Ada Jones and Len Spencer - A Bowery Flirtation (1909)

Ada Jones and Len Spencer

“A Bowery Flirtation”

Edison Standard Record 10082, issued in 1909

Leonard Garfield Spencer was born in Washington, D. C., on January 12, 1867.

The middle name was given in honor of Senator James A. Garfield, a friend of the Spencer family before he became a U.S. president. Len's mother, Sara, was a leader in the women's suffrage movement. His father Henry Caleb Spencer--son of Platt Rogers Spencer, co-inventor of the Spencerian style of penmanship--operated the Spencerian Business College located in the nation's capitol at Ninth and D Streets. He died in 1890.

Len's younger brother--Henry Caleb Spencer, Jr., born on February 14, 1875--also became a recording artist. Harry worked mostly for Columbia but occasionally made records for other companies, even making Zon-o-phone discs in 1901. He mostly cut recitations, such as the popular "President McKinley's Address at the Pan-American Exposition." On minstrel records, he is addressed as "Mr. Henry."

By the early 1900s Harry was Columbia's chief announcer and his voice can be heard at the beginning of many cylinders and early discs. Jim Walsh states in the October 1958 issue of Hobbies that Harry later was a train caller in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as reported to Walsh by Joe Belmont. Harry suffered mental illness late in life and died on August 29, 1946, in St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, DC.

Len Spencer himself did announcing for other Columbia artists of the 1890s. Listing titles of the Columbia Orchestra, the company's June 1897 catalog states, "The announcements are as loud and distinct as only Mr. Spencer can make them, and his quaint negro humorisms, laugh, shouts, etc., so familiar to talking machine patrons, add much to the popularity of these records."

Only Len Spencer is identified elsewhere in the catalog, so the "Mr. Spencer" here undoubtedly refers to Len, not Harry. Columbia Orchestra numbers that include "shouts" and "laughs" include "Alabama Walk Around" (15086), "Old Nigger Wing" (15088), "Tapioca Polka" (15091), and "Frolic of the Coon" (15092).

Working as a junior instructor at the Spencerian Business College, the young Len Spencer frequently visited the sales office of the newly formed Columbia Phonograph Company, at that time with headquarters at 919 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, to get information, have parts serviced, and purchase cylinders. The college used an office graphophone, or dictaphone. He expressed a desire to record his own voice, and company executives discovered he had not only a rich baritone voice but an ability to put his character into a song.

Frank Dorian, a Columbia official who began working for the company in 1889, recalled in later years for Walsh that Spencer's career as a recording artist began either in late 1889 or early 1890.