Stephen Foster’s 1850 tune Ah! May the Red Rose Live Alway (mp3) is both death-obsessed and over-the-top pussy, like a Hallmark card that says “So sorry you’re rotting in the grave!” Very emo.

Lulled be the dirge in the cypress bough,
That tells of departed flowers!
Ah! that the butterfly’s gilded wing
Fluttered in evergreen bowers!
Sad is my heart for the blighted plants–
Its pleasures are aye as brief–
They bloom at the young year’s joyful call,
And fade with the autumn leaf:
Ah! may the red rose live alway,
To smile upon earth and sky!
Why should the beautiful ever weep?
Why should the beautiful die?

The way it slips briefly from major to minor during the instrumental hook is chilling.

About the musicians here, that floaty singing is a gal named Merja Sargon. The accompanist is a fellow named Bernard Rose, who I think is using a genuine 1850 piano.

Can’t say I like the famous Stephen Foster tunes. Mainly they get on my nerves. But this one is awesome.

Soapy Smith was a scoundrel, con artist, bunco man, and lowlife of the highest order, so he naturally left quite a lot of bad blood behind when he was shot to death in 1898, and this has taken a harsh toll on the sanctity of his final resting place. Friends of Bad Man Soapy Smith has written a history of Soapy’s six gravestones.

Forest Historical Society blog has a bunch of records on the International Concatenated Order of the Hoo-Hoos.

Among other hijinks they uncover in their secret stash of records, it turns out that the Hoos were the sinister lurking background force behind the front group SFPOWTS, as evidenced in this photo:

According to the Lufkin Daily News of Lufkin, TX, the Hoo Hoo Band was famous nationwide:

In 1903, the Hoo Hoo bandsmen were playing as the Trib Band, a group sponsored by the Lufkin Weekly Tribune, a forerunner of The Lufkin Daily News.

When Johnny Bonner of Houston, a hometown boy who made a fortune in lumber and oil, paid a visit to Lufkin, he was so enamored by the band that he asked them to accompany him to a Milwaukee convention of the International Concatenated Order of the Hoo Hoo, a fun-loving lumberman’s fraternity that had been established in 1892 at Gurdon, Ark.

The band was such a hit in Milwaukee in September of 1903 that the fraternity named the band its official band. After that, everywhere the band went, it was known as ‘The Famous Hoo Hoo Band.”

For the next 12 to 15 years, the band played at Hoo Hoo conventions, Elks Club gatherings and other events all over North America.

In 1904, the band was the only Texas band allowed to play concerts on the midway of the World’s Fair in St. Louis.

In 1904, a newspaperman said “the young men played without pay and were delighted to do it.”

Lufkin employers supported the band by providing jobs for the young men. It became commonplace knowledge that musicians had preference over other young men seeking jobs at local companies.

W.C. Trout of Lufkin Foundry and Machine Company (now Lufkin Industries Inc.) and Joseph Kurth at Angelina County Lumber Company not only carried musicians on their payrolls, but allowed them to take off from work to travel and perform with the band.

The band members who appeared at the Milwaukee convention were brothers Tom, Norris and Will Humason, cigar maker Otto Lang, telegraph operator V.G. Blake, upholsterer Charles Cheneval, oilman Charles L. Bonner, contractor Conrad Rausch, electrician Harry Barnard, lumber checker W.E. West, bottler A.J. Glenn, clerks W.E. and C.D. Stegall, tinner Sam Kerr, painter George Schmidt, and city marshal C.M. (Kit) McConnico.

In Buffalo, New York, Johnny Bonner — who started the band down its road to fame — was named “Junior Hoo Hoo of the Supreme Nine,” a title equal to a traditional second vice-president.

And in a few years, Bonner ascended to Hoo Hoo’s presidency, known as “The Grand Snark of the Universe.”

At home, bandsmen became the nucleus for Lufkin’s first fire department with C.N. Humason as fire chief and Sam Kerr as secretary-treasurer.

The band also established a rehearsal hall on Cotton Square and inspired Lufkin businessmen to invest in the construction of the Lufkin Opera House, where some of the finest plays and music events in Texas were held before the building burned in the 1920s.

Dr. J.P. Hunter, an early bandsman and dentist, built a “picture show” on Cotton Square. And, when World War I exploded in 1917, Kit McConnico raised one of Texas’ largest companies of soldiers, but died of a fatal illness before he could go to France with his men. Today, a Lufkin park bears his name.

As its members grew older and school bands began to replace town bands, the Hoo Hoo Band began to dissipate.

Thanks to gurdonark, who lives in Texas, perhaps in the very same town as the Junior Hoo Hoo of the Supreme Nine, for posting the link to this story.

The Edison Talking Doll, patented in 1877 and produced in 1890, creeps the hell out of me, and yet thrills me so.

Edison was later quoted as admitting that “the voices of the little monsters were exceedingly unpleasant to hear.” Judge for yourself from this recording at archive.org:

Edison talking doll — Little Jack Horner.

February of 1891: “One of Edison’s talking dolls has reached Winnipeg (Canada.) It is at Miss Maycock’s store and is inspected daily by a large number of people. It is a very good evidence of the uses to which the phonograph can be applied, but as a conversationalist or an elocutionist, the doll cannot be pronounced a success. The piece which the manufacturer has arranged for the lifeless talker to say is that familiar old nursery rhyme, ‘Jack and Jill.’ When the crank is applied to the mechanism and turned, the sound is emitted from a perforated plate on the breast of the doll. At first it is hard to distinguish any words, but by listening attentively and following the rhyme from the start, every word can be heard although not distinctly. As a novelty it is interesting.”

Thanks to davidbuckley.net for the info and picture.

Some great old photos of musicians from the Vanishing Georgia collection. These guys look like life was pretty hard.