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The Billy Murray Pages “Billy Murray, Old-Timer” By
Bob Dumm
Murray picking apples at his Long Island home,
c. 1920 Editor's Note: Murray’s colorful recounting of his early years as a performer is reprinted here without modern annotations or corrections. Like all of Murray's published recollections, beginning with his 1917 Edison autobiography, it contains some embroidered facts and several outright errors — for instance, Murray’s San Francisco recordings were not made for Edison, but for Peter Bacigalupi, an Edison dealer who sometimes produced his own recordings. Billy Murray, Old-Timer Some thirty-five years ago the citizens of Denver, Col., were being annoyed of nights by four serenading young fellows who paraded the darkened streets under the illusion that they could sing. I ate lunch recently with a member of that quartet — Billy Murray, one of the Eight Victor Artists I talked about last month, a thirty-year-old-timer on phonograph records and probably the best-known comedian on the records today. You hear him on the radio every now and then, too. “I was torn between many great ambitions in those days,” he said. “I thought I’d be an acrobat and for a while practiced tumbling with a crowd of boys who used an old ice house for their gymnasium. But I tried a flip one day and landed flat on the hard floor. One of that crowd, by the way, is today the best acrobatic comedian in the country — Fred Stone. Another time they tried to make a jockey of me. But a horse discouraged that by stopping suddenly.” “One by one my list of ambitions dwindled through the discovery that there were bumps to be taken in all careers. Then Leavitt and his ‘High Rollers’ came to town. When he and his show moved on to Canyon City on its way to the Pacific coast our quartet was with him—signed up as regular actors. Mr. Leavitt was a gentleman who didn’t believe in pampering his actors. He seemed to think we would grow soft and lazy if we ate too well or lolled around on plush cushions traveling from town to town. Instead of buying railroad tickets for us he kept us informed on all the good freight trains going in the direction the show was traveling. He depended upon us to get to the next town in time for each performance. “I finally made the coast but not with the ‘High Rollers.’ That show busted up in a grand scrap in a little town out in the Rockies when one of the members of the troupe pulled a knife on a fellow actor. Said fellow actor pulled a gun. No one was hurt much, but when the fracas was over most of us were aboard a convenient freight train getting as far out of the reach of the local sheriff as we could. “In the next couple of years I piled up a lot of experience. I learned to clog a bit and do black-face stuff, and finally in San Francisco started making phonograph records for the old Edison company, which had a branch there. “Those days making records was a real job. To make a record it had to be sung, and sung good and loud. To make a number of records you had to sing that song over and over again. I remember one time a couple years later after I’d got to New York and was making records for both Edison and Victor I sang one song over a hundred times in one day. “How I got to New York is another story. Al Field’s Minstrels came to the coast. I heard they were heading East shortly and I hit Field for a job. ‘I can’t afford to hire you now,’ he said, ‘but if you can come along on no salary. Of course I went. Anything for a chance at a big-time minstrel job. “Field traveled in two cars, a sleeper and a combination diner and baggage coach. I was sitting in the sleeper shortly after I’d joined the show when one of the men yelled out, ‘Belvedier!’ About eight of the fellows made a dash for the door and disappeared. I soon learned why. Field carried a troupe of between forty and fifty men but made it a habit to buy only thirty-eight tickets. ‘Belvedier’ meant the conductor was coming. It was our cue to rush for the baggage coach and hide down behind the trunks and scenery we carried until the ticket-collecting was over. That was a great disappointment to me — to be on ‘big time’ and still have to beat my way. “I was out with Field’s as end man for a couple of seasons after that and then I found my way to New York. I immediately applied at the Edison company and as they remembered the work I’d done on the coast they let me make records for them.” For
a complete index of Murray articles and photos, see |
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