Vernon Dalhart / Puritan 11347
Hard Hearted Hannah or How Do You Do? / Go Long Mule
recorded August 1924 in New York City, New York
Here`s an oddity. I`ve been transferring some of my Vernon Dalhart 78`s and found I had two copies of this, but the A side of each disc had a different artist and song. Both A side artists are out of my "field of study" and I have no information on either as they are both pop type performances. I wonder why they would have issued this disc with different releases on the A side. Dalhart`s Go Long Mule is nearly the same song as Uncle Dave Macon`s Go Along Mule that was recorded in 1927. Happy downloading!
Click here to download Vernon Dalhart on Puritan 11347
First of all, thanks for the nice download!
ReplyDeleteThe conglomerate dime store labels, of which Puritan was one, are a discographical bad dream. Some records have more than one issue, with varying contents. Dalhart, Pop Stoneman, and Arthur Fields recorded for this group of labels, doing many of the same songs. The released 78s might contain any of the renditions, and might credit any of the artists under their pseudonyms. Pu 11347 is probably a specimen of the same. The artist credited as "Chas Dale" sounds just like Arthur Fields, and the Internet 78RPM Discography gives that side as a Fields recording, but it's clearly labeled "Dale." (Dale is shown as vocalist on a couple of band recordings from Puritan, and this may be just an Arthur Fields pseudonym.)
Fields (born Abe Finkenstein) was a popular singer of the 1910s and early 1920s, though his style went out of fashion with the rise of jazz. Later in the 20s he renewed his career by turning hillbilly, both on records and radio. He and his partner Phil Hall wrote "In 1992" and "11 More Months and 10 More Days," among others.
"Go Long Mule" is a 1924 pop song credited to Henry Creamer and Robert King, but certainly based on folk materials. Dalhart cut it for several labels, just before he went fulltime hillbilly, and there's a jazz instrumental version by Fletcher Henderson. UDM presumably picked this up on the southern vaudeville circuit, though he doesn't sing all the verses in Dalhart's rendition.
Yes, when artists such as Dalhart used many different names and then adding labels switching tracks on releases to the mix it can be VERY confusing! That`s part of the fun to me of collecting early material, you never know for sure what you`ve got till you listen to it. I have some early Oxford discs, which was a dime store type label. The early ones don`t even credit an artist. I collect Billy Golden discs and on the Oxford discs I have several early Billy Golden records were issued uncredited, then some time a little later when they started putting artist names on the label, I have some of these later records crediting Billy Golden and are Billy Golden skits, but a different artist performing them, Bob Roberts. Just another crazy piece to the puzzle.
DeleteI'll add that Puritan was a sister label to Paramount in Wisconsin.
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