Dan W. Quinn

Dan W. Quinn
Background information
Birth name Dan W. Quinn
Born 1859
New York, New York United States
Died November 7, 1938(1938-11-07)
New York, New York
Genres Ragtime
Occupation(s) Recording artist

Dan W. Quinn (1859 – November 7, 1938) was one of the first American singers to become popular in the new medium of recorded music. Quinn was a very successful recording artist whose career spanned 1892 to 1918. Quinn recorded many of his hits in the legendary Tin Pan Alley of New York City.

Biography

Dan W. Quinn was born in 1859 in New York City.[[]].[1][2][lower-alpha 1] He began singing in the choir of the Church of the Heavenly Rest (Episcopal) as a child. As an adult, he performed in vaudeville.

In January 1892, Quinn made his first recording in New York and quickly achieved success. Limitations of technology at the time meant that not all voices were suitable to be recorded; Quinn's voice was one that recorded well.[4] He assisted Thomas Edison in the laboratory as Edison made modifications to the talking machine, to make it also a singing machine. Edison described him as "the man with the perfect voice."[5] He sang for all the major record labels of his day, including Berliner, Columbia, Edison, Gramophone, Paramount and Victor. In 1898, Columbia signed him to a year-long exclusive contract, but within days of its expiration he was making a record for Berliner.[1] Over his career, Quinn recorded 34 top ten hits, and cut an estimated 2,500 titles.[2] He sang "Molly and I and the Baby" more than a thousand times in about two weeks, using the pre-electricity trumpet technology of the early 1890s:[6] the singer sang into the large end of a megaphone, which physically stimulated the stylus on the rotating cylinder. If they wanted a hundred copies, the singer had to perform a hundred times. For one take, Edison obtained an orchestra to accompany Quinn and kept that copy in his laboratory.[7]

At age 21 Quinn married 15-year-old Mary Jane Ritchie, known to the family as Jennie. They had six children: Dan Jr, Ritchie, Arthur (who died in infancy), Lidie (later Hunsberger), Jane (Manderson), and Frank. They lived in a reconstructed mansion on W 20th St, near 10th Ave until about 1898, when they moved to 442 W 24th St, in a row of two-story houses known as Chelsea cottages. Later, in response to Jennie's inability to use stairs due to worsening rheumatism, they moved to a flat at 312 W 20th St. Quinn retired from recording in 1906, but continued to work in vaudeville.[1] as well clubs, concerts, and occasionally comic opera. He briefly returned to recording in 1915 to 1918, but went back into retirement soon after. Although retired from singing, he worked extensively booking concerts and shows, including two large ones held the week he died.

Dan Quinn died of intestinal cancer at the W 20th St apartment in New York on November 7, 1938 at age 79.

Selected recordings

The following is a partial list of Dan W. Quinn's recordings:

†Indicates a record that reached number one on sales charts.[8]

Note

  1. ↑ His obituary in Variety, however, gives his birthplace as New York.[3]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Gracyk, Tim (2006). "Dan W. Quinn – Tenor". Tim's Phonographs and Old Records.
  2. 1 2 Hoffmann, Frank (2004). Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound. Routledge. p. 1741. ISBN 978-1-135-94950-1.
  3. ↑ "Dan W. Quinn". Variety: 62. November 9, 1938. Retrieved 2015-01-17. At the Internet Archive.
  4. ↑ Hoffmann, Frank; Cooper, B Lee; Gracyk, Tim (2012). Popular American Recording Pioneers: 1895–1925. Routledge. p. 13. ISBN 978-1-136-59229-4.
  5. ↑ New York Sun obituary, 07Nov1938
  6. ↑ NYSun obit
  7. ↑ July 1977 letter from Quinn's older daughter Lidie Q. Hunsberger to Robert Ziegler, a son of a cousin.
  8. ↑ Dean, Maury (2003). Rock and Roll: Gold Rush. Algora Publishing. p. 549. ISBN 978-0-87586-227-9.


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