Vernon Dalhart "Dream Of A Miner's Child" (1925) song by Andrew Jenkins (Victor 19821)
Vernon Dalhart sings \"Dream Of A Miner's Child\" on Victor 19821, recorded on October 20, 1925.
Music and words are by Rev. Andrew Jenkins.
The Country Music Foundation called Vernon Dalhart (1883-1948) a one man recording industry when he was inducted into the Country Music Hall Of Fame in 1981.
Dalhart was so popular that over 100 numbers adopted by him--songs he learned and cut for many companies--were on 10 or more labels. They include \"My Blue Ridge Mountain Home\" (46 labels), \"In The Baggage Coach Ahead\" (42 labels), and \"The Letter Edged In Black\" (35 labels).
Various pseudonyms were employed. Dalhart as a performer used a half dozen names. Companies used additional names. When a company released the same performance on several labels, it often used a different name for each. More than eighty names were used in the U.S.
On Monday, May 23, 1927--two days after Charles A. Lindbergh's solo nonstop transatlantic flight on May 20-21 1927--Dalhart entered Victor's Liederkranz Hall studios in New York and recorded Johnson and Sherman's \"Lindbergh (The Eagle of the U.S.A.).\" The song was probably written before the flight itself, the composers hopeful that Lindbergh would succeed.
Sometime in 1927, Dalhart arranged for Adelyne (sometimes spelled Adelyn) Hood to replace Kellner. She was a violinist (on some records she played piano and/or sang) who earlier provided musical accompaniment for the tenor during Edison Tone-Test Recitals.
Robison resented this--he also resented Dalhart collecting a portion of the royalties on songs that Robison wrote and that Dalhart recorded (a common practice among singers at the time). Despite tensions, but the trio worked together.
In the spring of 1928 Dalhart signed a contract with Columbia that made him exclusive to that company for performances issued on budget labels, or \"popular-priced\" discs.
Much of his recorded work for the next two years was issued on such Columbia labels as Velvet Tone, Diva, and Clarion. He was free to work for other companies if records were issued in a full-priced series, so he continued to make Victor and Edison records, but session work for the Grey Gull Record Company and Plaza Music Company ended.
Robison objected to the contract. By mid-1928 they went separate ways, Robison having a new partner in Frank Luther. The Columbia contract expired in May 1930. Dalhart recorded for the American Record Corporation, successor to the Plaza company, on June 4, 1930.
He recorded over 200 songs after Robison left, but no one song was a hit. Robison's songwriting had contributed to Dalhart's success, his departure contributing to a waning in Dalhart's popularity by the late 1920s. New country artists (Jimmie Rodgers, Carter Family) made Dalhart seem dated and unauthentic. Also, by 1931 the record industry suffered from the Depression. Artists looked to radio, not recording, for income.
Dalhart performed on network radio. In 1931 he and Adelyne Hood hosted a network show for Barbasol titled Barber Shop Chords, featuring Dalhart as Barbasol Ben,
In 1931 Dalhart had one Durium Records session. These flexible paper-based records featured a song on one side and Dalhart's picture on the reverse.
In 1931 Dalhart and Hood traveled to England (their network show possibly began while they were abroad, with transcription discs used) and had two recording sessions abroad.
Dalhart's next session was in 1932 when he and Hood had two sessions for Crown Records. The same recordings were reissued on the Varsity label in 1939 using the name Bill Vernon.
Two years later he and Hood did two sessions for the American Record Company, records issued on the Brunswick label. In 1939, RCA signed him as an exclusive artist, but he had only one session, titles released on the Bluebird label--Vernon Dalhart and His Big Cypress Boys. \"Lavender Cowboy\" on Bluebird seemed to refer to homosexuality, so radio executives banned it from the air.
His income substantial due to \"The Prisoner's Song,\" he purchased an estate in Mamaroneck, New York, in the late 1920s, but unwisely invested in the stock market before the Crash of 1929.
By 1938 he was forced to sell his estate and move to a smaller Mamaroneck home. That year he made personal appearances with Adelyne Hood (as Betsy White) in upstate New York and broadcast on a Schenectady radio station, Dalhart performing on radio for free to advertise personal appearances.
He left New York and moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, advertising that he was a voice teacher. Around 1944 he served as a security guard at a local defense plant. After the war he was a night clerk at the Barnum Hotel in Bridgeport. He died from a heart attack.
He is buried in the family plot at Bridgeport's Mountain Grove Cemetery. A headstone marks his grave: MARION TRY SLAUGHTER, SR, 1883-1948.
Vernon Dalhart \"Dream Of A Miner's Child\" (1925) song by Andrew Jenkins (Victor 19821)
