Russell Hunting

Russell Dinsmore Hunting (May 8, 1864 – Feb 20, 1943) Early Recording Pioneer & Maverick. Russell Hunting, an American, was a Comic Entertainer, Sound Recordist and Influential Figure in the early years of recorded music history who is often described as the most popular pre-1900 recording artist (historic voice and comedy recording). He was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts where he started his career as a dramatic actor for the Boston Theatre Company. In 1891 he made his first recordings (of comedy skits, featuring his Irish character Michael Casey) for Fred Ginsberg of Berliner Records, on cylinder. The comic skits consisted of rapid dialogue between two characters with Hunting taking both parts. From 1892 he recorded more Michael Casey skits for Columbia Records as well as other companies. The skits were very popular and were often imitated. In 1896 he founded the first independent magazine for the recording industry Phonoscope and set up a phonograph shop in New York with partner Charles H Carison. He also started recording a series of indecent recordings for saloons and amusement arcades on Coney Island under the pseudonym Manly Trumpet and Willy Fathand for which he was arrested for violating the Obscenity Laws and sentenced to 3 months imprisonment. Some of these lewd recordings are included in the 2007 compilation Actionable Offences & Indecent Phonograph Recordings from the 1890s. In 1898 he moved to England to become recording Director of Edison Bell records. After the UK became involved in the Boer War in 1899 he recorded his famous The Departure of a Troopship at Southampton docks which featured the sounds of crowds at the quayside, bands playing the troops up the gang-plank, bugles sounding All Ashore and farewell cries such as ‘Don’t forget to write’. The troops sang Home Sweet Home which gradually faded away as the ship moved away in the distance. This very dramatic and ambitious recording was so moving that Nellie Melba quoted it as having influenced her more than anything to have her voice recorded on records. This recording can inter alia be heard on Gramophone Concert Record G.C.-2-108. Hunting also recorded skits for Zonophone in Britain. In 1904 he formed the Sterling Record Company with partner Louis Sterling, which later became the Russell Hunting Record Company. The company produced Sterling cylinder records and Linguaphone language instruction records, but went out of business in 1908. Hunting then joined the Pathé Company in Paris as director of recordings. He set up the US arm of that company after which he again returned to Paris to take charge of Pathé’s European recording activities. He also maintained an occasional recording career, recording inter alia ‘The Departure of the First Troops for France’ (with sound effects of the band and crowd) in New York in 1917. Hunting returned to the US in 1940 and died in Westchester County, New York in 1943 at age 78.

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