Dan W. Quinn sings "I Want To Be An Actor Lady" Williams and Walker Broadway show In Dahomey
Dan W. Quinn sings "
I Want To Be An
Actor Lady" on
Victor 1471 (July 11, 1902).
This song also goes by the title "I Wants
To Be An Actor Lady" (with an "s" on the verb), but Dan W. Quinn clearly announces it as "I Want To Be An Actor Lady" on this Victor disc, and the label of the record has no "s" on the verb.
The comic song "I Wants to Be (A Actor Lady)" was written by
Harry von Tilzer and
Vincent Bryan. It was sung by
Aida Overton Walker (wife of
George Walker) in the
Williams and
Walker Broadway show In Dahomey. The song was an interpolation instead of an original number in the show.
Crazy for the stage was
Carrie Brown,
She work'd in a dry-goods store uptown.
Ev'rytime a play opened on
Broadway,;
In the gal'ry
Carrie could be found.
Carrie could recite the maiden's prayer;
She could sing most any ragtime air.
Each day just after lunch
She would entertain the bunch,
And when they'd all applaud her she'd declare:
I wants to be a actor lady,
Star in the play,
Up on Broadway,
Spotlight for me, no back-row shady.
I'm the real thing,
I dance and sing.
Miss
Carter she may play "
Du Barry,"
But she can't sing "
Good Morning, Carrie."
I wants to be a actor lady, too,
Indeed I do!
Carrie said that
Shakespeare was a shine,
Clyde Fitch may be good, but not for mine.
There is
Laura Jean Libby, she's a queen;
If she wrote a play I'd act it fine.
"Ha! the child's in
London," then you say;
Them's the kind of parts I wants to play.
"Troskeena
Wellington, you can't square what you have done!"
With lines like these I'd knock them on Broadway.
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 ("Laboratory, 97, 99 &
101 Reade
Street,
New York").
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."
In contrast to singers who recorded standards, Quinn as a Berliner artist covered new songs, nearly all of them quickly forgotten, few being recorded by other artists.
He estimated cutting some 2,
500 titles during his more than 20 years of recording experience. He listed for Walsh some companies that issued his records: "During my active days I recorded for practically all
American companies:
Edison, Victor, Columbia,
United States,
New Jersey,
Chicago,
Ohio,
Boston,
Gramophone,
Gennett, Leeds-Catlin, and a number of others."
Quinn usually worked as a solo artist.
During most of his recording career, Quinn was a free-lance artist, singing for practically all American companies. He made a few records in
1906 and then retired for a time (Gaskin likewise stopped recording around 1905, returning a decade later). This hiatus began just before the advent of double-faced discs. He continued to perform in vaudeville and operated a theatrical booking agency almost to the day of his death. In "Reminiscences of Dan W. Quinn," Walsh gives the address as 312
West 20th Street,
New York City.
Though nearly 60, he attempted in
1915 a recording comeback, beginning with a Columbia session on
September 23, 1915.
The singer died on
November 7,
1938, of intestinal cancer in his home at 312 West 20th Street, New York City.