S. H. Dudley - Military Mollie (1899)

S. H. Dudley, born on January 15, 1864, may have been the most popular baritone to record at the turn of the century. His output by 1900 exceeded that of baritone J. W. Myers.

S. H. Dudley was in the right place at the right time in that his voice suited the crude recording devices of the time better than most. As a featured solo artist he was in studios regularly from 1898 to 1904, after which there is a noticeable drop-off.

In a letter to Jim Walsh quoted in the May 1946 issue of Hobbies, Dudley even calls himself the Bing Crosby of 1900, stating that "more records were sold of Dudley, Kernell, duets, quartets, than of any other singer of the time."

Dudley adds, "Too bad the days of royalties had not arrived!" The Bing Crosby analogy is misleading since Dudley records did not dramatically outsell those of Arthur Collins, Harry Macdonough, and a handful of other pioneers.

He was born Samuel Holland Rous in Greencastle, Indiana. His father was a professor at Asbury College and then a superintendent of county schools, a position that required constant moving. Rous wrote to Walsh in a letter transcribed in the May 1946 issue of Hobbies, "I never even went through high school, but was forced to get a job at 13 when my father lost his hearing and could no longer teach. Then I jumped into opera without ever having a single voice lesson!"

The singer adopted the name S. H. Dudley as a stage name early in his career, and this is the name used for most of his Berliner, Victor, and Edison records. Some cylinders from 1898 and early 1899 give the name S. Holland Dudley, including Excelsior cylinders--the three principal Excelsior artists in 1898 were Dudley, Roger Harding, and William F. Hooley.

From mid-1899 onward the shorter "S. H. Dudley" was used on records. On a few Victor discs, he is identified as Frank Kernell, such as on "The Whistling Coon" (1982). When making duets with bird imitator Joe Belmont, he also used the name Kernell. His real name, Samuel Holland Rous, appears as the byline for some editions of The Victor Book of the Opera.

He spent some early years of his career singing opera with touring companies, including the Boston Ideal Opera Company.

Walsh states in the October 1962 issue of Hobbies that the Edison Quartet (or Edison Male Quartette) was organized "about 1894 to make soft brown wax cylinders. Original members were Roger Harding, J. K. Reynard, S. H. Dudley, and William F. Hooley." An 1896 Edison Quartet photograph once owned by John Bieling and duplicated in the September 1979 issue of Hobbies includes Dudley.

He became important as baritone for the Edison Quartet and Haydn Quartet. Dudley's signature is etched in several Berliner discs of the Haydn Quartet, and he added the word "manager" after his name (an example is 021, "Nearer My God To Thee," recorded on March 23, 1899).