Samuel Siegel was a regular contributor to The Cadenza, the mandolin world bible early last century. I will check through tomorrow for whatever bio stuff might be there.
Samuel Siegel was a regular contributor to The Cadenza, the mandolin world bible early last century. I will check through tomorrow for whatever bio stuff might be there.
http://www.mcdonaldstrings.com
The Mandolin Project on building mandolins
The Mandolin-a history
The Ukulele on building ukuleles
A few bits from The Cadenza. It seemed that there was barely an issue published of either The Cadenza or The Cresendo (the rival publication from 1908) where Siegel was not mentioned in one way or the other. It was often no more than a composition credit in a concert program, but his name was always there.Sam Siegel was also a board member of the American Guild of Banjoists, Mandolinists and Guitarists for many years.
A Regal ad promoting a national tour in 1901.
and a personal promotional ad from 1902
From The Cadenza in 1903 promoting his new pick
Reviews from a season in Nashville in January 1905
Ans a Vega ad from The Cadenza in January 1911. Not actually saying Sam plays a Vega, but definitely not a Gibson 8-) Vega was using his name a couple of years earlier in the same way, promoting the idea of the bowlback mandolin generally. The same issue mentions that Mr Siegel was a "concert-mandolinist who retired to perfect the correspondence system of the Siegel-Myers School of Music".
By 1917 the Siegel-Myers School of Music in Chicago had opened the University Extension Conservatory which sold correspondence lessons by Siegel for mandolin William Foden for guitar and Fred Bacon for banjo as well as for other instruments such as Hawaiian guitar and ukulele.
The July 1924 issue of The Crescendo noted that Mr and Mrs Sanuel Siegel's daughter Dorothy had passed away shortly after her fourteenth birthday after a year's illness from heart trouble. That may have influenced the move to England.
http://www.mcdonaldstrings.com
The Mandolin Project on building mandolins
The Mandolin-a history
The Ukulele on building ukuleles
I acquired a good handful of wax cylinders a decade or so ago mostly of Siegel's and donated them to the UCSB Cylinder archive. Some of mine are in this group of 17 records.
Jim
My Stream on Soundcloud
19th Century Tunes
Playing lately:
1924 Gibson A4 - 2018 Campanella A-5 - 2007 Brentrup A4C - 1915 Frank Merwin Ashley violin - Huss & Dalton DS - 1923 Gibson A2 black snakehead - '83 Flatiron A5-2 - 1939 Gibson L-00 - 1936 Epiphone Deluxe - 1928 Gibson L-5 - ca. 1890s Fairbanks Senator Banjo - ca. 1923 Vega Style M tenor banjo - ca. 1920 Weymann Style 25 Mandolin-Banjo - National RM-1
I hear all the recordings in the library of the congress and the link of Jim, what a pleasure! This man was a great player, a virtuoso, really. A friend of mine says about this kind of players "they have no bones in the fingers or the instrument has no frets"!
I have compiled some stuff from Music Trade review on my mandoisland website
You may note that even then the name has been changed to "Seigel" in one case...
Homepage: www.mandoisland.de / Blog: www.mandoisland.com / Freiburg / Germany
Very cool, Jim, you had those recordings to donate & they are available to hear. I really love those introductions. They fit the Musical style & presentation. How I yearn to step back into the days of Vaudeville.
Joe B
Just to keep our hero at the top of the discussions here is one of my favorites from the Todd Collection in the UCSB Cylinder Archives.
Hawthorne Club.
http://www.library.ucsb.edu/OBJID/Cylinder4671
Mark Lynch
I thought you Siegel fans might enjoy this.
The Edison site posted this Siegel 1918 Diamond Disc test pressing.
Follow the link and select Ragtime Echoes.
Ragtime Echoes
Performed by: Samuel Siegel - mandolin ; Marie Caveny - ukulele
Composed by: Samuel Siegel
Record format: Edison Diamond Disc test pressing
Matrix number: 6599-B-1-1
Recording date: 1918
NPS object catalog number: EDIS 76220
https://www.nps.gov/edis/learn/photo...nd-ragtime.htm
Mark Lynch
Very cool Mark! That one might not have been on cylinder so would not be on the Cylinder archive. Another example of his stellar playing. That sounds like a tenor banjo or possibly a mandolin-banjo.
For convenience (or download of mp3):
Siegel - Ragtime Echoes
Jim
My Stream on Soundcloud
19th Century Tunes
Playing lately:
1924 Gibson A4 - 2018 Campanella A-5 - 2007 Brentrup A4C - 1915 Frank Merwin Ashley violin - Huss & Dalton DS - 1923 Gibson A2 black snakehead - '83 Flatiron A5-2 - 1939 Gibson L-00 - 1936 Epiphone Deluxe - 1928 Gibson L-5 - ca. 1890s Fairbanks Senator Banjo - ca. 1923 Vega Style M tenor banjo - ca. 1920 Weymann Style 25 Mandolin-Banjo - National RM-1
Hi Jim, this performance was most likely dubbed from Diamond Disc to Blue Amberol 4523 (cylinder) and appears in the June 1922 Edison Blue Amberol catalog supplement with this description.
"Truly a novelty and a dashing, whirlwind one-step. Samuel Siegel plays the mandolin with the technique of a violin virtuoso. He also appears in the role of composer."
The instrumentation is mandolin and ukulele.
I am still researching if it was also issued in the Diamond Disc format. After the Diamond Disc format took over at the Edison Laboratories recordings were made solely onto disc and then dubbed to the cylinder format to supply material for the many customers that still had cylinder machines. Commercial music cylinders were available right up to the end of Edison's involvement with music records and phonographs in 1929. The business phonographs and blank cylinders for office use continued much longer.
Mark
Mark Lynch
Jim
My Stream on Soundcloud
19th Century Tunes
Playing lately:
1924 Gibson A4 - 2018 Campanella A-5 - 2007 Brentrup A4C - 1915 Frank Merwin Ashley violin - Huss & Dalton DS - 1923 Gibson A2 black snakehead - '83 Flatiron A5-2 - 1939 Gibson L-00 - 1936 Epiphone Deluxe - 1928 Gibson L-5 - ca. 1890s Fairbanks Senator Banjo - ca. 1923 Vega Style M tenor banjo - ca. 1920 Weymann Style 25 Mandolin-Banjo - National RM-1
The "surviving Siegel" you mention was my younger brother, Dr. Edward Siegel, who is of course another nephew of Samuel. Our mother, Jeanette Nina Schremser Siegel, would answer direct questions, but would never discuss the Siegel family with me. Clarence Isaac Siegel died 12/28/1947, when I was 8, and our mother re-married a couple of years later. Ben Shiffman formally adopted both me and my brother a year or so later. I do have a few recollections of my father, including the Japanese surrender after Nagasaki, and a few instances of him playing a banjo, ukelele, and guitar (Washburn) that my brother learned to play.
On 02/13/2012, Annette Siegel posted 2 sentences;
1. Samuel Siegel was my husbands grandfather!
2. As far as we could tell he was a Washburn man.
A day later, she added some details, including the first reference to Donald Siegel that I ever saw (but not until 04/2016):
• As far as the the family links to Samuel Siegel, as I said he was my husband's grandfather and my husband's father was Don Siegel (director). Samuel had died some time before my husband was born...and Nowell's father is no longer with us. We did name our son after Samuel though...wanted to keep the name going. My husband and I call our music duo "The Seagulls" misspellings abound with "Siegel" just look at the thread title : )
im Garber, Annette Siegel, and "Brunello97" each added a little more, but I would not find it for several more years.
Robert A. Margo posted on 11/30/2010 that he wanted to contact Paul Sparks to put him in touch with my brother, Dr. Edward Siegel, to learn more about Samuel.# However, it appears that our cousin Donald was never mentioned, and when I asked Ed, he did not remember.
Paul and I have been in touch, thanks everyone.The context of this:
I was contacted two weeks ago by Dr. Edward Siegel, the nephew of Samuel Siegel, the noted early twentieth century American mandolinist. Dr. Siegel was looking for information about his famous uncle. I provided him with some, as did Paul.#
Robert A. Margo
This was mentioned again by Robert Margo on 02/24/2012, without my brother's name.#
I attended a Mensa meeting in April 2016.# Our guest speaker was a guitarist and a music teacher at University Of Memphis, and was very interested in ancient stringed instruments.# The mandolin was not initially mentioned, but another member asked about it.# He said that it had been around for at least 400 years, and certainly qualified, but he had not brought one to demonstrate.# But that mention woke up a dormant brain cell in my head, but without a first name.# I asked the speaker if he knew of a mandolinist from very early 1900's named "Siegel," but he did not know.# However, when I got home, Google showed me many pages of Samuel Siegel, including "Mandolin Cafe."
This is truly Siegel family trivia, but since I never met either Uncle Samuel or Cousin Donald Siegel, but I have lived in Memphis (with a few breaks) since 1965, and Memphis was the home of Elvis Presley for most of his life. Elvis, in turn, has a connection to Donald based on his only dramatic film, "Flaming Star," directed by Donald. I was never much of an Elvis fan, but he loved Memphis as much as Memphis loved him.# Meanwhile, Annette's posted claim to Siegel family membership was the first time that I ever heard of Donald Siegel, but that did not happen until April of 2016, when I saw her post, and a few days later, when I became a member of Mandolin Cafe and posted an explanation of my interest.
My new connection to Elvis Presley actually came from IMDB instead of Mandolin Cafe, but would not have happened without your help.# IMDB includes interspersed bits of trivia, and one such tidbit tells us that during the filming of "Flaming Star," Elvis loaned a brand-new Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud to Donald for two weeks.# We had a visitor a couple of weeks ago who was visiting us, but was REALLY interested in Elvis, and particularly, to tour Graceland.# The tour was much more elaborate that it had been, and included his cars.# But it was complicated by the presence of 2 such cars, one white and one black.# Also, the Archive staff was not there on week-ends, and nobody else there could confirm the presence of that "loaner" OR its color.# So I Emailed my question, along with my explanation of why it mattered, which I have explained in this post.#
The reply arrived 3 or 4 days later, along with thanks for contacting him. And of course, the answer, which was the BLACK car.# And I have been invited to return, to revisit the ghost of my cousin Donald, now that I know where it might be found.#
I am NOT a musician, and therefor am not what the rest of you are.# I am merely an uninvited guest, and all of you seem to be a gathering of friends.#So I would like to thank all of you mentioned above, as well as everyone that has contributed pieces of the unknown Uncle and Cousin that are now part of my family heritage.#I will check back when I can, looking for anything else you find about MY Uncle Sam.
--
Dave Shiffman
901-386-2251 home
901-481-7295 cell
I'm new to this forum and especially this thread, having purchased a 121-year-old disk of "The Bonita Waltz" only yesterday at a rummage sale, and looking for information about Samuel Siegel. This forum has more information than any other site I so far found, the others mostly being only regurgitated Wiki content. But I am confused, in what appears to be an assimilated, but still traditional, Jewish family, a Christopher? Not that the family genealogy is my business, but even with intermarriage, strange, I find, to have a Christopher.
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