The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

melvind wrote:Terrific record Bob! I would love to hear it one day. I looked this record up on the DAHR site and it appears it was released on this black label and also on the more common Blue banner label. It is from 1906 so perhaps sometime in 1906 they changed to the new labels. Anyone know?

https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/ ... nny_Deever

And as a side note; the song was written by Walter Damrosch who was a composer and a conductor that helped popularize classical music in the USA at the turn of the 20th century. He conducted Opera and many other types of music and was an eager early recording producer. An impressive guy that likely knew Bispham.

Joseph Clack wrote:Bob, thanks for posting the photo of the Danny Deever record. My copy (now lost) was on the early banner label. I too, in many years of collecting, have never seen a 12 inch black and silver Columbia (until now). A great find, especially with the back seal about the poem.

Bispham recorded the song twice, first with piano and then with orchestra; I believe both recordings appeared under number A5021, and I also have the orchestral one as A5778. The earlier one has some pronounced pitch issues, as I recall things. I have that one, same as the black and silver, as one of the Marconi flexible disks, 30016.

Walter Damrosch did indeed toil long in the garden of classical popularizing; among other things, he had a weekly radio broadcast about classical music. My dad remembered being herded into the auditorium each week to hear it when he was in school--that would have been in the late 1920s or early 1930s--and hating it. For the rest of his life he had not a single good word to say about Walter Damrosch.

Columbia actually issued a record of Damrosch at the piano explaining the funeral march movement of Beethoven's "Eroica" sym., one of the records issued in observance of that composer's 100th death anniversary. It was Viva Tonal 7122-M, both sides of a 12" disk.

Bispham most assuredly did know Damrosch; indeed, he was a member of the Damrosch opera company in the 1895-1896 season. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damrosch_Opera_Company

drh wrote:Bispham most assuredly did know Damrosch; indeed, he was a member of the Damrosch opera company in the 1895-1896 season. More here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damrosch_Opera_Company

Thanks for the info. Amazing information.

David Bispham is buried at Philly's Laurel Hill Cemetery, where my pal Rich gives the tours. He's a huge Bispham fan, always asking me to keep an eye out for his records, which he'd like to play at the gravesite on the tours. Still looking!

By the way, although his Columbia records turn up most often, Bispham also recorded for Pathé. In fact, Danny Deever was one of the songs he waxed for that label, my copy being catalogue no. B 59020. So when I said earlier he recorded the song twice, I meant for Columbia; counting the Pathé issue, he made three records of it.