Dan W. Quinn - Raving (1904)

Dan W. Quinn sings "Raving" on an American Record disc issued around 1904.

The song was in the show Mr. Bluebeard (the title is also given as Mr. Blue Beard), which made the news when a fire broke out during a production, burning many audience members in a Chicago theater.

The Iroquois Theater fire happened on December 30, 1903.

It was the deadliest theater fire in United States history.

Lyrics are by Vincent Bryan.

Music is by Theodore F. Morse.

Dan W. Quinn was born in San Francisco, perhaps in 1859 since Jim Walsh reports in the December 1961 issue of Hobbies that Quinn was 79 years old when he died.

He was occasionally identified as a baritone but most often as a tenor.

Quinn was a boy soprano in an Episcopal choir and was evidently a vaudeville performer when he was a young man. His photograph is on the cover of sheet music of the 1890s.

He recounted how he began recording in a letter sent to Walsh, who quotes it at length in "Reminiscences of Dan W. Quinn," published in the July 1934 issue of Music Lovers' Guide.

Quinn explained why he was among the most successful recording artists of the 1890s: "It was while working for Vic Emerson [a Columbia executive in the 1890s] that I began to work like a good fellow and went after all the latest songs. I learned everything, whether it naturally suited my style or not. The good singers--I mean fellows like John W. Myers and George Gaskins [sic]--were slow getting up their stuff, and I, being a sight reader, just couldn't keep from learning every new number."

Quinn recorded regularly from 1892 to 1905. He made recordings for the Phonograph Record and Supply Company.

Columbia's November 1896 catalog, which lists over 60 Quinn titles, states, "Mr. Quinn's reputation as a vocalist is so well established that the mere announcement of his name is a guarantee of the record."

He was one of Berliner's most important artists, recording nearly a hundred titles. The only singer to cover more titles for the disc company was tenor George J. Gaskin. Perhaps the earliest Quinn discs to be issued were "Girl Wanted" (935), recorded on November 3, 1895, and "Henrietta, Have Your Met Her?" (151), also recorded in November 1895.

An April 1899 catalog issued by the National Gram-o-phone Company, maker of Berliner discs, identifies Quinn as "The King of Comic Singers."

Berliners made by Quinn featuring show tunes include a "popular Hebrew dialect song" (as the National Gram-o-phone catalog characterizes it) titled "Ikey Eisenstein," from the show An American Beauty (1737--it was also recorded as Edison 1039) and, from the show Hurly Burly, "Little Old New York Is Good Enough For Me" (030), recorded on April 4, 1899.

In contrast to singers who recorded standards, Quinn covered new songs, nearly all of them quickly forgotten, few being recorded by other artists.