Earl Fuller

Earl Fuller

Earl Fuller (1885–1947) was a pioneering American ragtime and early jazz bandleader, composer and instrumentalist. Fuller helped to initiate the popularity of jazz in New York City shortly before America's entry into World War I. He also had an ear for talent, and discovered Ted Lewis and Teddy Brown.^[1]

Biography

Earl Fuller was born Earl Bunn Fuller on March 7, 1885^[2] in Stonington, Illinois^[3] however his family had longstanding ties to Warren County, Ohio. Practically nothing is known of his musical education, but he was proficient on several instruments; photos of his jazz band show him seated at the piano, whereas he also is credited with playing trumpet and trombone in his Novelty Orchestra; other accounts identify him as a drummer. Fuller was hired, in 1913,^[4] as musical director of Rector's Restaurant on Broadway in Manhattan's theater district; since about 1912 it was already established as a place where famous personalities from the New York Stage rubbed shoulders with politicians and other prominent New Yorkers.^[5] Fuller's Novelty Orchestra's star attraction was xylophonist Teddy Brown, then just a teenager and later destined for far greater fame in Britain.^[6] However, a Christmas ad placed in Variety on December 28, 1917 shows that Fuller also used George Hamilton Green in this role.^[7]

According to an unpublished autobiography by Ted Lewis,^[8] Lewis and his "clown band" was playing at the boardwalk at Coney Island; this was a group that had evolved from a circus band and included cornetist Walter Kahn, trombonist Harry Raderman and drummer John Lucas—at that time the "clown band" did not have a pianist. Sometime towards the end of the summer, Fuller approached Lewis' clown band and offered to hire them into Rector's. The contract they signed in September 1916 still survives,^[9] and shows that what became "Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band" was signed, as a whole, into Rector's at one time. Trading in their clown costumes for tuxedoes, Fuller's Jazz Band was an immediate success, and appeared at Rector's a few months before the Original Dixieland Jazz Band made its acclaimed debut at Reisenweiber's Restaurant in January 1917. The Novelty Orchestra—playing rags, schottisches, waltzes, polkas and two-steps—alternated sets with the more raucous jazz band. While the jazz band was exciting, only the bravest dancers could contend with its tempo. So the resulting show was a successful balance between the revolutionary rhythm of jazz and more sedate material that was friendlier to dancers. According to the 1917 Christmas ad, Fuller also maintained two other groups, his "Celebrated Society Orchestra" and "Earl Fuller's Combination Seven," but of these only the first group is known on recordings through a single Victor side.^[10]

The Novelty Orchestra recorded for the first time for Columbia on June 1, 1917 and the jazz band three days later for Victor. Fuller's groups remained busy in the recording studios through February 1919, recording for Victor, Columbia, Edison, Emerson and Starr/Gennett. There is some controversy as to whether Fuller functioned as pianist in the jazz band; some sources contend that the pianist in the Earl Fuller Famous Jazz Band was actually Ernest Cutting, rather than Fuller.^[11] However, the Victor ledgers show Fuller as pianist, at least on sides made for that company; Cutting did play with the Famous Jazz Band in live engagements, however.^[12] Likewise, Fuller's authorship has been challenged for five Fuller Jazz Band titles credited to Fuller as composer. However, Fuller did publish sheet music that he had written,^[13] and Lewis in his autobiography makes no such claim.

Ted Lewis has taken some criticism over his handling of the matter of extracting himself from Rector's and Fuller's control, which included the whole of the Fuller Jazz Band, minus Fuller. In his autobiography, Lewis recalled that by mid-1919 that he was being offered outrageous sums of money by Florenz Ziegfeld to play the Roof Garden of the New Amsterdam Theater. Neither Lewis nor his fellow jazz band members were paid more than other musicians at Rector's, and when his contract came up, he opted not to renew, and the band simply left Fuller along with him, including pianist Ernest Cutting. However, Cutting returned to Fuller after only about a month, and Cutting's composition Jazology was featured on the last recording credited to Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band, made in December 1919. This disc was issued both on Arto and as a special "Earl Fuller Record" with Fuller's picture on the label; the latter is one of the rarest of all early jazz records.^[14]

Jazology was one of 15 pieces compiled in Earl Fuller's Collection of Classic Jazz, published by a cooperative which Fuller headed called the American Musicians Syndicate with offices located at 1604 Broadway. The collection was available both as a piano folio and as a set of orchestral parts arranged by Harry L. Alford, whom Fuller brought out from Chicago to make the arrangements; among other pieces in the collection were early works composed by future bandleaders Lou Gold and Irving Aaronson. The folios were issued in conjunction with three Q.R.S. piano roll medleys consisting of nine pieces from the set.^[15]

With the final passage of the Volstead Act in October 1919, rather than to continue as a restaurant without a liquor license, Rector's opted to close its doors. After making the final Earl Fuller Famous Jazz Band disc, Fuller took his bands on a coast to coast tour of vaudeville houses in the United States. Variety stated in his obituaty that Fuller therefore "was the first big time orchestra leader to invade the hinterland."^[16] On returning to New York, Fuller diversified, renaming his band "Earl Fuller's New York Orchestra" and establishing a dance band booking agency, primarily run by his wife, Katherine.^[17] While Fuller's band halted its recording activities in 1921, the booking agency continued in New York until at least 1925.^[18] By 1928, Fuller and his wife had relocated to Cincinnati to continue the business there, but it ultimately foundered. Afterward, Fuller served as manager of WFBF radio in Cincinnati. When he died of a heart attack in Morrow, Ohio on August 19, 1947, Earl Fuller was working as a real estate agent in nearby Lebanon.^[19] He was buried in Morrow Cemetery, near to, but not in, the Fuller family plot.^[20]

Legacy

Outside of enthusiasts of early jazz and vintage record collectors, Earl Fuller is a forgotten figure. He has not been regarded well by mainstream jazz experts; Gunther Schuller's evaluation of the Fuller Band in the seminal survey Early Jazz^[21] was couched in mostly negative terms. However, there are listeners who are attracted to the "crude sort of excitement" that Schuller also alludes to, and overall their recordings are more violent and chaotic sounding than even the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Some post-modern scholars refer to its like as "punk jazz," a kind of early jazz with a nihilistic aesthetic akin to the punk rock movement in England in the 1970s. The one inescapable factor of Earl Fuller's legacy is that he played a major role in popularizing jazz in New York City; Ted Lewis' "clown band" may have been one of the first groups to play something that could be regarded as instrumental jazz in New York, and by incorporating their act into his high profile show at Rector's, Fuller exposed the new sound to the very clientele that would take to it most ardently. Moreover, like the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, Fuller's groups were among the first artists to record pieces that have become standards, such as W. C. Handy's Beale Street Blues.

Apart from Ted Lewis, Teddy Brown and George Hamilton Green, musicians who worked in Fuller's various groups included Sig Behrendson (who sometimes filled in for Raderman), Willie Creager, Ben Selvin, Joe Green, Joe Kayser, Joseph Samuels and Ted Weems. Variety states that of the band Fuller took on tour of the United States "many of the men later formed the basis of the late Ben Bernie's first stage band."^[22]

Discography

Earl Fuller made an impressive number of recordings in a very short time. The table below contains all known Earl Fuller recordings, minus non-U.S. issues; some undocumented items may have also been issued on Olympic, Arto or Starr/Gennett, labels incompletely documented in this period. Edison Blue Amberol cylinders are generally identical to the Diamond Disc issues, though takes may vary. Victor 18395 was announced, but ultimately not released. Fuller is also credited as a director and/or manager on some Pathé recordings by Joseph Samuels' Orchestra, but his connection to these items remains uncertain.^{[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]}

Artist Credit	Title	Date	Label	Issue	Matrix
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	Cold Turkey	6-1-1917	Columbia	A2298	77092-2
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	12th Street Rag	6-1-1917	Columbia	A2298	77093-7
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	Slippery Hank	6-4-1917	Victor	18321-A	B-20062-2
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	Yah-de-dah	6-4-1917	Victor	18321-B	B-20063-2
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	Cold Turkey	6-4-1917	Victor	unissued	B-20064
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	I Never Knew	6-4-1917	Victor	unissued	B-20065
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	One Fleeting Hour	6-9-1917	Columbia	A5989	49235
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	Castle Valse Classique	6-9-1917	Columbia	A5989	49236
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	Pork and Beans	7-20-1917	Columbia	A2370	77220-3
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	Jazzin' Around	8-13-1917	Victor	unissued	B-20502-1-4
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	A Coon Band Contest	8-13-1917	Victor	unissued	B-20503-1-3
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	The Old Grey Mare	8-13-1917	Victor	18369-A	B-20504-2
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	Beale Street Blues	8-13-1917	Victor	18369-B	B-20505-2
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	More Candy	9-5-1917	Columbia	A2403	77307-2
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	Ida Sweet As Apple Cider	9-5-1917	Columbia	A2403	77308-2
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	Jazzin' Around	9-10-1917	Victor	18395-A	B-20502-5
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	A Coon Band Contest	9-10-1917	Victor	18394-A	B-20503-4
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	L'il Liza Jane	9-10-1917	Victor	18394-B	B-20549-3
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	Cotton Blossoms	9-10-1917	Victor	18395-B	B-20550-1
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	Smiles	11-17-1917	Columbia	A2578	77516-2
Earl Fuller's Orchestra	When the Incense is Burning	11-19-1917	Victor	18450-B	B-21465-1
Earl Fuller's Orchestra	Charming	11-19-1917	Victor	unissued	Vi trial
Earl Fuller's Orchestra	What Could Be Sweeter?	11-19-1917	Victor	unissued	Vi trial
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	Mama's Baby Boy	12-18-1917	Columbia	unissued	77582
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	Graveyard Blues	3-1-1918	Columbia	A2523	77583-3
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	Sweet Emalina My Gal	3-1-1918	Columbia	A2523	77697-3
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	I Ain't Got Nobody Much	3-18-1918	Columbia	A2547	77725-3
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	Down Home Rag	3-18-1918	Columbia	A2547	77726-1
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	Jazz De Luxe	3-1918	Emerson	952	3182-1, -2
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	Jazzbo Jazz	3-1918	Emerson	952	3183-1, -2
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	Mickey	5-3-1918	Columbia	A2547	77806-1
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	We'll Do Our Share	5-7-1918	Columbia	A2566	77815-2
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	I Want Him Back Again	5-7-1918	Columbia	A2566	77816-2
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	The Missouri Waltz	5-14-1918	Columbia	A2578	77821-2
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	Here Comes America	5-1918	Columbia	A2578	77838-2
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	When I Feel Sad and Lonely	6-3-1918	Columbia	unissued	49439
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	Texas - Fox Trot	6-3-1918	Columbia	A6075	49440-1
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	Oriental - One Step	7-1918	Columbia	A6075	49474-1
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	I'm Sorry I Made You Cry	6-4-1918	Edison Blue Amberol	3585	6198-C
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	I'm Sorry I Made You Cry	6-4-1918	Edison Diamond Disc	50521-L	6198-A-B-C
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	Jazzbo Jazz - One Step	6-4-1918	Edison Blue Amberol	3554	6199-C
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	Jazzbo Jazz - One Step	6-4-1918	Edison Diamond Disc	50505-L	6199-C
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	Jazz De Luxe	6-13-1918	Edison Blue Amberol	3610	6005-C
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	Jazz De Luxe	6-13-1918	Edison Diamond Disc	50541-R	6005-C
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	Jazzin' Around	6-13-1918	Edison Blue Amberol	3572	6225-C
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	Howdy	8-6-1918	Columbia	A2649	77987
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	Cold Turkey	8-1918	Gennett	8504-B	1334
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	I'm Sorry I Made You Cry	8-1918	Gennett	8504-A	1335
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	Unknown Selection	8-1918	Gennett	unknown	1336
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	Jazz De Luxe	8-1918	Gennett	8522-B	1337
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	Russian Rag	9-3-1918	Columbia	A2649	78034
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	Singapore	12-10-1918	Columbia	A2686	78194-3
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	Out of the East	12-10-1918	Columbia	A2686	78195-3
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	Sand Dunes	12-19-1918	Columbia	A2697	78195-3
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	Spaniola	12-19-1918	Columbia	A2697	78195-3
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	Egyptland	1-31-1919	Columbia	A2722	78280-2
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	Mummy Mine	1-31-1919	Columbia	A2722	78281-2
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	Ruspana	2-21-1919	Columbia	A2712	78310-2
Earl Fuller's Novelty Orchestra	Sweet Siamese	2-21-1919	Columbia	A2712	78311-3
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	Jazorient	12-1919	Arto/Earl Fuller	9009-A	31001-
Earl Fuller's Famous Jazz Band	Jazzology	12-1919	Arto/Earl Fuller	9009-B	31002-2
Earl Fuller's New York Orchestra	Ain't We Got Fun	5-1921	Olympic	15116-A
Earl Fuller's New York Orchestra	Ain't We Got Fun	5-1921	Symphony Concert Record	21180-A
Earl Fuller's New York Orchestra	Just Because	5-1921	Olympic	15116-B
Earl Fuller's New York Orchestra	Just Because	5-1921	Symphony Concert Record	21180-B
Earl Fuller's New York Orchestra	Melody in F	5-1921	Olympic	15118
Earl Fuller's New York Orchestra	Melody in F	5-1921	Black Swan	2058-B
Earl Fuller's New York Orchestra	Just Because	6-17-1921	Edison Diamond Disc	50824-R	8076
Earl Fuller's New York Orchestra	I Wonder Where My Sweet, Sweet Daddy's Gone	6-17-1921	Edison Blue Amberol	4392	8077-A
Earl Fuller's New York Orchestra	I Wonder Where My Sweet, Sweet Daddy's Gone	6-17-1921	Edison Diamond Disc	50824-L	8077-A

Reissues

Reissues of Earl Fuller recordings in modern formats are almost unknown. A notable, early departure from this state of affairs was the work of Dutch black music authority Dr. Hans Rookmaaker, who included two Earl Fuller selections on his 1961 collection New York Jazz Scene: 1917-1920^[31] which was the first volume in his series "Classic Jazz Masters" for Dutch Philips. Fuller is also included by virtue of two tracks on John R.T. Davies' Ragtime to Jazz I^[32] and one on Archeophone's Real Ragtime.^[33]

References

External links

• 's_Famous_Jazz_Band Works by Earl Fuller at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Earl Fuller in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Redhot Jazz web site
• Earl Fuller's Collection of Jazz Classics, Roll 2

Authority control WorldCat VIAF: 13984025 LCCN: n93069735

Persondata
Name	Fuller, Earl
Alternative names
Short description	American musician
Date of birth	1897
Place of birth	Morrow, Ohio
Date of death	1948
Place of death	Lebanon, Ohio