Features and Reviews
Joseph F. Lamb: A Biography
By Russell Cassidy
Part II
Joe's father died when he was 12 years old. His mother wanted him to become a priest, although he had inclinations toward engineering. He was sent to St. Jerome's College at Berlin, Ontario (Later changed to Kitchener during World War I), about 70 miles from Toronto, in 1902 when he was 14 years old. That music was in his veins is obvious from his extra-curricular activity while at college. He contacted a music publisher, the Harry H. Sparks company in Toronto, who paid him five dollars for a waltz named after his sister, "Celestine Waltzes." Another, "Florentine Waltzes," dedicated to a friend, Miss Luch Fischer, was soon published. "Then they asked me to set poems to music. I wrote a couple dozen. I would read the poem over and get the rhythm of the words; maybe it was a ballad, a comical song, or a novelty. The music would always come—especially if the poem affected me"
His academic studies apparently did not suffer because of his musical sideline during his two years at college, because he passed the entrance examinations for Stevens Institute of Technology, where he planned to continue his technical education. The call to the priesthood had not been sufficiently strong. (Joe's early desire to become an engineer stemmed from an affinity to mathematics: 55 years later he advised, in a mildly admonishing letter to the non-mathematically inclined Trebor Tichenor, "...I'm afraid that regardless of which career you intend to follow, you're going to have to have plenty of math. I liked math and it was a good thing for my children that I did. I had algebra and trig at college...so you cram up on math! Math and syncopation, the only really important things in life.")
"I once wanted to be an Electrical or Mechanical engineer, but I didn't just switch to ragtime instead. I probably would have written rags even if I had become an engineer. While on my (summer) vacation preparatory to entering Stevens Institute, a neighbor in Montclair asked my mother if I wanted to go to work. (I was 16). Well, for a kid that age that was something–a commuter to New York every day with the big shots. That seemed to overshadow being an engineer, and besides, no more school! The place where I went to work was a wholesale dry goods company, and I was an office boy, then a messenger, then something else. See how I was climbing? I started at $3.00 per week and in ten months I was getting—you guessed it—$3.00 per week. After buying my commuter ticket and my lunch six days a week, I was—or at least my mother was—able to save enough for me to go to California to visit my brother who lived in San Francisco."
He stayed with his brother and got a job in a leather goods firm. The job was satisfactory except that he was occasionally asked to deliver large rolls of hides on the trolley car. At first he was refused by the conductor because of the size of the rolls, but he solved the problem by wrapping the rolls around himself and standing. A Saturday afternoon football game at Stanford that Joe particularly wanted to see conflicted with his employer's plans for him that afternoon. Nevertheless he enjoyed the game and was apparently ready to leave California for home anyway. "...Later I went back to Montclair. That was two weeks before the big earthquake in 1906. I was 18 then and had started writing some rags but making no attempt to sell them until a year or so later."
After his return to Montclair it wasn't long until he had an idea for another song. A childhood friend and neighbor, as Joe preferred to called her, "Addie" Bunton, was pleased that he was back from his travels. About that time the greeting "Hi Kid" was in vogue. It seemed to Joe that a term he and Addie used, "Gee Kid, But I Like You," was a good name for a song, so he wrote the music and lyrics to go with it, dedicating it to Miss Adaline S. Bunton. His next song (1909) was a collaboration. "...During the years I wrote ragtime I also wrote classic ballads. Mary A. O'Reilly was a school chum of my mother back in Ireland when they were kids, but in the interim they went their separate ways, married and had families. They finally both wound up in Montclair and met by coincidence. Mrs. O'Reilly was a poetess, and when she found out I wrote music, she suggested writing a poem for me to set to music. She wrote "Love in Absence" and I had 500 copies printed for distribution among her friends by her and my mother. I had it published under the name of the Gordon Hurst Music Company (a nom de plume of mine). One of Mrs. O'Reilly's sons was a concert singer and he sang it several times."
As previously stated, Joe had been writing some rags, but making no attempt to sell them. In 1907 he took two rags to the John Stark music publishing office, but they were politely returned within a few days. He had been such a frequent customer at Stark's that a friendship had developed with Mr. and Mrs. Stark, and he often dropped in to shop and visit. He later said that he considered the Starks as personal friends rather than business acquaintances. It was during one of these shopping visits that an event transpired which was to alter the course of his career as a composer.
"There was a colored fellow sitting there with his foot bandaged up as if he had the gout, and a crutch beside him. I hardly noticed him. I told Mrs. Stark that I liked the Joplin rags best and wanted to get any I didn't have. The colored fellow spoke up and asked whether I had certain pieces which he named. I thanked him and bought several and was leaving when I said to Mrs. Stark that Joplin was one fellow I would certainly like to meet. 'Really,' said Mrs. Stark. 'Well, here's your man.' I shook hands with him, needless to say. It was a thrill I've never forgotten. I had met Scott Joplin and was going home to tell the folks."
After exchanging pleasantries, Joplin asked Joe if they could continue their conversation while walking homeward. He asked Joe to bring his rags to his home later that week and to play them. "...A lot of colored people were sitting around talking. I played my 'Sensation' first and they began to crowd around and watch me. When I finished Joplin said, 'That's a good rag–a regular Negro rag.' That was what I wanted to hear. Then I played my two other numbers, 'Dynamite Rag' and 'Old Home Rag.' There is a place in the first strain of 'Dynamite' where the bass and treble originally went upward together. At Joplin's suggestion I made the bass move downward in contrary motion to the treble. Joplin liked 'Sensation' best of my first three rags." It was then that Joplin suggested placing his own well-known name on the title page as arranger underneath Lamb's name as composer in order to help sell "Sensation," both to John Stark and to the public. It worked. A letter soon arrived from Stark with an offer of twenty-five dollars and the same amount to be paid after the first thousand copies were sold. Joe got the other twenty-five dollars in three or four weeks. Fifty-one years and some forty-six rags later, Joe recalled: "...This was one of my greatest thrills since I entered the ragtime domain. The first and foremost was the day I met Scott Joplin; the second, the day I first received published copies of 'Sensation.'" (Lamb's "Sensation–A Rag" of 1908 is not to be confused with the 1918 "Sensation Rag" credited to Eddie Edwards of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band.)
The heading at the top of the title page of "Sensation" reads "Respectfully inscribed to Miss Nellie M. Butler," and the copyright date is 1908. Nellie Butler was another of Joe's childhood friends and neighbors in Montclair. It is to be presumed that the young Misses Bunton and Butler were delighted at having these musical efforts inscribed to them. Joe explained the switch in dedications: "One day I walked past Addie's house with Nellie, and Addie saw us. She got mad and said she wouldn't talk to me any more if I didn't quit seeing Nellie."
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