Richard Jose<br /><br />"Belle Brandon"<br /><br />1909<br /><br />Victor 16666<br /><br />This is the orchestra version.<br /><br />This is not to be confused with Jose's 1903 version that has piano accompaniment.<br /><br />Lyrics are by T. Ellwood Garrett. <br /><br />Music is by F. Woolcott.<br /><br />'Neath a tree by the margin of a woodland,<br />Whose spreading leafy boughs sweep the ground,<br />With a path leading thither o'er the prairie,<br />Where silence hung her night garb around;<br />Where oft I have wandered in the evening,<br />When the summer winds were fragrant on the lea,<br />There I saw the little beauty, Belle Brandon,<br />And we met 'neath the old arbor tree.<br /><br />Belle Brandon was a birdling of the mountain,<br />In freedom she sported on the lea,<br />And they said the life current of the red man<br />Tinged her veins, from a far distant sea.<br /><br />And she loved her humble dwelling on the prairie,<br />And her guileless happy heart clung to me,<br />And I loved the little beauty, Belle Brandon,<br />And we both loved the old arbor tree.<br /><br />On the trunk of an aged tree I carved them,<br />And our names on the sturdy oak remain,<br />But I now repair in sorrow to its shelter,<br />And murmur to the wild winds my pain.<br /><br />And I sat there in solitude repining,<br />For the beauty dream night brought to me,<br />Death has wed the little beauty, Belle Brandon,<br />And she sleeps ’neath the old arbor tree.<br /><br />Belle Brandon is called "a birdling of the mountain"--a way of saying the speaker's one-time (now deceased) girlfriend Belle Brandon was in tune with nature, enjoying the freedom of birds.<br /><br />Richard Jose recorded for the Victor Talking Machine Company exclusively and was popular during that company's early Monarch-Deluxe and Grand Prize periods.<br /><br />Richard Jose was the first countertenor to make records, including brown wax cylinders in 1892, such as "Poor Blind Boy." <br /><br />Most of Jose's discs, including the earliest with Monarch and Deluxe labels (Victor used these words on early ten- and twelve-inch discs, respectively), identify him as "counter-tenor" though on some labels Jose is identified as "tenor." Jose was more often billed as a tenor than as a countertenor in minstrel shows.<br /><br />A book titled "Silver Threads Among the Gold in the Life of Richard J. Jose" was self-published by Grace M. Wilkinson. Copyright date is February 8, 1945.<br /><br />Only once does Wilkinson refer to Jose as a countertenor: "His popularity in vaudeville as a contra-tenor was very much like that of Caruso in Italian grand opera." Jose's range is noted: "Mr. Jose's compass was from D above middle C to E above high C." <br /><br />He was born in England in a Cornish village, Lanner, on June 5, 1862. Various sources give later dates since Jose (and his wife) pretended that Jose was younger than he really was. <br /><br />Wilkinson refers to a home built in Lanner by Captain James Francis and writes, "In this home, all of Captain Francis' children were born. His daughter, Elizabeth...was now being courted by a young Spanish miner, Richard Jose. His ancestors had come from Spain to work in the tin mines at Cornwall."<br /><br />
