Fred Irvin (1883- c. 1960)

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Recently (November 2023), Eric S. Marchese played the early fox-trot "Doctor Brown" (1914) by Fred Irvin at the Nixon Library, and in his write-up of the concert for the RagFest website, he wrote about Fred Irvin's composition "This great piece is unique, and can perhaps be deemed a 'one-hit wonder' as we have no other rags by composer Irvin and little information about him." This stimulated me to look into Fred Irvin, naturally.

A first step was to look at the Catalog of Copyright Entries to see what compositions Irvin copyrighted and/or published. It turned out that Irvin published three instrumentals in 1914, including "Doctor Brown".

Henry Jones was at that time a co-owner of the Elite Cafe, where Irvin worked before going to New York. This lyricist Henry Jones is almost certainly Henry "Teenan" Jones (born 11 January 1861, Tuscumbia, Alabama, died 12 April 1946, Watseka, Illinois), well-known as the owner of the Elite. See Jelly Roll Morton's account of how Teenan Jones begged him to "take charge" of the Elite No. 2. It is also possible that Irvin's lyricist was Henry Hebron Jones, who was a younger man (born Dec. 25, 1879 according to his WWI draft registration) than Teenan Jones, Henry H. Jones confusingly enough being a waiter at the Elite No. 2 in 1918 (see the draft registration).

Note in Jelly Roll's account as given in Lomax's "Mr. Jelly Lord": "The old original Elite at 3445 State Street was the most beautiful place on the South Side . . . When Teenan Jones, the owner put his partner in charge of the Elite Number Two, corner 31st and State, this man, Art Cardozier, ran the place right into the deep blue sea." Also note that Lomax's transcriptions of Morton's speech were typically slightly inaccurate, as in this case with the name of Jones's partner. If the typescript of Lomax's transcriptions are examined on the Library of Congress' webpages, at

https://www.loc.gov/resource/afc2004004.ms030106/?sp=3&st=slideshow#slide-16

one finds that actually what the transcription says is "The first operator of the Elite No. 2 was Art Codozier, which was Teenan Jones' partner of the Elite No. 1, corner 31st and State . . ." so the name Codozoe is less garbled than what appears in "Mr. Jelly Lord", and it seems clear that Morton was saying that it was the Elite No. 1 that was at the corner of 31st and State.

In fact, it is Elite Number Two that was at 3445 State Street. By autumn 1915, advertisements call the Elite Number Two "Teenan Jones' Place", and Art Codozoe was the proprietor of the original Elite at 3030 State Street, not far from the corner of 31st and State, as for example advertised in the Freeman of January 29, 1916:

An evocative photo of the Elite No. 2 as decked out for the Elks convention is shown on Mike Meddings's website at http://www.doctorjazz.co.uk/jelly32lg.jpg . It might be noted that Chicago hosted the Elks convention August 29 - September 14, 1915, so it's possible that that dates that photograph.

Renewal:

Sheet music covers:

Above from New York City Directory, 1914

Above right, from Chicago Defender, November 27, 1915, page 6. Note that at 3409 1/2 State Street, Frank B. Jones Music Co. was only a few doors away from the Elite No. 2 (at 3445 State).

Above from Chicago Defender, January 29, 1916, p. 8.

Censuses:

1900; Chicago, 2958 Dearborn Street

Above, at 18, Fred is working as a waiter at a hotel.

Marriage record:

Residing at 3327 Wabash Avenue, Chicago, 1910, Fred is managing "Elite Coffeehouse" - is this not likely to be the club "Elite Cafe"? (see 1912 item from the Freeman below), although a 1915 article says that it opened in 1911 -- while his bride of one year is listed as a musician. (Note Ancestry's OCR read Fred's location of work as "electric office" and Blanch's occupation as "milkman"!) ---

In 1920, Fred lists himself as a musician; again, Blanch is also listed as a musician.

Indianapolis Freeman, May 4, 1912, p. 8 puts Irvin (as "Ervin") in transit from Chicago, where he was at The Elite, to New York, with his wife (this is presumably Blanch) via Hot Springs Arkansas:

(Elite Cafe, 3030 State Street)

The New York Age of October 15, 1914, p. 8 indicates that Irvin has been quite a success in Montreal with what appears to be Clef Club bands playing at dance venues:

Comparing these personnel to the list of Clef Club members as of early 1912 that Ed Berlin posted in 2004, we see at least the following were "Clefties":

Peter Staples, Alex Fenner, Theodore Wilson, Ed. Wise (as J. Eddy Wise), and Walter Gray (as Walter Grey).

Indianapolis Freeman, March 13, 1915, p. 5 provides more evidence of Irvin's successes in Montreal:

"I've Got a Remedy to Cure the Blues" was recorded by Clarence Jones on Rolla Artis 50231 circa 1916 (was in Himpsl collection).

By the time Irvin registered for the draft in 1918, he was trying his hand at hotel ownership in Gary, Indiana (about 25 miles from his home on the South Side of Chicago):

By 1921, Fred has moved away from the musical part of club ownership into what he must have decided was more lucrative. He leans on his "great reputation as a Cafe Manager and Entertainer".

Running a cabaret like Lorraine Garden meant dealing with police on a regular basis:

By about 1923, he has moved into boxing promotion which he spent most of his subsequent career involved with. Not everything he promoted was a boxing match, certainly:

Promoted pool match at Royal Gardens in 1926

Promoted pinochle meet in Cleveland in 1932

Known not only in the fight game but also still in the "theatrical profession" in 1939 as he opens "Club Lido" in New York (Defender, January 28, 1939 p. 18):

Tried unsuccessfully to run a horse show in 1941 (Defender, August 30, 1941):

Left above, from The Chicago Defender February 24, 1940, p. 16 is perhaps the earliest explicit mention I've found that before Irvin got into promotion, he was a "songwriter and former pianist." The item on the right was from the next page in that issue.

Fred Irvin was also a member of the Crescendo Club, as mentioned in the Chicago Defender, August 19, 1939, p. 20:

The People's Voice (NY) from April 25, 1942, p. 27 records a party Fred Irvin held in honor of fellow Crescendo Club member Luckey Roberts getting to no. 1 with "Moonlight Cocktail":

Fred was portrayed as a publicity hound and called the "gabby Chicagoan" in the Chicago Bee of July 18, 1943, p. 22:

An ad for this gym, complete with a little photo of Irvin, ran in The People's Voice July 3, 1943, next to an article describing how Irvin was taking over the gym and planned to modernize it:

Mrs. Helen Irvin passed away in 1944, as noted in an item in the "Man About Harlem" column by Joe Bostic, March 4, 1944, page 24:

That would be Tuesday, February 29, 1944. But I found what looks like a slightly garbled record for the death of Mrs. Irvin that says she died at age 38 on Feb. 22, 1944 and was buried at Rose Hill Cemetery in Linden, NJ on Feb. 28, 1944. So "last Tuesday" meant Tuesday, Feb. 22. The garbled part seems to be that the listing is for Helen Irving [sic], even though it says that the informant was her husband Fred Irvin. The same record also says that her parents were Robert and Addie Smith, when Smith was the name of her first husband, according to the item when Fred and Helen married. Note the mother's first name is consistent with "Mrs. Adeaide Johnson" that the article has mentioned. The Find-A-Grave record also says "Helen Irving" - it would be worth looking at the grave in Linden.

It's more garbled than that, actually. If Fred told the person filling out the death certificate that his wife's date of birth was March 1, 1906, she really was putting one over him, because she apparently was born in December 1894 (according to the 1900 census for Wilkes-Barre, PA, where she shows up as the daughter of Robert Johnson (born in the West Indies) and Addie Johnson (born in North Carolina). Alternatively, maybe Irvin didn't tell them any of this and somebody looked up records and found a Helen C. Johnson that had been born in Media, PA in 1906. Helen Johnson married J. Elwood Smith (born March 13, 1887 in Oakville, Maryland, according to his WWI draft registration) in Wilkes-Barre on November 16, 1916. Smith passed away not in 1935 as mentioned in the caption to the photo about Fred Irvin marrying Helen, but on June 30, 1934 in Buffalo, NY, where he is buried.

New York Age, December 1, 1951 contained what turned out to be a premature obituary of Irvin that again mentioned that he'd come to town (New York) from Chicago as a piano player before he had turned to promotion of all kinds:

The retraction came out in the New York Age of January 19, 1952, above.

New York Age December 20, 1958: