knew show biz people just like them. And I have no doubt that this happy bunch included many of his iconic songs in their performances. Their full photo shows a quartet of three women and one man sitting cross-legged on the floor of either a theater stage or a photographer's studio. They are dressed in extravagant band uniforms with fringed epaulets, fancy knotted embroidery, and pillbox caps topped with frilly horsehair plumes. Resting on their knees are four saxophones—a baritone, tenor, and two altos. Stamped on the lower edge is their name:

Four Musical Hodges

 

This slightly faded and cracked postcard has small pinholes in the corners which I imagine meant it spent most of its life pinned to the wall in some theater manager's office. The caption is the only clue to the saxophone quartet's identity as there is nothing on the back. Fortunately it is more than enough.

 

 

Portland Oregon Daily Journal
13 September 1908

 It didn't take long to find them in the newspaper archives. The earliest theater notice of the Four Musical Hodges came from the end of October 1907 when they played a vaudeville theater in Washington, D.C. In the following year they started in Brooklyn, NY and then Camden , NJ, but by the summer of 1908 the Four Hodges had traveled to the northwest Pacific coast with dates in Vancouver, British Columbia, Seattle, and then Portland, Oregon in September. 

 

There they were the headline act at the Pantages Theatre in an "Advanced Vaudeville" show playing "In a Spectacular Military Musical Act".  The show included Tatum, "the wizard of second sight"; The Helstons, "presenting the Stenographer and the Office Boy"; The Two Zolars, "Fashion plate song and dance artists"; Maud Rockwell, "Comedian and Character Singer"; Myrtle Victorine, "La Petite Soubrette"; Barney First, "Hebrew Comedian"; Elliott Beamer, "Baritone Soloist"; and the Biograph, "presenting the latest animated picture direct from the manufacturer". You got an awful lot of entertainment for 15 cents. 

In the years before World War I, vaudeville theaters flourished in the great boom of America's entertainment industry. Every small town had an "opera house", often incorporated into a town hall and civic building. Every big city had multiple "grand theatres", not to mention "music gardens" and amusement parks. Many theaters were linked together under national management agencies that contracted with hundreds of entertainment acts like the Four Hodges to fill their theater bookings. Every week thousands of entertainers boarded a train that would take them to another town and another stage.

Little Rock AR Democrat
28 February 1909

In February 1909, the Four Hodges, "high-class musical artists" played the Majestic Theater in Little Rock, Arkansas. The local newspaper printed a photo of the quartet showing the three women and one man standing in the same uniforms as they wear in the postcard. But instead of saxophones, the Hodges hold two cornets and two slide trombones. Notice that the women are not wearing ballet slippers but sturdy laced boxer boots.

 

 

Fort Wayne IN Daily News
29 May 1909

 

At the end of May 1909 they were in Fort Wayne, Indiana and the paper there ran a similar photo but this time they are standing with saxophones. From the very brief descriptions of their act, the Hodges played both brass and reed instruments as well as percussion instruments like xylophones and drums. Though they were characterized as high-class, their newspaper notices never listed any music repertoire except to broadly label it as in a ragtime or popular style. With four saxophones they may have played lively Rossini overtures but it's unlikely they ever played any refined music of Mozart or Beethoven. Essentially the Four Hodges were a novelty act that amazed audiences mainly by the variety of instruments they played.

Locating the circuit that the Four Hodges traveled is relatively simple since their newspaper notices are easy to map. But gathering any personal information on this kind of forgotten ensemble is a real roll of the dice. Just finding out their names was a difficult challenge because few newspapers ever reported both first and last names of theatrical artists. However, I got lucky, and found a reporter in Pittsburgh who asked the Hodges some questions in 1911 and ran a picture with his article too. It turns out that they were a pretty musical family.

 

Pittsburgh Post Gazette
13 August 1911

Pretty Sisters in Musical Family  

"Music hath charms."

   That familiar old saying, hand painted and hung in a beautiful frame, always occupies a prominent place in the library of the Hodge homestead up in the Kentucky hills south of Frankfort.
   The Hodges are a musical family and by the same token a happy, contented family, as a glance at two of the girls will show. Edna and Alice Hodge are pretty blue grass country girls, and they are on the stage playing musical instruments because they love music. In addition to them there is a brother, William Hodge (no relation to The Man From Home){a popular theater melodrama} and a sister, Harriet Hodge, all of whom will be seen and heard at the Hippodrome this week where, as The Four Musical Hodges, they are one of the big features on the program.

 

As regular readers should know, I have written many stories about family bands. It seems that William Hodge and his three sisters, Edna, Alice, and Harriet Hodge were a subset of that genre, a sibling band, or in their case a quartet. Unfortunately despite the useful clues in this report, I have been unable to find any Hodge family in the Frankfort, Kentucky region, or even in the whole state, that included all four first names. It's very peculiar, and frustrating too, that there are no census records, marriage documents, or newspaper accounts that would verify this report. But I'll accept it for now and call them William, Edna, Alice, and Harriet Hodge.

 

 

Winnipeg MB Tribune
27 January 1912

 

In 1912 the Four Hodges were in Canada again, this time in Winnipeg, Manitoba, where the local newspaper published a photo to announce their appearance at the Empress Theatre. Here they stand in a line with cornets and trombones raised for a fanfare. Since they wear the same costumes as in the postcard and other newspaper photos, I believe this was taken at the same studio and actually dates from 1908/09.

 

 

 

Denver CO Post
28 May 1912

 

In May 1912 the Hodges were in Denver, Colorado where they played at another Empress Theatre joined by members of the Denver Post Boys' and Girls' Band. The feature's editor made a passable paste-up of photos of the Hodges and the cornet section of the Denver Post Boys' Band. This was one of the bands I featured in my story from September 2019, The Newspaper Boys' Band, though there was no mention of a girls' component as my two postcards came from 1907 and 1908. I imagine many young girls who saw the Hodges perform began the next day to campaign their parents for a band instrument.

 

 

 

Pittsburgh Post Gazette
14 July 1912

A few weeks later they were back in Pittsburgh and the Post Gazette ran a different fanfare photo of the Four Musical Hodges with cornets and trombones. Here they are dressed in Scottish kilts and caps that suggests a Scottish connection though I have no other reason to place their heritage there. But it is a curious choice, that at least demonstrates the group had a larger wardrobe. In this image William Hodge is on right playing a trombone instead of cornet. Though this scanned photo is terribly grainy, the women's faces look younger than my first photo. More interesting is that William is the tallest here but in the other earlier newspaper photos two sisters appear taller. I suspect this may be a photo that either dates from before 1907 or that some of the women are different people.

 

 

Frederick MD Post
10 September 1912

 

In this next news photo we get a glimpse of what the stage setup was like for the Four Musical Hodges. William Hodge and his three sisters stand on a theater stage behind some xylophones, at least three are visible, which display banners with the name Hodges. On the floor in front are trombones and cornets, and behind are several tubular bell racks. The xylophone is not an easy instrument to move around, and like the bells, it is made of enough metal to require a stout box for storage and transport. How the Hodges managed to carry all this, as well as their costumes, is a question no reporter ever bothered to ask. Just getting their equipment onto the stage would be a logistic feat worth seeing. 

 

 

Fort Wayne IN Journal-Gazette
7 February 1914

In February 1914 the Hodges Quartet played Fort Wayne again where the newspaper ran a nice portrait of them wearing the same uniform costume as in my photo. Though the archived newsprint is very dark (despite my digital improvements) William Hodge is obviously at the top in this diamond arrangement and I think the women, going counter-clockwise from William, are the same persons as right to left in the photo.

 

 

Sioux Falls SD Argus Leader
6 April 1914

Then in April 1914 the Hodges were in Sioux Falls, South Dakota at the Orpheum Theatre. Here they are on the floor with their saxophones which surely makes this image contemporary with my photo of them. On a table behind them are two mellophones, another rather awkward instrument to have to carry.

 

The Four Musical Hodges had kept their group together for at least 7 seasons. Their circuit was not very large but it covered a long distance. They seemed to play enough large cities like New York, Washington, St Louis, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco to justify their good reputation, but they didn't seem to play more than a few dozen dates each season. Whether they returned home to Kentucky is unknown. Another curious thing is that with the exception of that single Pittsburgh report which gave their full names, no other newspaper notice described them as siblings of a family in any way. Only "one and man and three women" was used in the brief promotions of their act. Could Hodges be a stage name? Were they in fact unrelated? I don't know.

 

But history interrupted their story as it did for most people of the world living during 1914-1918. The United States entered WW1 in 1917 but it took many months to actually get soldiers "over there". For unknown reasons the Four Hodges played less than half as many shows in 1915 as they did in 1914. They stopped altogether in 1916 and had only a half dozen dates from 1917 to the end of the war in 1918. Did William Hodge serve his country? His name is too common to find in military records. And of course the great influenza epidemic of 1918-19 disturbed many people's work life but I do not know what effect it had on the Hodges.

 

But evidently they weren't giving up show business just yet. In 1919 the Four Hodges made a come-back of sorts and began appearing in the new style vaudeville theaters. The ones that featured motion pictures.

 

 

Bloomington IL Pantagraph
12 April 1920

 

The new age of cinema was exciting and full of new kinds of celebrities. Photos of the latest screen stars filled the newspaper space that used to go to vaudeville artists. Films with action, drama, romance, and comedy took center billing for theaters. Since the films were silent there was still a need for live musicians to accompany the picture show, but increasingly there were fewer variety artists on the playbill. 

 

Somehow the Four Hodges remained a headline attraction so that from 1919 to 1920 they played a few dozen theaters. Their repertoire now included a new specialty number called "The Jazz Drummer Girl". They still played the old standards of ragtime and popular songs, but like many musical groups, they were scrambling to get the attention of a public that wanted to hear music just like this "jazz" music everyone was playing on the new gramophone records.

 

 

Trenton NJ Evening Times
7 January 1922

 

The Hodges disappeared from the amusement pages in 1921, but made it back in 1922. Theaters found they could play movie shows almost continually all day, every day. The early pioneers of cinema had fresh competition from startup film studios generating dozens of new film titles every week. The old theater owners were also challenged as the popularity of bigger and longer films meant that larger theaters were needed for increased seating. Cinema chains built new palaces of entertainment. Few vaudeville acts could keep up with the changes.

 

 

Harrisburg PA Telegraph
13 October 1922

 

In October 1922 the Four Hodges played a show aptly named. Harmonyland, at the New Regent Theatre in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. The local paper ran their picture promoting their show in conjunction with Bebe Daniels in "Pink Gods", her latest Paramount release. The four musical Hodges would "give a number of pleasing musical numbers." In this photo they are holding four mellophones, usually described incorrectly in the theater notices as "French horns". The only qualities of the mellophone that are similar to the horn is the circular shape and large bell.

The Hodges had perhaps two dozens dates booked in 1922, less than half what they had in 1912. In 1923 it diminished again until finally in 1926 they played no more that two theaters in New York and Pennsylvania. After that the Four Musical Hodges vanished from newspaper notices and, as far as I can find out, left show business entirely. 

 

What really impressed me about this small group was the number of publicity photos that they used. Show business in this era was a tough competitive market which played to very fickle audiences. Small town folks had more conservative tastes in music while people in big cities preferred more sophisticated modern fare. A small novelty band had to keep a close watch on the public's latest trends and fashions. I don't think the Four Hodges could have been modestly successful without keeping their music fresh and appealing. It surely took a lot of hard work and dedication to keep smiling.

* * *

 

While researching my stories I usually limit my search range within the time frame of my subjects, so, for instance, these musicians were working adults from roughly 1900 to 1950. But earlier this week I removed that restriction and was surprised when I found a reference to the Four Musical Hodges from 1974. It was a reprint of a monograph entitled "Musicians, Orchestras, and Bands" delivered to the Maynard, Massachusetts Historical Society in 1967 by Birger Koski. It filled a full newspaper page with all kinds of historic trivia about talented people of Maynard who made a notable contributions to music making in the community. 

 

In his 1967 lecture Mr. Koski mentioned several individual musicians and gave an unusual credit to the Woolersheid Family of four brothers, Theodore, Ernest, Albert, and John and their offspring who were "unquestionably the most prolific musical family in the history of Maynard." Considering what he said about other people, this was high praise indeed. The four Woolersheid (or sometimes Woolershied) brothers were second generation German-Americans who played in several orchestras and bands around Maynard.

 

Evidently Theodore Woolersheid's daughters were very talented and beginning in 1901 his eldest daughter, Emma, played cornet for several seasons with Helen May Butler's Ladies' Band, a group I've featured several times on my blog. Her younger sister, Leonora or Lenora Woolersheid, was also a talented musician who began on E-flat tuba and in 1902, at age 13, was playing trombone in the Maynard town band. This is where Mr. koski's story gets interesting.

 

He writes that by 1913 Lenora had been touring the Keith Theater Circuit for five years with the "Four Musical Hodges". And she was still with them in 1915 and in 1920 too. In February 1922, Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Woolerscheid hosted a "tender reception for the Four Musical Hodges." This is an intriguing reference that may explain why the Four Hodges rarely explained their supposed family relationship. It may not be a complete confirmation but it does open up a new element of mystery to my postcard.

 

This treasure trove of information was clearly research that Mr. Koski took great pride in having gleaned these details from reading old Maynard newspaper accounts and interviewing family members. It also has a ring of truth because Maynard is very close to Boston, a place that produced many female musicians who are in my photograph collection, either individually or in bands and orchestra. It makes perfect sense too that a talented young woman who could play multiple instruments would find a steady job in an act working the B. F. Keith Circuit, a chain of vaudeville theaters that began in Boston. And taking on a stage name like Hodge meant you didn't have to keep announcing your name as Woolerscheid, admittedly a difficult surname to fit onto a playbill.

 

I don't know which of the four Hodges was Lenora Woolersheid, or if this is just a mistaken connection. But I did find the 1920 census record for Theodore Woolerscheid living in Maynard, Massachusetts. He was age 59, occupation: Foreman, Woolen mill, and a widower. He shared his home with his daughter, Lenora Woollenscheid, age 30, single, occupation: Musician, Musical Act. That's a pretty good confirmation of something.

 

 

As Irving Berlin says,
Let's go on with the show
and finish by watching the
Tokyo Disneyland Saxophone Quartet
play a sprightly arrangement of The Entertainer, by Scott Joplin.

The Four Musical Hodges would have liked this.

 

 

 

 

 

For my other stories about saxophone ensembles
who worked on the vaudeville circuit check out these:
The Darling Saxophone Four
Bicycles and Saxophones, The Elliott~Savonas Troupe
Sax Appeal
Send in the Clowns!
The Novelty Musical Artists

 

 

 

 

 

This is my contribution to Sepia Saturday
where laughter is always the best medicine.