Studying history often comes with an inevitable fact that we will never be able to communicate with the people we are interested in. As frustrating as this is, the closest thing we can find are personal papers and letters that belonged to the person. Recently, a letter was shared online that was sent by Justin Ring to a young record collector, dated to about 1960. While this letter is very interesting to read, it doesn’t reveal much new information on Ring or his friends. However, it does tell us that contrary to previous scholarship, Ring did in fact communicate with young collectors toward the end of his life.
There was a major revival in research of acoustic era recordings in the 1940s and ’50s, and this coincided with the west coast Jazz Revival. There was a small but influential group of record collectors who started communicating with folks who were still living at the time. One of the most famous of these scholars was Jim Walsh. Walsh interviewed as many people as he could contact in the beginning of his career. While he was a very important writer and scholar, he did miss some essential figures. There are some people he communicated with but never wrote any articles about. One of these people was Justin Ring.
There are a few indications throughout Walsh’s writings that he had communicated with Ring, such as a single line he wrote accompanying a now well known photo of Ring and Fred Hager from 1902:
Fred Hager, who won a gold medal awarded by The Phonoscope for making the best violin record. His inseparable companion and accompanist, Justin Ring (Justus Ringleben) is at the piano. Hager is dead, but Ring, aged 86, lives in Hollywood, Fla. This picture was taken about 1899.
This little note was written mere months before Justin Ring died.
When Walsh started communicating with Hager in about the late 1940s, he was absolutely delighted that someone cared so much about what he had done in his life. This new connection brought a new found vigor to the then aging but still active Hager. This prompted him to go back into his massive collection of records and ephemera to rediscover all sorts of significant pieces.
Walsh and Hager were corresponding regularly by 1950, and in that summer Walsh and a few other recording stars organized a meet up in the home of the former quartet tenor John Beiling. Not only did Walsh write an in-depth article about the meet up, there is also a home movie (which is silent) showing everyone at the event. While all of this was great for people like Walsh and the other young collectors at the event, Justin Ring was absent.
We do not know why Ring did not attend this event and the others that were held in the succeeding years, but based on recently discovered materials, it seemed that he preferred to write directly to those interested rather than attend events like this. One possible reason for this could have been his previous relationship with Hager. Hager with his newly revived energy would have only been too anxious to share everything about his past to these young collectors and to their then surviving colleagues (it is relatively clear, however, that people in recording studios as late as the 1930s associated them always being together). Once Ring retired, he was done. He kept his word by this, and was said to have played piano very little after 1947. Even if he wasn’t particularly interested in reunions, he was surprisingly active in writing to scholars.
The few who knew he was among the last surviving recording artists to make records before 1900, hastily took advantage of this fact by inquiring of him regularly. While little direct correspondence between him and Walsh survives today, it is nearly obvious that some of the reprinted material that Walsh used came from Ring’s collection. The picture that accompanies the description above is one of the items that is to this day kept within the collection of Ring’s descendants.
While his family always knew him as being rather quiet, maybe he wasn’t so much that way while at work. There is a film dated to about 1928 that shows Eddie Lang, the Dorsey Brothers and a few more in the Okeh studio; unnamed, but prominently featured for only a few seconds is Justin Ring. In the film, Ring stands next to the long time Okeh engineer Charles Hibbard, and as could be expected, Hibbard is sitting there emotionless, as the old fart he was, uninterested in Jazz. Ring, however, is very much enjoying his job, smiling from ear to ear moving to the music (alas the film is silent).
At the time this film was made, Ring had taken Hager’s position as the studio manager. In many accounts later in his life, he mentioned this being a big change for him, even if he only served a term of not even three years. During his tenure the Okeh team packed up and went to Kansas City to make some significant field recordings, including the first that Victoria Spivey made.
In the letter recently discovered, Ring mentions some big names that he was very familiar with during his time at Okeh and later Decca. The overall tone of the letter could be considered slightly melancholy, as he mentions how Hager, his wife Elsie, and many others by then were dead. At the time he wrote he was living with his younger daughter in Florida.
It is however new information that he not just worked for Decca, but helped organize the label in its formation in the United States, and, much like his “old pal”(this is how he refers to Hager in the letter) Hager had done back in 1900, went and found artists to hire for the talent. He mentions in this letter that he was a close friend of Decca founder Jack Kapp. Even if Kapp and Ring were separated by nearly 30 years, the two of them understood what was good music at the time in the early electric era.
Kapp’s history working for Brunswick was innovative to say the least, as he had hired so many influential artists. Just a few of these folks include: King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Isham Jones, Cab Calloway, etc. Ring may have been older than the new generation, but it could be considered quite a feat for a person who had begun working in the music business in 1891. Not many other acoustic era executives were able to adapt as easily as he did.
It must have been unusually flattering to Ring to get this attention from young scholars, in much a similar way as it did to Hager or even to someone like Billy Murray (who was also quite happy to speak with younger collectors). But unlike the other two, most of Ring’s correspondence still has yet to be discovered.
Yes, I write a lot about Ring in this column, but readers do keep in mind that Ring was one of the last surviving recording artists or executives who worked before 1900. Also at this time I am working on a book on him.
