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
We all recognize that pitiful feeling. Far from home and kinfolk, down on your luck,
uncertain of tomorrow, much less the rest
of your future. What to do?
But it helps to have one good friend who lends an ear to share your misery and will always support you as much as they can.
Maybe it's time to move on.
Leaving DENVER
Ask mother why she don't write to me __________
This postcard was addressed to Miss Bessie Welsh of Breckenridge, Missouri. It has a postmark from Denver, Colorado on May 21, 1910 at 7:30 PM.
Kelley
Melda ^ gave me
Dear sister I got your
letter and am all right
I am brock now but
am going to work
from your brother
Loren Welsh
This postcard is no longer in my collection as several years ago I gave it to a former Sepia Saturday blogger Tattered and Lost Photographs, whose devotion to the eclectic and wonderful genre of vernacular photography inspired me to look closer at old snapshots, postcards, and photo ephemera. I am indebted to Linda for introducing me to the fine art of deconstructing a photo into separate components, the better to see into the subjects' faces and a photographers eye. Since her blog is now retired I don't think she'll mind that I post this fellow for our Sepia Halloween
so that he can plead, "Trick or treat?"
and makes us smile for a second. I expect everyone has known
a brother/cousin/friend like Loren. They deserve a treat, too.
The first aviators were very brave. Their flying machines were still experimental so every flight was a test of control for the pilot and a gauge of engine performance for the mechanic. They learned that getting up was not so hard as coming down.
In the second decade of the 20th century, for some unknown reason, Iowa, the Hawkeye State, became a bustling center for aviation.
Enterprising publishers in Des Moines sent photographers out onto Iowa's great prairies to capture the magic of human flight. Their postcards showed aeroplanes, and sometimes airships, too, flying all over the state.
This is part two of a series that I started last year in Flying High in Iowa. Today I offer four more postcards of flying high in Iowa. Again.
In this postcard a biplane similar to the Wright brother's flyer takes a close pass near the Adair County Courthouse in Greenfield, Iowa. Construction on the courthouse started on July 4, 1891 and finished the following year. It was the third courthouse for the county and was built of brick and limestone in a Romanesque Revival style for a cost of $26,768. Greenfield is the county seat and is located about 60 miles southwest of Des Moines. In 1910 it boasted of 1,379 residents.
At some point in around 1949, the courthouse tower was removed. Some say it was a structural safety hazard because of its weight on the foundation. Others think it was because it attracted too many crazy pilots. Tornadoes, supposedly, had nothing to do with its removal. Today the Adair County Courthouse is proudly preserved in Greenfield, though its square no longer has a bandstand.
Adair County Courthouse, Greenfield, Iowa Source: Google Maps 2024
* * *
Here another biplane passes over the roof of the public school in Williamsburg, Iowa. It must have happened on a weekend as no children are evident. Williamsburg is a small town in between Davenport and Des Moines. In 1910 it had a population of around 1,000 residents. The school building was demolished many years ago but I could not find any evidence of where it once was.
* * *
Aeroplanes were not the only thing flying around Iowa. In this photo of the C. N. W. Depot in Lisbon, Iowa two small airships float above the railroad yard. The airships are Semi-rigid Dirigibles that used a keel structure to hold the engine and pilot. It was attached by ropes or cables to a sausage shaped envelope which was filled with hydrogen gas, used because of it had a high lifting capacity and a ready availability. At the time an airship was capable of reaching a higher altitude than any aeroplane, but moved much slower and was difficult to steer in even moderate winds.
Lisbon, Iowa is about 36 miles northeast of Williamsburg as the crow flies. It is a small town that had 846 citizens in 1910. Today the Chicago and North Western Railroad which served Lisbon is no longer in operation having been restructured many times. The remainder of its railway line was acquired in 1995 by the Union Pacific Corporation. This next image is the modern railroad crossing in Lisbon where I expect the old depot was likely situated on the north side of the town.
North Washington St., Lisbon, Iowa Source: Google Maps 2022
* * *
This photo is one of the more dramatic postcards. An aeroplane flies low over the Main St. of Washington, Iowa, up the east side of the town's square. The street is broad and made of packed dirt. The commercial block facing the square has a wide concrete sidewalk where an open-top automobile is parked. Opposite are horse-drawn wagons and in the center of the street a man is leading two horses or maybe mules. No one seems to take any notice of the aeroplane above them.
Washington, Iowa, the county seat of Washington County, is situated southwest of Davenport, only 32 miles west of the Mississippi River. In 1910 its population was 4,380 so this was a pretty large city by Iowa standards. Maybe enough to support an airfield? Wikipedia doesn't say.
Unlike the other postcards which were never mailed, this one was sent inside a letter on 15 March 1912 to Mr. & Mrs. R. H. Lemon of Los Angeles, California. No doubt the writer hoped to impress them that Iowa had aviators just like the big cities on the West Coast.
Washington Iowa
March 15, 1912
Dear Friends
I thought I would send you
this card & let you know that
our City has improved since
you have left & if you dont
return you will not know
Washington You will think
you have family in Chicago
I am feeling fairly well I am
some **? yet have a fine
appetite & can eat anything again
Remember me to Mrs Burrgess
How is Mrs Young by this time
I hope she is improving
Your friend Bessie & Ira Generton(?)
answered Mar 28 - 1912
Today that corner of Washington's town square is still broad but now properly paved. Horses and wagons are rare and airplanes likely don't fly so close to the store buildings anymore.
W. Main St. & S. Iowa Ave., Washington, Iowa Source: Google Maps 2024
* * *
Sharp-eyed readers may have noticed a similarity in the biplanes pictured on these postcards. In fact the aeroplane is identical in every one. If you look closely you can see a faint line outlining the aircraft which shows how its image was pasted onto the photos of the courthouse, the school, and the town square. All of these postcards were sold as novelty fantasy picture postcards of Iowa towns. The airships over Lisbon, and the postcards in my previous story, Flying High in Iowa, were all fakes, yet still produced by genuine human intelligence using only photographic alchemy and, of course, without the aid of computers. Some, like the last image of Washington, Iowa, were published by the "Real Photo" Des Moines Postcard Company (notice the "quote marks"). Others were created by the National Photograph Company of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The "photos" all date from around 1910-1915 and clearly were just good-natured fun, perhaps aimed at promoting civic pride and boosting trade and regional recognition.
But the biplane pictured on these postcards was not a Wright brothers' flyer. In fact the only connection that Orville and Wilburn Wright had to Iowa was that their family once lived in Cedar Rapids. In 1878 their father, a traveling church minster, brought home a toy helicopter for his sons that was made of bamboo, cork, and a rubber band for power. The two brothers became so captivated in playing with it that it broke. So they built a new one. In later years, they credited this childhood experience with the toy as the spark for their interest in making a flying machine. However the Wright brothers never returned to Iowa and never flew their machine there.
Nonetheless when they traveled to France in 1908 to present their new invention to the French government and its people, the newspapers in Iowa were quick to report on it.
Des Moines Tribune 2 June 1908
Somehow the Des Moines Tribune "at great expense secured the exclusive right to publish the working drawings of the Wright Brothers Aeroplane as improved up-to-date." In June 1908 the newspaper printed the detailed plans along with photos of Orville and Wilburn with their flying machine.
Two years later in 1910, human flight was no long a fantasy or even just a theory. Iowa's newspapers regularly reported on not just the Wright brothers but on aviators from around the world, giving precise numbers for distance flown and altitude reached. Every new advance in aviation engineering was covered, both for lighter-than-air dirigibles and the heavier-than-air powerd aeroplanes. Many articles described the great potential of flight, offering an imaginative future for aeroplanes in commercial air travel or as powerful military aircraft.
1910 Los Angeles International Air Meet poster Source: Wikipedia
In January 1910 Los Angeles hosted the first international aviation meet in North America. Aviators from around the world brought their flying machines to Dominguez Field in Los Angeles County, California for an eleven day event. Though the Wright brothers had presented their flyer at several events in Europe in the previous two years, they did not participate in this one. Instead they were there in LA to protect their invention's patents from infringements by other aviators. One of them who they accused of stealing their design for ailerons was Glenn Curtiss (1878–1930).
Glenn Curtiss (1878–1930) Source: Wikimedia
Curtis was one of the new stars at the Los Angeles Aviation Meet. His first career, like the Wright brothers, started with bicycles, both building and racing them. He then moved over to racing motorcycles, manufacturing his own engines. In January 1907 Curtiss set an unofficial world speed record with his motorcycle powered by a V8 engine. Later that year he joined an aviation research group in Nova Scotia, the Aerial Experiment Association, founded by Alexander Graham Bell. On July 4, 1908, Curtiss flew the biplane AEA June Bug for nearly a mile, making it the first aircraft flight witnessed by the public in North America. The feat won him the Scientific American prize, and also a lawsuit from the Wright Brothers, who had declined previously declined to fly the June Bug. They waited until 3 September 1908 to demonstrate their flyer to the public at Fort Myer in Arlington, Virginia.
After Reims, in September 1909, Curtiss took his aircraft to an airshow in Brescia, Italy, where he won the grand prize, flying five 10 km circuits in 49 minutes 24 seconds. He also won the quick starting prize, firing up his engine in 8.2 seconds. But he made only second place in the altitude prize, climbing to just 165 ft (51 m).
Glenn Curtiss carrying Jerome Fancuilli as passenger at the Dominguez Air Show, January 1910 Source: Wikimedia
It was this same Curtiss No. 2 aeroplane that Glenn Curtiss brought to Los Angeles in January 1910. This was the first major exhibition of powered aeroplanes in the United States. It proved a huge success with an estimated 254,000 tickets sold, roughly 20,000+ spectators each day. Gate receipts for the eleven-day event made around $137,500 which returned $1.25 for every dollar that subscribers invested in the aviation event's fund.
It didn't take long before other cities got into the action. Even as the Los Angeles meet was going on, announcements were released of major aviation meets in New York, Montreal, Indianapolis, St. Louis, and Minneapolis.
And even in Sioux City, Iowa.
Sioux City IA Journal 21 June 1910
Sioux City is in western Iowa on the Missouri River bordering Nebraska. In 1910 its population was 47,828. After hearing about the airshow in Los Angeles meet, a local Sioux City businessmen's club raised $10,000 to host their own aviation meet. Sioux City's newspaper had been a big promoter of aviation for several years, publishing many articles on aircraft development and reports on new flights.
The Sioux City Aviation Meet was set for three days at the end of June. The Journal ran a full page spread on the event at Woodland Park with grand banner leads: "Greatest Attraction The World Has Ever Known / Man's Conquest of the Air / A Realization of the Dream and Quest of Ages / A New Hazard for Those Who Seek Fresh Thrills in Sport / The One Important and Distinctive Achievement of the 20th Century."
The featured aviators would be Charles E. Willard and James C. 'Bud' Mars flying the famous Herring-Curtiss Aeroplane. The park would also have band concerts and league baseball games every afternoon. Later, motorcycle racing was added to the events. Admission was 50¢ for adults, 25¢ for children.
Sioux City IA Journal 30 June 1910
A RUNNING START IS MADE ON THE GROUND BEFORE ASCENDING.
The Curtiss biplane which is shown in the picture was set up Tuesday afternoon at Woodland park by the mechanics who travel with the aviators. Aviator "Bud" Mars is seated at the wheel, with Eugene Ely, who is to take the place of Aviator Willard, standing in front of the machine. The men in the rear are the mechanics who piece the bird cars together. The machine is equipped with one front and two rear wheels, on which it is rolled for a distance of 100 yards or more before rising into the air. It is this feature which makes the Curtiss machines superior to those of the Wright brothers, as the latter are not equipped with ground wheels.
A week later when the event started, the newspaper ran a picture of one of the two Curtiss aeroplanes brought to the show. Its open frame construction owed more to bicycle than automobile fabrication with a cage of thin supports and cables connecting the two main wings and ailerons, a pusher prop engine, and a single bench seat for the pilot.
Besides flying his own aeroplanes Glen Curtiss was also training other aviators to fly his machines, so for this event his company contracted to send Willard and Mars, who were already known for their "barnstorming" flights. However a day before the event Willard unexpectedly cancelled. He was replaced by Eugene Burton Ely (1886–1911) a native Iowan, born in Williamsburg, and raised in Davenport.
Sioux City IA Journal 30 June 1910
"BUD" MARS AND EUGENE ELY.
With the disappearance of Aviator Charles Willard the brunt of flying during the three days' aviation meet will fall on Aviators "Bud" Mars and Eugene Ely. Mars, who appears at the left of the picture, has been here since Monday, superintending the work of setting up his machine, and Ely, at the right, arrived Tuesday afternoon from Chicago, where he was preparing for the flights which will be made by himself and Mars in that city July 2, 3 and 4.
Unfortunately the weather conditions in Sioux City that week were not ideal for the small aircraft. Around 4,000 people showed up on the first day but were disappointed when after a long delay the few flights attempted were aloft for only a minute or two, and never reached more than 10 to 20 ft in the air. The aviators blamed the wind.
The next day was no better. Mars made one flight late in the evening going around the race track, making a "pretty picture...with green trees for a background." But he "narrowly missed dashing into the judge's stand and one of the grandstands." Most of the crowd had already left the ground.
On the final day of the exhibition, July 1st, the Sioux City businessmen's aviation committee was so dissatisfied by the poor performance of Mars and Ely that they threatened to withhold the final $6,000 payment of the contract with the Curtiss Company. Fortunately on the evening of the final day, both J. C. Mars and Eugene Ely not only got into the air but reached altitudes above the tree line that offered the thrills promised by promotors. The few spectators present cheered and applauded as the two aeroplanes flew around the darkening sky.
The following week the aviators and their machines were off to Chicago for another aviation meet. The Ringling Bros Circus arrived to take over Sioux City's Woodland park.
The city's commercial club reported that gate receipts for their aviation event took in $3,355 leaving a shortage of $800 from what had been expected. Organizers were not consoled by reports that Charles Williard, the star aviator who had abruptly dropped Sioux City, had taken his aeroplane to an airshow in Kansas City where he failed to get his plane into the air, first because of a punctured wheel, and then, once it was repaired, only managing a very brief straight flight that barely reached a height of 25 feet. The Sioux City club's contract with the Curtiss Co. was for $2,000 each day for at least two successful flights each day. In the end the motorcycle races and baseball games turned out to be more exciting for the spectators who came to Sioux City's first Aviation Meet. Iowans were less than impressed with the reliability of aeroplanes or their future utility to mankind.
I am certain that the little biplane pictured in my collection of Iowa postcards was one of the two Curtiss aeroplanes brought to the 1910 air show in Sioux City. If you look closely you can see the plane has only three wheels with a pusher prop just like the Curtiss. It's a small but significant detail that proves it was not a Wright brothers aeroplane. A newspaper photographer managed to point their camera at either J. C. Mars or Eugene Ely at just the right angle and with a clear sky behind them. The Des Moines "Real Photo" Company then decided that Iowans would get a kick out seeing an aeroplane over familiar places in their home towns. It marked the beginning of the age of aviation, when folks could pretend that they had seen a real aeroplane fly. In a few more years just about everyone could say they had seen an actual aeroplane. But it would be a few decades before people could book a ticket to ride in one.
Later in December 1910, James C. Mars (1875–1944) appeared at an aviation meet in Fresno, California where on a flight at 4,000 feet (1,200 m) his engine's carburetor froze. He was forced to make the longest plane glide then on record, putting it into a half-mile spiral glide to land safely. Less than 2 weeks later Mars demonstrated the first aircraft flight in Hawaii. On this same 1911 tour he is also credited with bringing aviation to Asia with demonstration flights in Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Korea. While in Japan, he even took along as a passenger Crown Prince Hirohito, the future Emperor of Japan.
Eugene Burton Ely (1886–1911) was surely frustrated by the strong winds in Sioux City that summer but he persevered and in September 1910 found good weather at an airshow in Davenport, Iowa. There he and his Curtiss aeroplane set a new record, flying five miles in ten minutes and reaching an altitude of 2,100 ft. He was praised for the deftness of his landing too.
A month later on 24 November 1910 Ely made the first shipboard aircraft takeoff in Hampton Roads, Virginia where he launched off theUSS Birmingham. The aircraft nearly crashed into the water before rising up, but rather than continue flying over the harbor Ely wisely chose to land on a nearby sandy beach.
Eugene Ely takes off from the USS Birmingham, Hampton Roads, Virginia, November 14, 1910. Source: Wikipedia
Two months later on 18 January 1911, Ely reversed the maneuver to make the first successful shipboard landing of an aircraft. He tool off from a racetrack in San Bruno, California and landed his Curtiss aeroplane on the armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania anchored in San Francisco Bay. This used a tailhook system to stop the plane, another first in aviation.
Tragically on 19 October 1911, Eugene Ely was killed in an accident at an airshow in Macon, Georgia. His plane went into a steep dive that he was unable to pull out of. After he crashed Ely was able to jump clear of the wreckage, but his neck was broke and he died soon after. He was two days short of his 25 birthday.
Sioux City IA Journal 28 August 1910
Despite the disappointment of the airshow the Sioux City Journal continued publishing articles on the future of aviation. In August 1910 they ran a lengthy piece entitled "Commercial Possibilities of the Aeroplane". It was illustrated with a fantastic drawing of a cityscape with a sky filled with monoplanes, biplanes, and like something out of a Jules Verne story, a monstrous winged airship which presumably carried hundreds of people. The prophetic caption read: "The Whirr of their motors will be as the droning of bees, so numerous will they be."
Sioux City IA Journal 28 August 1910
On the same page was another article entitled "Aeroplane vs. Battleship" with another illustration showing biplanes dropping bombs onto a navy warship. The caption reads: "The Aeroplane has come like the torpedo and the submarine, but the battle ship remains and will continue to remain King."
Four years later the world would put aeroplanes and airships (not to mention submarines and battleships) to a real test of military power at the start of the Great War.
The Cradle of Aviation Museum in Long Island, New York made a short video on the 1910 International Aviation Meet held at Belmont Park in Elmont, NY in October 1910. The film presents some history of the airshow and pictures of this event which were likely very similar to what people saw at the meet in Sioux City.
To finish I offer this terrific video, courtesy of RDJunc YouTube channel, of a replica 1910 Curtiss Hudson Flier built for the Glenn Curtiss Museum in Hammondsport, NY. I recommend watching how the engine and prop is started at the 2:00 minute point. Takeoff is at 4:00 minutes.
That's because it was a Tuesday and the Los Angeles Fire Department Orchestra was playing on KFI radio.
Whittier CA News Tuesday, 12 April 1927
The L. A. Fire Department Orchestra came on at 7 pm after the Dragon Hawaiians at 5:30 and Bertha Miller, English pianist at 6:30. Sometimes the orchestra invited Hale Hooper, a tenor, to join them for a song or two. If you stayed tuned to the station you could hear the Gattone String Quartet, the soprano Grace Mead, and finish the evening with the Azure Music Club, featuring Edna Cook, a blues singer with Glenn Edmunds and his Collegians dance orchestra.
It was all live music, broadcast free over the air.
Of course, most people never actually saw the Los Angeles Fire Department Orchestra play, not unless they could get down to the KFI studio in Los Angeles. There they undoubtedly would have been impressed by the group's brilliant white uniforms, white hats, and white saddle shoes. Instead people living beyond Los Angeles had to be satisfied with a postcard of the orchestra, offered free to anyone who mailed in a request. (And many, like me, probably wondered how hard was it to clean soot and ash from those firemen's uniforms?)
Calling it an "orchestra" was a bit of a stretch since there were only eleven musicians and the only string instrument visible is a banjo at the back left. The reed players on the left are playing saxophones, two tenors and an alto, but extra color they can switch over to either two baritone saxophones, or three soprano saxes, or three clarinets. On the right are four brass players with two trumpets, slide trombone, and a sousaphone. At their feet are metal Harmon mutes which give a trumpet or trombone a "wow-wow" effect, a novelty sound effect popular in music of the 1920s.
Standing center is the leader holding a baton and next to him is a piano player and a drummer, whose trap set looks very uncomplicated compared to modern drummers. However behind him is a tympani drum and a tubular bell rack for more percussion color. Basically this is a 10-piece combo band typical of the groups that played popular music in the 1920s. Their repertoire was likely taken from the latest Broadway songs and new dance music from big city nightclubs. Since the first sound films had not yet been released, Hollywood's movie musicals were not a part of America's music culture. But they soon would be. This orchestra/band's instrumentation was chosen because these instruments were the best suited for radio. In January 1922 California had just 13 radio stations in the state. By the end of the year in December there were 63 stations, most located in southern California.
The postcard was sent from Los Angeles on 2 May 1927 to Mr. and Mrs. S. M. Graux of Red Bluff, California, about 570 miles north of Los Angeles in the Sacramento Valley. The postcard's back has a small illustration of a firefighter pointing his finger—"Are you doing your duty to help reduce America's Fire Losses?" There's a printed note below, "We acknowledge with thanks, your kind message. L. A. F. D. Orchestra" The Grauxs likely heard the fire department orchestra play on their new wireless set and sent a letter or card to the station in express their appreciation of the concert. KFI station encouraged public comments as a way to measure the distance of its signal reception and the size of its listenership. This was important data for its marketing department to use in securing new advertisers.
On a side note the postmark banner promotes Citizen Military Training Camps, a program first were authorized by the National Defense Act of 1920. Each summer between the years 1921 to 1940, these camps offered basic military training to young male citizens age 17-24 without incurring any obligation to be called up for active duty like in the National Guard or Reserve forces.
Like many cities in America, the Los Angeles Fire Department already had a sizeable band which marched in parades and performed benefit concerts at sporting events, circuses, and fairs. One of the first radio stations in America was WLAG in Minneapolis which began broadcasting in September 1922. By December that year it announced a concert by the Minneapolis Fire Department Orchestra sponsored by the Minnesota Loan and Trust Company. This orchestra also had just 10 musicians, though it included two violinists. The size of the ensemble was due to the size of their studio's sound room as the first radio studios had very small facilities and recording technology at the time had many limitations. Getting microphones to reproduce vocal and instrumental music with acceptable sound fidelity was a big problem for radio engineers then. Check out my 2024 story, The Little Symphony Orchestra of KDKA Radio for another perspective on the early radio studios.
In Los Angeles the fire department used the musical talent of its firefighters to form an orchestra partly to have a dance ensemble to play for banquets and benefit balls. But the advent of local radio gave the department an opportunity to use this orchestra to promote the importance of fire safety and Los Angeles' local fire fighters. The group got their start in July 1925 playing monthly broadcasts on station KFWB. Situated at the Warner Brothers studio, the station had signed on the air onl a few weeks earlier on 3 March 1925. Its call letters were assigned by the Department of Commerce in order of official application. So it was pure coincidence and had nothing to do with the "Four Warner Brothers" who operated the movie studio.
Los Angeles Daily News 9 July 1925
Musical Firemen Practicing Hard for Debut on Radio
WILL BE HEARD ON RADIO — Here is the Los Angeles Fire Department Orchestra, which will be heard on Los Angeles Fire Department programs to be broadcast monthly from Warner Brothers' Studio (KFWB). The first appearance is scheduled for next Monday from 10 to 11 o'clock. The personnel of the orchestra includes: Back row, left to right: S. E. Frandsen, clarinet; J. Marietice, saxophone; L. V. Parker, violin and banjo; J. C. Goodrich, piano. Front row, left to right: A. J. Kirby, saxophone; Lieut. T. F. Carler [Carter], saxophone; C. L. Yager, trumpet; H. W. Grains, trombone; Capt. D. W. Clairborn[e], in front at drums.
When I began research on my postcard of the L. A. Fire Department Orchestra I found a perfect match to it in the vast archive of the internet. This postcard was annotated with the names of all eleven musicians. Though I won't show it here, the postcard's note matched five of the names on this 1925 newspaper report (which also allowed me to correct the newspaper's spelling in a few cases.) The other names from this 1927 postcard list were: Royal Hotchkiss, banjo; Everett C. Appleton, trombone; A. W. Grannis, sousaphone; H. S. Metheny, trumpet; L. F. Smithson, sax and clarinet; and Chief Waldemar Guterson, director.
Broadcast Weekly magazine 23 June 1929
When the Los Angeles Fire Department Orchestra started performing on radio in July 1925, stations initially broadcast only a few hours a day and had trouble filling the time. Radio technology was still crude and transmitters operated on relatively low power which did not carry a signal very far. And there were not many receivers listening either, as the American public had not yet found reason to buy a home radio set. Stations competed with different gimmicks to get people to listen, and music was one of the first hooks.
The first problem was keeping radio signals strong enough to give clear fidelity so people could hear a concert on their primitive speakers or headsets. But as more new stations came onto the airwaves there was a new problem. How do you get people to tune in. The early radios used AM frequencies which could reach a surprising distance depending on the atmospheric bounce. So newspapers and magazines began publishing daily and then weekly schedules of local and nationwide radio programs. In June 1929 Broadcast Weekly, a national magazine, ran a picture of the Los Angeles Fire Department Orchestra above the programs for Wednesday, June 26. It shows the same musicians as in my postcard but all standing at attention and saluting.
The fire department orchestra had begun with monthly performances on KFWB, but now four years later they were playing on KFI, however they were no longer a regular on Tuesday evenings and had moved to afternoons or sometimes late night at 11:00. I couldn't find any reviews or list of music that they played, but because of their instrumentation it seems safe to say that saxophones did not play Mozart. Instead they likely cultivated a dance band style typical of other dance bands of this roaring decade. Perhaps influenced by their director, Chief Waldemar Guterson.
Los Angeles Herald Examiner 19 November 1924
The postcard I found on the internet clearly labeled the director of the Los Angeles Fire Department Orchestra as Chief Waldemar Guterson. I've been unable to find any newspaper report that connects him to the orchestra, or the fire department, for that matter, so I suspect he was an honorary fire chief and was engaged to bring a hip new dance style to the fire department's radio orchestra.
Guterson was already a rising star in the Los Angeles music scene as he had brought his European jazz group, "Band of All Nations", to California in November 1924, after a season in London. His uncle was Mischa Guterson, a noted conductor who led the famous Grauman theater orchestra in Los Angeles. Waldemar also played piano and composed songs and instrumental music. This 1924 report in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner included a sharp photo of him which matches the man in the fire department orchestra photo.
Long Beach CA Press Telegram 2 June 1928
The annotated postcard I found labeled the drummer in the Los Angeles Fire Department Orchestra, as Capt. D. W. Clairborne, also manager of the group. I found other reports of him in regular fire department activities so I know he was definitely a career fireman. Guterson, on the other hand, seems to have been too busy performing at hotel ballrooms and night clubs around southern California to have ever had time to fight fires. How long he directed the fire department orchestra is unknown, but he seems to have gone on to a successful career conducting theater orchestras on Broadway in New York and as a music director for television and film in Hollywood. Waldemar Guterson died in March 1964, at age 61.
The Los Angeles Fire Department Orchestra was a featured group on Los Angeles radio stations for nearly nine years, from October 1925 to March 1934. After that time the group seems to have disbanded as they did not receive any further notice in newspapers. The reasons may have involved reorganization or financial cuts to the fire department. Or perhaps Los Angeles' radio stations were changing with the times. Much of America's first generation of radio stations were no longer independent and had been bought by the emerging media giants, corporations like NBC, CBC, and MBC, which set new standards and direction for the industry, that would eventually transform the radio age into the television age. For a while musicians still performed live on the air, but increasingly there would be less and less live music until, like laughter, it was canned like a commodity, an invisible soundtrack for other entertainers to talk over.
Would you like to be an actress, playing every night to 1200 admiring, applauding theatre-goers?
Or would you like to take a six months' vacation?
Or would you like to go for a 2000-mile steamer cruise with your own cozy stateroom, lounge around, swim or do anything you choose?
Or would you prefer to stay at home?
How would you like to have them all together?
That is the enviable lot of the actresses on the floating theatres that ply during the Summer months up and down the Ohio, Mississippi, and Illinois Rivers and their tributaries.
"Showboat's Come"
Maybe you have never been in a river town to be awakened at 7 o'clock in the morning by a steam calliope tooting the latest popular song and upon inquiry being told that "It's a showboat, I guess"
Nor maybe you were never down on Main St. at about 10 o'clock when a natty band marched up the street and stopping at the principal corner gave a concert. Nor noted that the banners which were carried by half a dozen smudgy small boys in red coats three sizes too big for them announced that "The Girl Who Had No Chance" would be shown on the Water Queen Floating Theater at the landing tonight.
If you have seen this much and have not allowed your curiosity to carry you further, you have missed a delightful experience. Upon inquiry you would have been told that there are several of these floating theaters. And they will give you the names of several past and present—the Water Queen, the Golden Rod, Cotton Blossoms, Columbia, Superior and others.
Furthermore, they will tell you that in the afternoon visitors are permitted to look over the boat.
Whole Theatre Afloat
In the afternoon you will pick your way down to the landing and see a small steamer and a barge about 175 feet long. The front of the barge will be hollowed out like the shell-like front of a movie theatre and studded with colored electric lights.
This barge is the theatre proper and the steamer is for pushing it up and down the different rivers.
You find that the interior of the theatre is just about like the auditorium of any good theatre, seating about 1200 persons—orchestra, balcony, boxes, fans, carpets, orchestra pit, scenery and a stage about 25 feet wide at one end.
But you are more interested in life aboard the boat. You are taken about and see the dining room, the kitchen, the barber shop, the print shop, the carpenter shop, the scene-painter's working room (for they make their own scenery), and you are told that everything possible is done on the boat.
The men even have their own baseball team which plays the local nines at the different landings, thereby giving the men recreation as well as advertising the show.
"Like Heaven After Vaudeville"
You see the show-folk taking life easy. The women are sitting around on the shaded deck sewing. Some men are playing cards. Others are glimpsed far back on the stern of the steamer diving from the rail into the water.
One of the women volunteers to show you her stateroom. She is more than willing, for she is comparatively new to showboat life and wants to talk about it.
She opens the door to a cozy little bedroom. Rugs on the floor. White spread on the bed. Pictures tastily hung about. A table with writing materials and a portable typewriter. Clothes hung up out of the way.
"It's like Heaven after coming off a vaudeville circuit." she tells you. "My husband and I have been in vaudeville 10 years — playing clear across the country and most of the time only half a week at a time.
"Maybe you don't know what that life is. It's hurrying your packing after a show to catch a train. Or getting up at some unearthly hour and carrying your grips down a dark street, through the mud and waiting two or three hours in a cold depot for a late train. It wears you out.
"Now here we never have to hurry after a performance—no packing, no trains to catch. We live right on the boat all the time. Why, we don't even have to change to street clothes after the performance. And how I do sleep with the cool breeze coming off the river.
"And we play only six shows a week—one a night. I play Nellie Gray in this show—nearly all our dramas are about alike, generally some out West. Then Bob and I do a song and dance specialty between the second and third acts.
Bob plays Jack Leslie in the piece. Oh, yes, everybody doubles. You see, there are really only six of us who were hired out-and-out as actors. The small parts in the piece are taken by some of the band boys. The rest of the musicians are in the orchestra. One of them is the printer and another the scene painter.
"We get our meals regular and we get good meals, too—they're a godsend after the stuff we got at some of the $3 and $4-a-day hotels across the country.
"I've never had so much time to myself before. Why, I've done more fancy work in the last two months than all the years I've been married. You'd have thought I had lots of time on the train but there were too many catnaps to make up for lost sleep.
"Oh, it's a wonderful life for the six months—down the Ohio, up and down the Illinois and down the Mississippi and back. Of course, the salaries are small; but when you count traveling and living expenses we're just as well off and it's just like living at home like a family, you know.
"I just eat and sleep and loaf and do whatever I want to. The only thing is, I'm afraid"—and she smiled ruefully—"that I'm going to have to let out all my clothes."
1853 Spalding & Rogers' Floating Palace Source: Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, 1853, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
My opening text is from a 1921 article in the Boston Globe which described life on a showboat, a floating theater uniquely suited to the waterways of America. In the age before the development of steam trains and railroads, rivers were the principal arteries that connected America's cities and towns. With the advent of steam-powered boats in the 1830s, travel on rivers became fast and more reliable with shipping capable of going both downstream with the waterflow and upstream against it. Many theatrical companies had purpose built barges made into floating theaters which were towed by steamboats. One of the largest was the Floating Palace of circus entrepreneurs Gilbert Spalding (1812–1880) and Charles Rogers. Built by a Cincinnati boatyard the hull was 200 ft long and 60 ft wide supporting a huge amphitheater with luxurious seating for 3,400 on two decks.
Spalding and Rogers decorated their theatre with ornate mirrors, thick carpets upholstered seats, and hand-carved woodwork. It used 200 gas light fixtures to illuminate a 42 ft diameter circus ring. Its circus show featured a variety of acts that included clowns and equestrian acts, balloon ascents, minstrel shows, and theatrical performances. The Floating Palace was conveyed along the river route by a steam-powered towboat which also provided heat and a gas supply for the lights as well as sleeping quarters for 50 performers and crew. Yet even when fully loaded with crew, circus artists, patrons, and horses too, the Floating Palace only drew 25 inches of draft.
Sadly in 1860 the Civil War interrupted its tour and the Floating Palace was stranded in New Orleans, where in 1862 it was confiscated by Confederate Forces and converted into a hospital ship. The war closed the showboat circuit for several years and it was not revived until the 1870s. Entertainment companies now turned away from circus acts, which were expensive to produce, and instead built showboats for conventional theatrical shows that presented melodrama and vaudeville acts.
My opening photo is a small postcard which joined my collection several years ago. It was not posted and the only clue as to the identity of the boat was the large lettering along the lower deck—Cotton Blosso[m]. Several showboats used that name so it was a puzzle to determine when the photo was taken. Then I discovered at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Library an archive of Historic Steamboat Photographs. My postcard is identical to Neg. 8212 in their collection. There are 142 more photos related to the history of this celebrated showboat like the one above which gives a different perspective on how a showboat typically tied up to a riverbank. Notice that the Cotton Blossom does not have funnels or a paddlewheel. It was essentially an unpowered barge that depended on a steam towboat, fastened here on the right at the stern of the showboat, to push it along the river.
However the Cotton Blossom first started out under a different name—the "Modern Temple of Amusement"—operated by Eugene E. Eisenbarth and his wife Susan Henderson. According to a feature story on this showboat that I found in a 1956 Evansville, Indiana newspaper, Eugene got his start in show business as a medicine man in a small wild west show that traveled along the Ohio River. After he met his wife Susan, who was from a wealthy family and objected to vaudeville's cheap vulgar acts, the two formed a different entertainment company which would present first-class culture. They began in about 1898 with a tent show of Uncle Tom's Cabin, which by then was a pretty stale melodrama. In 1900 they decided to expand to a proper theater. Except now their troupe would travel in their own "floating" theater.
They commissioned a boatyard in Martinsville, West Virginia to convert an old glassware barge into a two-deck showboat with an auditorium that could hold 600 people. They also owned or hired a steam towboat to transport the showboat. Actors and supporting players were engaged for a spring/summer season from April to October. Mr. Eisenbarth managed the boats but also took parts in stage productions while Mrs. Eisenbarth-Henderson managed the box office. They primarily played smaller towns along the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers as there was too much competition in the large cities from regular theaters.
In late summer of 1902, toward the end of their third season, the Eisenbarth-Henderson floating theatre was on the Mississippi River at Grand Tower, Illinois, about 125 miles south of St. Louis, Missouri. On the evening of September 4th, just after their showboat had opened its auditorium to the public, the towboat Sprague came around the bend at full speed and lost control. It collided into the showboat with such force that it drove the floating theater onto the embankment and nearly snapped it in two. Fortunately the show had not yet started so only about 100 people were seated. Thus a greater tragedy was avoided but nonetheless three women were injured and, of course, the tour of the Eisenbarth-Henderson Co. was instantly discontinued.
Towboat Sprague. 1902–1948 Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison Library
This towboat was no ordinary steamboat. The Sprague was a powerful new sternwheeler that was on it first trial run after the Iowa Iron Works in Dubuque, Iowa had completed its construction. It was 276 ft (84 m) long with a beam of 61 ft (19 m) and a draft of 7.4 ft (2.3 m) which made it the largest steam towboat ever made. In the accident the Sprague was not damaged, nor was the floating theatre's steamer. The next morning, managing 12 miles per hour with her paddlewheel turning at six revolutions per minute, the Sprague continued to Cairo, Illinois where she was turned over to her new owner, who quickly made a generous settlement with the Eisenbarth-Henderson Co.
{The Sprague earned the nickname "Big Mama" as it worked the Mississippi and Ohio for almost five decades, retiring from service in 1948. In 1907, the Sprague set a world's all-time record for towing: 60 barges of coal, weighing 67,307 tons, covering an area of 6+1⁄2 acres, and measuring 925 feet (282 m) by 312 feet (95 m).}
Eugene and Susan Eisenbarth-Henderson did what any good show biz trouper would do. Within a few days after the accident they ordered a new floating theatre from the boatyard at Parkersburg, West Virginia. Costing $16,000 it would be much bigger than the old barge. The new showboat would measure 42 by 160 ft and with a double-timber hull construction weighed-in at 650 tons. There was seating for 1,200 and cabins for crew and actors. By 25 March 1903 it was ready for inspection and interior fitments in Pittsburg. The next season it would open with a production of "Faust."
The Eisenbarth-Henderson Co. floating theatre was said to be the largest of its kind. They called it the "Modern Temple of Amusement" and expanded its shows with vaudeville acts, silent movies, exhibitions, and spectacle shows in addition to melodramas. Within a few years its success, or novelty, was deemed interesting enough for newspaper readers in England.
Uttoxeter, England New Era & General Advertiser 17 January 1906
A FLOATING THEATRE
An Interesting Craft. A number of floating playhouses may be seen on some of the rivers of Europe and America, but the largest and most novel is that known as the Modern Temple of Amusement, which plies the Ohio and Illinois and Mississippi rivers during the summer months. This unique theatre has a seating capacity for 1,000 persons. It boasts of boxes, stalls, a pit, and an orchestra. In addition, the vessel is sufficiently large to admit of numerous sleeping rooms for the actors, the deck hands, and all those connected with either the show or the boat.
This interesting craft makes a journey of 2,500 miles every summer. The boat starts at Pittsburg (sic), and visits the towns of the coal miners and steel workers along the Monongahela river. Next it turns and goes down the Ohio river, and later up the Illinois river, finally making its way to the Mississippi. The boat carries a complete electric plant, and at night the theatre is not only brilliantly illuminated, but a searchlight is made to flash its beams over the surrounding country. The theatre is well patronised.
In this photo from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Library the Eisenbarth & Henderson Company's name is stenciled along the lower deck walls of its floating theatre. In profile it looks almost like a military barracks or boarding house. In fact there were several cabins for the premier artists and Mr. and Mrs. Eisenbarth. The band, crew, and other male cast members bunked in the auxiliary steamboat. On top of the roof is a pilot house which would likely be manned for navigation when underway since the steamboat pilot behind did not have as good a view of the river channel.
The Star & Stripes are flying at the bow end and below it is a sign reading Mount Vesuvius. This was a picture show, probably projected photos and illustrations using a magic lantern rather than a movie film, that depicted the eruption of Italy's famous volcano and the "Destruction of Pompeii". From around 1875 the volcano had been increasingly active culminating in April 1906 when three weeks of repeated explosions of lava and ash destroyed several towns and killed 500 people.
Steubenville, OH Herald 7 October 1907
In a previous season the Eisenbarth & Henderson Co. produced a similar picture show on the Great Flood of 1889 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania.
The stage of the Eisenbarth-Henderson floating theatre, the Modern Temple of Amusement, circa 1906 Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison Library
Photographs of theater stages are rare to find so this photo of the interior of the Eisenbarth-Henderson floating theatre offers a special glimpse at how its entertainment was presented. The simple proscenium stage is about 20 ft high and 28 ft wide with a covered orchestra pit in front. The central seats are in compact rows with two tiers of box seats on either side. The stage curtain depicts a wreckage of a wooden sailing ship so perhaps this was for a play about pirates or a naval battle.
The band of the Eisenbarth-Henderson floating theatre, circa 1906 Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison Library
This photo shows the brass band of the Eisenbarth-Henderson floating theatre, twelve men dressed in white caps and tunics. Their names have been written below their feet. When I found this picture in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Library collection I was surprised that I recognized these musicians as just a few months ago I acquired a different postcard of them. The clue was the E & H Band written over the bass drum—the Eisenbarth-Henderson Band.
My postcard shows 12 musicians in the same uniforms but sitting relaxed outdoors with their instruments at hand and five other people. Behind them is a banner that reads: The Eisenbarth-Henderson Floating Theatre Band. The word Band is written in by the photographer. Some of the musicians are clearly the same men seen in the other photo, so this photo likely dates from the same time.
The postcard has extra special value because it was sent by one of the musicians. He writes to a Miss Mary McQuarrie of 232 Notre Dame Avenue in Manchester, New Hampshire. The postmark is obscure, perhaps SEP 3 19?? but the letters RAVENS match Ravenswood, West Virginia which is a town on the Ohio River, about 35 miles south of Parkersburg where the showboat was built.
This is a new postal one of the band boys took. Mr. Eisenbarth is on it with the black hat on with his two little girls. I was playing the big drum for [a] couple of days. "Tom"
{SIDE NOTE: Miss McQuarrie's name stumped me after I went through all the usual letter combinations. Then I stumbled onto McQ names and found her in the 1908 Manchester, NH city directory. Unfortunately, though she was in the city directories from the 1890s to the 1920s, I could not find her in any census records.}
The leader of the band is the man standing center in the first photo, holding a cornet and a baton in the other hand, and in the second photo seated center in front of the man with the campaign hat. He is Harry High from Evansville, Indiana who led the Eisenbarth-Henderson showboat band for the 1907, 08, and maybe 09 seasons. Previously he had been a bandleader for the showboat Water Queen in 1904, and the Emerson in 1905. While on the Eisenbarth-Henderson floating theatre he also appeared on stage in bit parts of their melodramas and comedies.
In the 1950s Harry High was semi-retired working as a private music teacher in Evansville. He was contacted by several academics who were writing books on the forgotten entertainment world of America's showboats. His reputation was one of the best bandleaders of this genre, though he modestly denied it, but he proved such an invaluable resource for stories of show biz life on the river that one professor dedicated his book to Harry. Evansville's newspaper picked up on this and ran feature stories on him in the 1940s, 50s, 60s, and 70s. He died in Evansville in December 1964 at age 83.
In March 1908 the Eisenbarth-Henderson Co. was about to open their season and were traveling on the Ohio River down to Point Pleasant for the first show. Just after midnight on 25 March 1908 the showboat, pushed by its towboat Columbia, reached lock #18, near Marietta, Ohio across from Williamstown, West Virginia. The river was running high and turbulence pushed the Columbia onto the lock walls which tore open its hull. It rapidly began to sink as the showboat broke away to drift down the river. There were about 40 members of the Eisenbarth-Henderson troupe and crew on each boat. The Columbia's crew and its passengers scrambled to escape. I'll let Harry High tell the rest of the story.
"It was a miracle that anyone escaped," says Harry High today. "Though this was nearly 50 years ago. I can remember that night all too vividly.
"Men and women leaped from their beds and fought their way to the top deck. In less than a minute all but a half-dozen were there and climbing into the small boats.
"Two or three of the crew went out their windows and into the river to swim for the shore. It wasn't far but the water was cold and the current at the dam was strong. If they hadn't been expert swimmers they'd never have made it."
Harry still remembers the near-panic that spread when it was discovered that one man and two women were missing. He and another musician ran along the roof to a ventilator that was over the women's stateroom. They pried it loose and peered down. There they saw Louis Carroll, the company electrician they called "Nick," standing on a table in water up to his armpits. He had come to the cabin in an attempt to save the two women.
"He didn't say anything," recalls Harry. "We stuck our arms down and told him to grab ahold. But he shook his head and floundered off into the darkness. We thought he was stunned. But in a moment he reappeared, carrying one of the women. We pulled her out through the ventilator and looked back. Nick was gone again. In a few seconds he returned, carrying the other girl. We lifted her to safety and then — just as water was lapping at his chin — we got hold of Nick and pulled him up on the roof.
A few moments later the boat settled to the bottom Of the river. Only the roof and the pilot house were clear."
It a wild night for the showboat people.
This account comes from a feature story on Harry High published in the Evansville Press on 12 August 1956. Harry said that during the following day he and his bandmate returned to the steamer to chop holes in its roof and "fish out" musical instruments and personal gear from the vessel. But as the sun set they found themselves trapped in the dark on top the sunken steamer. Stranded in the middle of the river they had to wait until morning to signal someone on shore for help.
Fortunately no lives were lost in the calamity, though other newspapers did falsely report that seven people drowned. But this disaster should have been enough for any theatre company to go bust, except that "Capt. Eisenbarth was not easily discouraged. Within a few days he had re-equipped his troupe, obtained another to and was off on his schedule of carrying culture to the river towns."
In September the company finished out their 1908 season, but the near tragedy convinced Eisenbarth and his wife that the risks were too much and it was time to sell their Modern Temple of Amusement.
Clarksville MO Sentinel 12 June 1912
In early 1909 the floating theatre was sold to Walter Needham and Harry Steiner who rebuilt the barge, adding that distinctive front shell with the electric lights, and renamed it the "Cotton Blossom." Then a few months later they sold it to Ralph W. Emerson, the so-called "King of Showboats". Over his long career he owned nine showboats and the steamers that propelled them up and down America's wide rivers.
In this notice from the Clarksville, Missouri Sentinel the Cotton Blossom presented the "great New York success – One Girl in a Thousand". There were 5 vaudeville acts including "the European Sensation – Prince Victorina and his Royal Troupe of Hindoo Wonders; the talk of every city, the best and highest salaried Vaudeville act ever seen on the river."
"the Cotton Blossom is the only show boat that guarantees their performance or money refunded."
Hannibal MO Courier and Post 16 June 1914
For many decades showboat floating theaters offered entertainment to hundreds of communities scattered along the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers and their navigable tributaries. In 1914 the Cotton Blossom season scheduled performances along the Monongahela, Ohio, Kanawha, Tennessee, and Mississippi rivers, from Pittsburg to New Orleans, even stopping in Hannibal, Missouri the hometown of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835–1910), a.k.a. Mark Twain. Its featured comedy drama was "A Devil in Petticoats". "A dollar show for 25¢."
Most of these towns were quite small and were relatively isolated from the main vaudeville circuits which followed America's railroad networks, or the circus wagon routes which traveled by roads. Theatre troupes on showboats like the Cotton Blossom rehearsed multiple shows each season to have new material to present whenever they returned to a town later in the season. The convenience of having their own theater meant it was unnecessary to daily unpack and repack all their costumes, scenery, props, and stage equipment as they traveled to each town. Likewise having their room and board on the boat saved the troupe of actors and musicians money which was likely a better deal than staying at hotels in big city theatre districts.
But while these floating theatres claimed to offer first-class culture, they were never the origin for much new art. Rather they served as decent seasonal work for actors and musicians like Harry High. He ended his 1956 newspaper interview with this comment:
"I wouldn't want to say the old showboat days were the greatest days in entertainment," he says, "for there is more music in the air now than ever
before. But I will say that today's music-makers can never know what real adventure and fun and work we experienced in that colorful era which can never return."
It seems Capt. Emerson ran the Cotton Blossom successfully for a few years after he took it on in 1910. Like many of the owners of floating theatres, Emerson, and his wife too, regularly took parts in their theatrical productions. And, of course, since it was a showboat, he took on the honorific "Captain". However Capt. Emerson owned several showboats and could hardly be on all of them each season. At some point around 1914 he took on a partner named Capt. D. Otto Hittner to operate the Cotton Blossom.
This was an era when many regular vaudeville theaters were undergoing a lot of consolidation and large theatrical agencies controlled more of the industry. It was also the start of new artistic forces like movies and jazz which would significantly affect American culture in the next decades. And then there was a war.
The winter of 1917-18 was especially bitter cold and by early December 1917 the Ohio River was completely frozen above Cincinnati. Then a fierce blizzard hit Louisville, dropping 16 inches of snow in less than 15 hours. Within days an "ice gorge" formed, with some ice measuring 26 inches thick, blocking the Ohio River and making travel on the river impossible farther downstream.
By the new year in January 1918 the lower river was frozen too with ice on the Mississippi down to Vicksburg. Even the giant steamboat Sprague was grounded at Cairo, Illinois where the Ohio joins the Mississippi. It was considered the worst winter in living memory, especially as it stopped all transport of coal which was then the dominant fuel for heating and power.
Nashville TN The Tennessean 8 January 1918
The showboat Cotton Blossom and its towboat Jewell were tied to the wharf at Mt. Vernon, Indiana on the Ohio River, about 18 miles west of Evansville, but 35 miles downriver. Capt. Hittner had taken them there in October for repair and storage in anticipation of the 1918 season. On the night of January 6th the ice pack began to shift and the Cotton Blossom and the Jewell were torn free from their mooring, then crushed by the ice and sunk. At the time no crew were on the vessels, but both boats were reckoned to be a total loss, estimated at over $25,000. Considering all the other destruction incurred that terrible winter, the loss of a floating theatre was hardly front page news.
City of Cincinnati (1899 steamboat) wrecked by ice, 1918 Source: Wikimedia
Yet Capt. Hittner, like Capt. Eisenbarth, and Capt. Emerson before him, was an optimistic man who quickly ordered a new floating theatre made from an old barge named the Princess. As it was a smaller hull there was space only for 500 seats, less than half that of the old showboat. Hittner named this new boat the Cotton Blossom Pavillion.
Evansville IN Courier and Press 10 April 1921
The shows were probably smaller too as I found few newspaper notices in the following few years. According to a 1951 report in The Evansville Press on the death of Harry Steiner, one of the co-owners who took over the first Cotton Blossom in 1908, Hittner's Pavilion did not tour very long and was turned into a floating dance hall in the early 1920s. Hittner built a third showboat which he named Cottom Blossom No. 1, but it was sold for his debts in 1931 and converted back into a freight barge. A fourth Cotton Blossom showboat was built in 1932 by a man from Chicago but it was lost to a fire the following year. In 1939 another man ordered a fifth Cotton Blossom constructed with seating for 700, but it failed as a floating theatre and was sold at auction in 1941, only to be destroyed by fire the next year.
The reason for these pathetic attempts to make money on the Cotton Blossom name was not due to its history from 1900 to 1918. It was because it was the name chosen for the fictional showboat invented by author Edna Ferber (1885–1968) for her bestseller novel "Show Boat", published in 1926. After Ferber published her fourth novel "So Big", which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1925, she began considering ideas for her next book. She decided to visit Bath, North Carolina on the Pamlico River where she spent four days aboard one of the few remaining showboats in the country, the James Adams Floating Theatre, which plied the coastal waterways on the East Coast. Though she had no prior experience of showboats or of life on a river, or in the deep South either, she became inspired to tell a story about a floating theatre troupe.
Woman's Home Companion, cover, May 1926 Source: Wikimedia
Her novel is set on a steam showboat called the Cotton Blossom which travels along the Mississippi River presenting performances at small towns along the way. It follows characters from the 1880s to the 1920s who deal with a mixture of stories of romance and tragedy. Her realistic depiction of racial issues and an unhappy marriage was combined with a nostalgia for a disappearing American past. The book quickly became a best seller.
By the end of the year Ferber signed a contract with composer Jerome Kern and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to adapt her novel into a Broadway musical. Show Boat, the musical, premiered on 27 December 1927 at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City and in 1928 was taken to London's West End. Kern and Hammerstein's musical proved such a success with the public that Show Boat was adapted again for cinema with noted motion picture productions in 1929, 1936, 1946, and 1952.
The most memorable song from the musical is "Ol' Man River", made famous by the celebrated Paul Robeson (1898–1976) who plays the part of Joe, a stevedore. Here is his performance from the 1936 film Show Boat.
Edna Ferber's novel and its subsequent spinoffs for stage and motion pictures are invented stories that took liberties with the true history of America's original showboats. The imagery of film created a myth of a grand Disneyesque paddlewheel steamboat, when in fact a real showboat was always a pair of boats, one a barge for the theatre and the other a steam engine for utility and power. A showboat was never an art form so much as just another novel medium for entertainment.
More importantly the history of the Cotton Blossom demonstrated that there was far more danger and risk in this forgotten branch of show business than is remembered. By the late 1920s and 30s radio and sound films began capturing the American public's attention and the age of showboats was finished. By the 1950s riverboat travel in America also came to an end.
Bandleader Harry High had it right. It was a "colorful era which can never return."
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.
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