This is a blog about music, photography, history, and culture. These are photographs from my collection that tell a story about lost time and forgotten music. Mike Brubaker
This gentle giant was named Bob. He was the horsepower at the Shaw family farm where he posed for the camera in August 1922. The farm was near Pomfret, Maryland on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay, where Bob's main chore was hauling wagons filled with tobacco.
Riding sideways is Blanche Shaw who is age 14, Leading Bob is her cousin Loretta McGinness and behind on the sledge are her two younger sisters Edna and Edith Shaw. Many years latter I would recognize Blanche's shy smile as Grandma, my mother's mother.
This was a very patient, painted pony. It's name was Sally and it was 1935 as notated by the photographer on the stirrup.
The little girl with the Shirley Temple curls is not yet five years old.
I can see in her smile that she is excited and thrilled to meet this new animal friend, even though her legs are not long enough for her feet to fit into the stirrups, much less attempt any barrel racing. It's a picture of my mom, Barbara Dobbin.
According to my dad's notes on the print
which he made from a scan many years latter, the photo was taken, without her parent's permission, in Glenwood, Minnesota as a gift for her grandfather, William Dobbin who lived there. He must have loved this photo as much as I love it too.
This gallant steed was also very patient though he was inclined to buck when given a spur. His name was Horsey.
The rider is just age two and to judge by his expression he is not thrilled to be in the saddle.
The trainer is helpfully restraining Horsey from any sudden twist or spring. He is my dad, then Lieutenant Russ Brubaker, who was in the army but not in the cavalry. The worried jockey is me, my younger self.
Today Horsey sleeps in a pasture up in our attic. It's quiet there, with a few stuffed dogs and raggedy bears to keep him company.
Every few years
he gets a rubdown and an inspection of his stall. He looks smaller than I remember.
"Climb Ev'ry Mountain", 1959 Lyricist: Oscar Hammerstein II
Composer: Richard Rodgers
These postcard images of enthusiastic mountain hikers are the work of Viennese artist Fritz Schönpflug (1873–1951) whose work I began collecting a few years ago. The cards were produced in 1910 as a six piece set marked B.K.W.I. 727. I'm still missing number 4 , but when I find it, I'll add it below.
As I was preparing this story a song title came to mind which inspired me to use the lyrics as links between Schönpflug's comical pictures.
"Climb Ev'ry Mountain", is a famous show tune that was featured in the 1959 musical and 1965 film,
In the musical the song is sung at the close of the first act by the Mother Abbess. In the original 1959 Broadway production the role was played by Patricia Neway (1919 – 2012) an American operatic soprano and musical theatre actress. Here she is singing on the Ed Sullivan Show, December 20, 1959. Good ears will recognize that the song is in a different key than in the 1965 film version.
I don't know why Hammerstein put an apostrophe in the word "ev'ry".
Neway certainly sings it as "evverrrry" and her voice is so powerful it could bring down mountains.
And here is a reprise from the ending to the 1965 film THE SOUND OF MUSIC.
Georg Ludwig Ritter von Trapp (1880 – 1947) Source: Wikipedia
It's quite possible that Fritz Schönpflug knew the original Captain von Trapp, patriarch of the Trapp Family Singers, Georg Ludwig Ritter von Trapp (1880 – 1947). Georg was an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Navy and during World War I became that navy's most successful submarine commander, sinking 11 Allied merchant ships and two warships.
His first wife, Agathe Whitehead, died of scarlet fever in 1922, leaving behind seven children. In 1926 one of his daughters was an invalid at home so Trapp engaged Maria Augusta Kutschera, a novice from the nearby Nonnberg Abbey, as a tutor. They fell in love and married in 1927, eventually adding three more children to the previous seven. In 1935 during the Great Depression, Georg lost his inherited wealth in a bank failure. A Catholic priest, Franz Wasner, who had been teaching the children music, encouraged the family to perform concerts around Austria and on radio.
In 1938 Trapp was offered a commission in the German Navy but turned it down in opposition to Nazi ideology. Recognizing the great danger of staying in Nazi Austria the Trapp family left for Italy, traveling by train, not by foot across the Alps as depicted in the movie. There they arranged a concert tour of the United States. In 1941 after a brief stay in Pennsylvania the family settled in Stowe, Vermont where they purchased a 660-acre farm in 1942 and converted it into the Trapp Family Lodge. Trapp died of lung cancer in 1947 but his wife Maria von Trapp and his Trapp Family troupe continued performing and making recordings until 1957.
The flute has perhaps the oldest heritage of all musical instruments. (Okay, drums are older, but let's skip that debate today.) Originally crafted in prehistoric times from hollow animal bones, it's a simple instrument whereby a player makes a whistling sound by blowing air over a hole at one end of a tube. Over many millennium different cultures around the world improved the flute by making it out of reeds, bamboo, and wood. Eventually it became the familiar transverse flute.
By the early modern era, flutes were commonly constructed of dense African blackwood, also known as Grenadilla, (Dalbergia melanoxylon),
the same timber used to make oboes and clarinets, and fitted with several metal keys to cover the tone holes. .
But in the early 19th century the German inventor and musician Theobald Böhm (1794 – 1881) devised a new improved flute made entirely of silver. His first patent for a metal flute with improved keywork was taken out in 1847 and it was first displayed to the public in 1851 at the London Exhibition. This is the type of flute now played in orchestras and bands.
However Böhm's design was not immediately adopted and in the mid and late 19th century many flutists preferred the sound quality of a wooden flute despite the advantages of a silver flute.
Some players compromised by playing a flute that had a wooden body for the keys
and a metal head joint for the embouchure hole.
Other instrument makers used ivory. This hard white dentine material, taken primarily from the tusks of elephants, was the plastic of the 19th century. It was once used in many common household items as well as for musical instruments like the white keys of a piano, the decorative accents on violin bows, and for head joints of flutes and piccolos.
Today I present five well-dressed flutists
who took pride in posing for a camera in their best concert uniform.
My first well-dressed flutist is a young man holding a blackwood flute and dressed in a dark uniform embellished with a swirling line of contrasting embroidery that matches the curls of his hair. This style of jacket was used by musicians in both professional and amateur bands, but not in military bands.
The portrait was produced at the studio of Ada Houseknecht, Artist, Batavia, New York. It is a rare example of work by a female photographer. Ada was born in 1868 and married to a photographer, Philon B. Houseknecht. Her obituary in 1949 described her as a "well-known photographer" in Batavia.
On the back is a signature and date: Walter Bernard, Geneseo, Sept 15, (18)99. I'm not absolutely certain of the last name as the letters are very spiky, but Bernard seems the most likely spelling. Geneseo is the county seat of Livingston County in the Finger Lakes region of western New York. The town is about 25 miles southeast of Batavia, New York. Unfortunately the man's name is too common to make a positive identification as I found no exact match in the either town. But the date is surely correct.
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My next flutist holds a silver flute as he stands in a photographer's studio with his instrument case and sheet music on a tall wooden plant stand. His name is Albert and he signed the back of his postcard portrait and wrote the date 28-9-10 or 28 September 1910. It was addressed to a Madame Jeanne Guillaume of Paris.
His uniform is neat but restrained without ornament. There are music lyre badges on his cap and collar. I believe he is a member of a regimental band but I don't see any unit number badge so he could be a member of a civic band from some French commune.
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My third flutist chose an unusual narrow and tall cabinet mount for his portrait, perhaps to accentuate his height and his flute which he holds vertically on a side table. This flute is a hybrid design with a silver head joint and a blackwood body. His uniform has a jacket embroidered with a kind of trefoil design on the front buttons, sleeves, and epaulets and a broad stripe along the trouser legs. His cap appears to be without a brim and has five initials fixed to it: W.H.P.D.C.
The photo came from the studio of Rodgers Photographic Palace, 471 Main Street, Hartford (Connecticut). My estimate is that this portrait of a young man, age twenty-something, was taken in the late 1890s or early 1900s. There is a West Hartford and perhaps the letters stand for West Harford Police Department but I don't know what the C could stand for. I would instead expect the letter B which of course would stand for Band.
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My fourth uniformed flutist is posed seated and gazing off to his left. The photographer has faded the image edges for a dreamy effect but it actually looks as if the studio is on fire and filling with smoke. In the young man's lap are a piccolo and flute, both in blackwood with ivory head joints. His uniform has large fringed epaulets and a single row of shiny brass buttons. The diagonal belt across his chest is to carry a small satchel for his music.
I suspect he is a member of a state guard band. In the 19th century United States' regular army was quite small and whenever there was a crisis requiring a large military force it depended on state militias to provide the manpower. These state guard regiments often hired professional bands to play at the unit's annual training sessions, typically 12 to 14 days each summer. For parades the bandsmen would wear this type of formal uniform.
This cabinet card was produced at the studio of B. F. Freeman of East Somerville, Massachusetts. The style looks like late 1880s to me or perhaps early 1890s.
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My final flutist has the best uniform, I think. His short jacket is adorned with full fringe epaulets and three rows of 24 brilliant brass buttons. His military forage cap has a two-color feather plume which must have made a splendid effect when his band was marching. In his right hand he holds a piccolo made of blackwood with an ivory head joint and in his left is a blackwood flute. On the table next to him is a third blackwood flute as well as lyre for his music. It looks like it would be attached to a wrist band worn on his left arm.
His belt buckle has a wreath design with three initials in the center. The first letter is definitely a D but the next two are unclear. Like the previous flutist, I think his elite uniform marks him as bandsman of a state guard regiment. Unfortunately his cabinet card has no photographers name or other marks so I'm only certain it was taken in America, likely in the 1880s or 1890s.
Let's finish with a rendition of the famous piccolo solo from John Philip Sousa's march, "The Stars and Stripes Forever". The soloist is Staff Sgt. Kara Santos of the United States Marine Band performing at the Marine Barracks, Washington, D.C., on May 31, 2013.
Her instrument is made of blackwood
but appropriately for the 21st century without an ivory head joint.
Sousa claimed he composed his iconic American march on Christmas Day 1896 on board a steamer returning from England.
I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that ever since then this short tune has been memorized and played by every flutist from every nation around the world.
His smile invites you to smile back, to chuckle, to laugh. It's a jolly face of friendly mirth. You don't know what to expect but he's bound to be fun. It's the face of Julius Werner, Humourist crudely printed on a postcard. It was sent from Kiel, Germany, a port city on the northern Baltic coast below Denmark, on 27 December 1899. No doubt the writer composed his short message while enjoying Herr Werner's jokes at a cabaret near the docks. He and his recipient, who also lived in Kiel, likely anticipated celebrating a new year and a new century in a few days as the card was delivered on 30 December.
In my collection I have only a few early picture postcards, printed before 1900, and most are from Germany or Austria-Hungary, the two nations where this simple medium of communication first became popular. The earliest Austrian picture postcards, mostly lithographs prints, date from the 1870s. The first printing methods for photographs are later and were not widely produced until the late 1890s.
My particular interest in cards like this is because I want to show examples of how entertainers first began using postcards for promotion of their act. One of the more common types were humorists and comedians who banked on audiences remembering their face from a postcard. The name you might forget, but that hilarious mug you'd never forget.
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Sometimes a smile becomes a welcoming shout. Hallo! Good to see you again! (Even if we've never met.) Join the party, let me sing you a song. That was the appeal in this postcard portrait of J. Kopfmüller, Gesangshumorist~ Singing humorist, who claimed "Weil i an Spass versteh'! " ~ "Because I understand fun!"
Herr Kopfmüller's postcard was sent from Ulm on 22 June 1902. Ulm is a city on the upper course of the River Danube, at the confluence with the small Blau Stream in the southwestern German state of Baden-Württemberg.
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At other times the smile makes you laugh even before the punchline. You may think you've heard it before but the longer and more improbable the story, the more funnier it gets. That might have been the style of Oscar Freyer,Mitglied von Emil Winter-Tymian's berühmtesten alles humoristen un Quartett-Sänger ~ Member of Emil Winter-Tymian's most famous everything humorist and quartet singer. Many traditional German songs are ballads that tell a tale. I imagine Oscar knew hundreds of them. He performed in a Dresden male vocal group that at various times numbered five to ten men. It was led by Emil Winter-Tymian (1860–1926), a Saxon folk singer, salon-humorist and theater director. In their skits the group sometimes dressed in women's clothing for comic effect.
Oscar's postcard was sent from Dresden on 2 June 1903.
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However with many comics sometimes their smile dissolves into a grin where you don't know if the joke might actually be on you. That's in the face of Otto Mücke, Gesangskomiker~ singing comedian. His smug smirk challenges us as to who knows better; the fooler or the fooled. Up to the end of World War One, comical singers were very popular in Germany. I imagine that Otto sang original material and was likely accompanied on piano or guitar, but his twisted sneer suggests he had a barbed style like what we now call an "insult comic".
Otto's postcard was sent from Charlottenburg, Germany, a section of Berlin, on 2 August 1912.
As I have often pointed out in my other stories of comics and clowns, humor is the most ephemeral of all arts. The gags, jokes, and songs that these comedians once told are lost forever. The people they lampooned and teased are forgotten. The social and political issues they mocked and satirized have disappeared into the cracks of history. All that is left is a picture of a smiling comical face.
I wanted to include examples of old jokes from their era (in both German and English) but I could not find anything that really fit. Mainly because the great majority of humor from the beginning of the 20th century is stale and unamusing like a forgotten candy bar left behind in the back of a kitchen drawer. Edible? Maybe. But appetizing? No way. And aging it for another few decades won't improve it either.
My initial interest in collecting postcards of German/Austrian humorists was because they resembled the stout funny men of my generation. In Germany, humor is a serious business, so it's fascinating to see in these old postcards subtle elements of comic schtick that became part of American comic arts. A good clown can be appealing in any language when they reinterpret a gag.
It's an unexpected moment of mischief. Maybe set off by a bad pun, a wisecrack, or something silly.
Instantly the jest spreads like an electric shock. Eyes light up, smiles appear, as everyone joins the fun.
Then in a flash the giggles, groans, and squeals of laughter can not be contained.
Clowns and comedians understand how timing works in humor.
And so do photographers.
This merry moment was captured in a photo postcard of 14 young ladies, members of a small orchestra. They all wear white dresses, though not identical, and are jammed together into a back corner of a stage. Other than a snare and bass drum arranged in front, all the instruments visible are strings—violins, viola, cello, and double bass.
It's a rare image of spontaneous glee. In all of my photo collection it's the only one that makes me wish I could have been there to hear the joke. The girls look around age 16 to 20 and I think they have either just performed a concert or are about to. There is no caption and the postcard was never mailed, but the photographer did helpfully leave their name stamped onto the back.
W. R. C. Mynster, view photographer Bell Phone Red 850
It did not take long to find W. R. C. Mynster advertising in the newspapers of Council Bluffs, Iowa.
Council Bluffs IA Evening Nonpareil 6 June 1911
PHOTOS OF YOUR HOME, PLACE OF business, of the baby, of your pets, or anything else, funerals, weddings, lawn parties and social gatherings, a specialty. Taken day or night. Call Bell phone Red 850. Address W. R. C. Mynster, 309 Ross St., Council Bluffs, Ia.
His full name was William Rufus Choate Mynster. Like many men named after their fathers, he chose to use his initials as his principal public name, a practice that a century later makes research a bit tricky. W. R. C. was born in Council Bluffs in 1868 and become a professional photographer after several attempts at other careers that included law, medicine, prize fighter, and gambling saloon bouncer.
His first newspaper advertisements begin in 1911 which may have been in order to compete with a growing number of photographers in his city. His specialty was in commercial photography which included taking large wide photos of convention groups, exterior scenes of buildings, and interior shots of businesses. Council Bluffs is located in Pottawattamie County in western Iowa on the east bank of the Missouri River. On the west bank is Omaha, Nebraska. In 1910 the population of Council Bluffs was 29,292 while Omaha could boast of 124,096. That's a pretty sizeable metropolitan area with a lot of potential for photographers.
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Panorama View of Council Bluffs, Iowa 1916, William Rufus Choate Mynster Source: Wikipedia
Here is a panorama of Council Bluffs made by William Rufus Choate Mynster in 1916. It is described as a view of West Broadway in Council Bluffs between 1st Street on the right and the Council Bluffs Post Office and Federal Building on the left at 6th Street. This photo is in the collection of the Library of Congress.
This is a photo postcard of a beautiful house taken by W. R. C. Mynster who stamped the card with the same imprint as on the orchestra's photo. It was never mailed so the location and date is unknown, but presumably it is a home in a historic district of Council Bluffs. I just found the listing for it today, July 13, and decided it deserved to be in my collection.
Council Bluffs IA Evening Nonpareil 22 January 1915
PHOTOS TAKEN FOR LODGES, SO- cieties, etc., of each member, then all the photos mounted in one frame ready to hang on wall. For terms of work of this kind call W. R. C. Mynster, 321 Platner St., Council Bluffs, Phone 850.
Choate Mynster, as he was also known, perhaps from his boxing days, also took photos of prisoners at the county jail and of crime scenes for the police. And every spring he would take hundreds of photos of schoolchildren. I suspect my postcard is one he took of a high school orchestra or maybe a string ensemble from a local music academy. The girls' hair styles and the quality of the photo suggest it was taken some time from 1908 to 1915.
Unlike most photographers who kept a studio for portrait work, he preferred to go to his clients. In that way he got to know many families and business people of Council Bluffs. In February 1929 the Daily Nonpareil newspaper published a superb tribute on W. R. C. Mynster's life and work as a photographer in Council Bluffs.
Council Bluffs IA Daily Nonpareil 10 February 1929
It is very rare to find a photo of a photographer with his camera so I feel obliged to include it along with the full piece below.
It begins:
Like the family doctor who has attended to children and children's children and even another generation to follow that, so has W. R. C. Mynster, 2128 West Broadway, photographer, said, "Look pleasant, please," to three generations of students in the local schools.
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Council Bluffs IA Daily Nonpareil 10 February 1929
The full article tells a great story of W. R. C. Mynster's life but here is an excerpt which I liked for how it described what a photographer like Mynster did for their community. It's true for many of the forgotten photographers that I have featured on this blog.
He got out among the people he intended to photograph. He was called to the bier sides of the city's departed great. He was called to cyclone areas and took pictures of the piling corpses and the wrecks of once happy homes.
He met Coxey's army * as it entered the city and he photographed the flotsam and jetsam of the tides of life as they rolled their tragic way towards Washington and disillusion.
He photographed the bloody evidence for the murder trial. He saw first-hand and his camera caught for all time the grotesque shapes of those who died with their boots on, the victims of hatred, passion, averice, jealousy or their own weakness.
Mynster crowded into the photography business while remaining in one city, all the adventures and experiences that go to brush the moss from the rolling stone.
And he photographed the children. Little ones, medium ones, grown ones, self-satisfied ones, nervous ones, pretty ones, merely cute ones, but never actually ugly ones, for, he said, "all children are beautiful to me. I love them. I like to make pretty poses of them and to catch their pictures so that their parents will always rejoice in the possession of a likeness that will last forever."
He photographed the children's children and now he is photographing the third generation.
* Wikipedia:Coxey's Army was a protest march by unemployed workers from the United States, led by Ohio businessman Jacob Coxey. They marched on Washington, D.C., in 1894, the second year of a four-year economic depression that was the worst in United States history at the time. Officially named the Army of the Commonwealth in Christ, its nickname came from its leader and was more enduring. It was the first significant popular protest march on Washington, and the expression "Enough food to feed Coxey's Army" originates from this march.
On 30 June 1932, William R. C. Mynster died after suffering a heart attack. He was 63 years old.
What his tribute report did not mention is that W. R. C. Mynster and his wife Josephine were proud parents of ten children. Two sons: Lyonel and Edwin, and eight daughters: Cora, Sevra, Pearl, Iva, Flora, Nellie, Josephine, and Lillian.
If the photo of the orchestra was taken around 1908-1915, two daughters, Flora, born in 1893, and Nellie, born in 1894, would have been of the same age as the other girls. Did they play a musical instrument? I don't know. It's only speculation but look at the photo again. Can you spot someone who's heard the cameraman tell this joke before? That's the face that sold me on the photo and still makes me smile today.
Whether it is Flora or Nellie, or someone else, I expect W. R. C. Mynster knew a thing or two about teasing young girls to get them to show off their best features. To tell a good zinger requires a punchline given with the timing of a prizefighter, a nightclub comic, or a watchful photographer.
William Rufus Choate Mynster (1868–1932) Walnut Hill Cemetery, Council Bluffs, Iowa Source: FindaGrave.com
This is a web gallery of antique photographs of musicians. Most are of people whose names are now lost in time but they represent the many kinds of players, instruments, and ensembles that once defined musical culture. But these photographs also capture a moment in the history of people and places, so I write about that too.
All the photos shown here are in my personal collection.
For Best Effect Click on the Images for a Larger View
For information on my music for horn - go to the bottom of this column.
