Family Archive

Sheet Music

Just a strange coincidence? It's eerily similar to the title of my blog.....

Various parts of the collection from my family archive still remain unexplored. One segment that I find a bit intimidating and haven't fully delved into yet are the reams of hand written sheet music I found in an antique hand painted chest hidden under my parent's piano. Even though I can visually appreciate this collection I lack the musical skills needed to read or play it. My Grandfather Harry wrote both music and lyrics for the Vaudeville stage, Musical Revue and Broadway. Certain pieces he wrote to be performed by himself, some he wrote for his sister Juliet and others he wrote for top performers of the era. I've been starting to familiarize myself with the sheet music and lyrics but haven't made much of a dent yet. The Family Album was a piece he performed as part of a Vaudeville routine. He wrote the lyrics for this piece but not the music. When I searched the title I found this article from a periodical called the New York Clipper dated May 23, 1917 under the header Fifth Avenue Vaudeville.

Harry Delf presents a single, in which he presents songs and patter of his own writing. After a song and some talk, he introduced a series of old-time characters from the family album.This is followed by another song and some more patter. He followed each song with soft shoe dancing which ranks with the best. For an encore he rendered another song. He is a capital all 'round entertainer and fully deserved the recognition accorded him.

Getting this opportunity to learn about my family history and the relatives I never got to meet through this unexpected discovery has been a gift. An additional benefit has been derived from getting the chance to explore and exhibit the personal collection of early 20th Century media using 21st Century tools and technology. It has been both enriching and rewarding getting to learn from the knowledge and experience of the various communities I've discovered around the Web. This wasn't my goal or interest when I first started Family Archive but as I become more familiar with the material and the technology the possibilities seem open ended .

I've been thinking about my Grandfather's Sheet Music. How can I use technology to showcase his music as I use JPG's to display photos? One suggestion that came from my downstairs neighbor was to put an ad on this site for a pianist, record some of these old tunes like The Family Album and play them with each post. 

Chic Sale

This has been bugging me since it happened and I'm trying to recoup something out of it. I did the antique store equivalent of whistling when you've got cards in a Poker game or what Joe Mantegna called "cracked out of turn" or "crumbed the play" in House of Games.

Earlier in the month I was up in Portland Maine visiting some friends and getting out of the city for awhile with the kids. My friend is the Director of the Portland Art Museum so one rainy morning we went downtown for the private tour. Before going into the museum I noticed an appealing looking antique store across the street. When our tour was done we had some lunch and did some shopping at the LL Bean Outlet store. We were on our way back to the house as the weather appeared to be clearing up and I asked the kids if they would mind taking a short detour past the store and started reciting the standard issue speech about not breaking anything. Something was pulling me in there. 

I've always liked collecting things and since I learned of my family's early entertainment roots I've started collecting vintage postcards of old Vaudeville Theaters from around the country. I asked the proprietor if they had any of these postcards and he told me that they didn't but they had a few old Vaudeville photos somewhere around and he continued on with his business. After a few minutes I asked him about the photos he had mentioned and he started looking for them. With a look on his face like he was straining to remember he said to me "I think his family name is Sale. Do you know anything like that?" This is where I cracked.....My Grandfather was writing and directing talking movies right when talkies first started. A few weeks earlier I'd been reading all about them. One of the stars of his earliest 2 reel films was a Vaudeville comic named Chic Sale. I just couldn't contain myself. I said to him "Sure I know a guy named Chic Sale" and  started spouting off every last detail I could remember with such relish and confidence that a huge smile started forming on his lips. 

He walked to the back and whispered something to his partner who looked around for a minute or so and found a few photos sitting on an old trunk covered in dust. He handed them to me and sure enough  there he was as his signature "Granpa" character in full garb with a hand written note and his name Chic Sale signed on the bottom. I tried backtracking but the damage was done. I made some stupid comment about how obscure these really were. Finally,  I asked him what he wanted for them and it was way more than I could justify spending. I tried bargaining but he had played his hand well. I asked him if I could buy one but he told me he couldn't break up the set. My only move for now was to walk and try something else but he had me. He gave me his card and told me to think about it.

Now 2-3 weeks have gone by and I'm still thinking about them. Lesson Learned!

Tecumseh

As long as I'm on the subject of names and specifically stage names, I found my Grandfather's business card from when he was first getting his start in Show Business. From my research I'd discovered that Dr. Deluxe in the year 1911 was his breakthrough performance. It certainly didn't hurt him either that Juliet? was his sister, by this time she had already become a full blown star and was headlining on the Keith/Albee circuit. At 19 Harry was discovered and given the role of Kid Romeo in Dr. Deluxe playing across from one of the comedic legends of the day named Ralph Herz.

On his business card his name reads Harry T. Delf. My name is Harry Delf III and my father is Harry Delf Jr. I'd recently discovered that my last name was concocted as a stage name by my grandfather(see PS 68 post).What about this middle initial T. I got back on the phone and called my dad but this time he had no idea what this middle initial T stood for. Vaudeville performers had a tendency to change their names as often as they changed their socks so to figure out what the T stood for I pulled out all of the materials I could find from my archive dated around 1911. There were several newspaper clippings and after reading through a bunch I discovered that the T. stood for Tecumseh. Was his real name Harry Tecumseh Rosenfeld or was Tecumseh part of his concocted stage name? I wondered if this new information effected my name? Was I still Harry Delf III?

The only thing I was sure of was that if I had known my Grandfather's middle name when my son Michael was born there would've been a Tecumseh Delf I.

PS 68

So far I've focused on still photography as a cornerstone of the family archive but other artifacts can be equally or more enlightening depending on the resources you have available to you, what you're trying to figure out and how deep you're willing to dig. Here is a piece from the turn of the century which taught me something interesting by leading me to a new stream of questioning to follow.

This is a certificate a child received from the city school system after finishing third grade. Harry Rosenfeld had received this certificate after finishing third grade at PS 68. Who was Harry Rosenfeld? I googled PS 68 and found out it was on Monticello Ave in the Bronx. I figured it had to be my Grandfather. I found it in a box of his stuff. I remembered that my father had told me that his grandfather, my great grandfather had been born in New York so that would mean that if I was right and Harry Rosenfeld was my grandfather then it would have to have been either my father or him that changed our family name to Delf after already having been here in NYC for at least 2 generations and that didn't make sense to me. I called my dad at work and started firing questions at him.

What I eventually learned was that Harry Rosenfeld was my Grandfather and that it was he who had changed the name. He had dropped the Rosen and reconfigured the letters of Feld to come up with Delf to use as his stage name on the Vaudeville circuits. At the time his sister, my great aunt Juliet went by the name Juliet? which transitioned to Miss Juliet and eventually into Juliet Delf and the  family name wound up sticking.

Its amazing what you can learn with a little deduction and taking the time ask.