Harry Macdonough and the Haydn Quartet sing "Sunbonnet Sue" on Victor 5568, recorded on August 12, 1908. <br /><br />The song is by Gus Edwards (music) and Will D. Cobb (lyrics).<br /><br />So that is your new Sunday bonnet?<br />Well, Sue, it’s becoming to you.<br />With those wonderful thing you have on it,<br />You’ll make them “some jealous,” dear Sue;<br />But somehow it sets me to dreaming,<br />Of the day we first said “Howdy do,”<br />And I see you once more,<br />In the bonnet you wore,<br />When I nicknamed you “Sunbonnet Sue.”<br /><br />Sunbonnet Sue, Sunbonnet Sue,<br />Sunshine and roses ran second to you,<br />You looked so nice, I kissed you twice,<br />Under your sunbonnet blue.<br />It was only a kind of a “kid kiss,”<br />But it tasted lots nicer than pie;<br />And the next thing I knew,<br />I was dead stuck on you,<br />When I was a kid so high.<br /><br />Harry Macdonough was born on March 30, 1871, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, as John Scantlebury Macdonald. During the two decades he was active as a recording artist, the tenor was perhaps the most popular ballad singer to make records aside from Henry Burr, also a tenor from Canada. <br /><br />Determining who made more records before 1920 would be a challenge since both Macdonough and Burr worked regularly as solo artists and also within duos, trios, quartets, and larger ensembles.<br /><br />He first made cylinders for the Michigan Electric Company in Detroit. In a letter written to Jim Walsh dated February 9, 1931, he states that these cylinders "were not sold but merely used in their `Phonograph Parlor' on the slot machines in use at that time." The June 1920 issue of Talking Machine World states he "spent his early business life in Detroit."<br /><br />John Kaiser, who recorded "Casey" monologues and later served as a U.S. Phonograph Company executive, helped Macdonald enter the record business on the East Coast. After Macdonald made a test record in October 1898 at the New York studio of Harms, Kaiser & Hagen, Kaiser himself played the test record for Walter H. Miller, then Edison's recording manager. As a result, Macdonald began making commercial recordings at the Edison laboratories in West Orange, New Jersey, on October 17, 1898. <br /><br />He wrote to Walsh, "At my first session I made twelve selections, for which I received $9.00. The regular rate was at that time $1.00 per song but being a beginner I was supposed to be satisfied with anything they chose to pay me and, as a matter of fact, I was. That $9.00 seemed pretty big pay for the afternoon and I had no complaint...shortly after that they paid me the regular rate of $1.00 per 'round' as it was described in those days. Each morning or afternoon session consisted of 30 'rounds,' consisting of five or six songs..."<br /><br />
