Ballin The Jack - Princes Band (1914)

First you put your two knees close up tight,
Then you sway 'em to the left, then you sway 'em to the right,
Step around the floor kind of nice and light,
Then you twis' around and twis' around with all your might,
Stretch your lovin' arms straight out in space
Then do the Eagle Rock with style and grace
Swing your foot way 'round then bring it back,
Now that's what I call "Ballin' the Jack."

Lyrics are by Jim Burris.

Music is by Chris Smith.

Prince's Band (conducted by G.Hepburn Wilson) plays "Ballin' The Jack" on Columbia A5595, recorded on July 31, 1914.

Charles Adams Prince was born in 1869 in San Francisco. His father hailed from New England, but at the time of Charles' birth he headed a successful fruit canning company on the West Coast. Charles' mother was a New York native.

It has been said that he was a descendant of President John Adams, but Hugh Brogan and Charles Mosley's American Presidential Families (Macmillan, 1993) does not include Charles Adams Prince among the hundreds of descendants. He was possibly a distant relative.

Prince's interest in music began in his youth when his mother took him to local theatrical productions. As a young man he took to the road, traveling for several years with circuses, minstrel shows and legitimate comedies.

Prince recorded for the New York Phonograph Company as early as 1891. At first he worked mostly as a piano accompanist, and he continued to provide piano accompaniment for artists a decade later, notably for the historically significant Columbia Grand Opera series of ten-inch discs recorded in late 1902 and issued in 1903. These were the first discs made in the United States with big-name opera stars, preceding Victor's Red Seal series by a few months.

Jim Walsh reports in the January 1953 issue of Hobbies that Prince succeeded Fred Hager as director of Columbia's band and orchestral recordings, a succession that Hager himself reported to Walsh. Prince was responsible for providing orchestral accompaniment for vocalists when piano accompaniment ceased to be standard.

Records of Columbia's house ensemble, called the Columbia Orchestra and Columbia Band, were issued regularly from the mid-1890s onwards (an 1897 catalog states, "Every musician in this great orchestra has been selected by Mr. [Victor] Emerson with special reference to the creation of an organization representing the highest achievement in our art"). But its conductors, which included cornetist Tom Clark (advertising in the July 1898 issue of The Phonoscope states that he was director of the Columbia Orchestra) and then Fred Hager, remained unidentified on records until 1905 or so, around the time that the Sousa march "The Diplomat" (3053) was credited to Prince's Military Band. Thereafter many Prince's Orchestra discs were issued.

Few musicians who made records in the acoustic era were as versatile as Prince.