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Thread: Samuel Seigel

  1. #1
    Registered User Tavy's Avatar
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    Default Samuel Seigel

    There's a mention of Samuel Seigel in the news pics with links to his recordings in the library of congress - well worth a listen for sure (if you can put up with the crackle!) the guy could certainly play all right!

    Anyone know what he played though? There must be some photo's somewhere but the usual search didn't turn up much about the guy....

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    Registered User Annette Siegel's Avatar
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    Default Re: Samuel Seigel

    Samuel Siegel was my husbands grandfather! As far as we could tell he was a Washburn man.

    Best, Annette

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    Mando-Accumulator Jim Garber's Avatar
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    Default Re: Samuel Seigel

    He certainly played mandolins by the (Wulschner) Regal Company of Indianapolis Indiana around the turn of the last century. This ad is from a 1901 music trades magazine.
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    Last edited by Jim Garber; Feb-13-2012 at 2:18pm.
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    Default Re: Samuel Seigel

    I don't have a scan of the page, (check out page 119 in "Washburn: Prewar Instrument Styles") but Mr. Siegel also endorsed (exclusively!) Washburn mandolins, as Annette says.

    Annette, I would love to hear more about your family links back to SS.

    Paul Sparks also has an extended section on Siegel in "The Classical Mandolin" pp. 123-25 in my edition. My scanner no longer works with my Mac OS so I can't get these images/texts up! Maybe someone else can help John out with this..

    Mick
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    Default Re: Samuel Seigel

    Our good friend Eugene was so kind to send me a duo style exercises book by Samuel Siegel. So, besides performing, he also provided the mandolin community with sort of a duo style method book. And there is also a piece that i remember composed by Siegel called "the volunteer patrol", that we used to play with my guitar colleague. Or at least this is what i remember about Siegel.

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    Registered User Tavy's Avatar
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    Default Re: Samuel Seigel

    Quote Originally Posted by Nettles View Post
    Samuel Siegel was my husbands grandfather! As far as we could tell he was a Washburn man.

    Best, Annette
    Isn't the internet amazing? Never thought we'd get a relative giving the definitive answer!

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    Registered User Tavy's Avatar
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    Default Re: Samuel Seigel

    Quote Originally Posted by Plamen Ivanov View Post
    Our good friend Eugene was so kind to send me a duo style exercises book by Samuel Siegel. So, besides performing, he also provided the mandolin community with sort of a duo style method book. And there is also a piece that i remember composed by Siegel called "the volunteer patrol", that we used to play with my guitar colleague. Or at least this is what i remember about Siegel.
    The Volunteer Patrol is one of the recordings on the library of congress site.

  11. #8
    Mando-Accumulator Jim Garber's Avatar
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    Default Re: Samuel Seigel

    Siegel toured around in the vaudeville circuit. In addition to the duo style etude book, he arranged some tunes for one of the popular music folios and composed quite a bit as well.
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    Default Re: Samuel Seigel

    Hi Mick,

    As far as the the family links to Samuel Siegel, as I said he was my husband's grandfather and my husband's father was Don Siegel (director). Samuel had died some time before my husband was born...and Nowell's father is no longer with us. We did name our son after Samuel though...wanted to keep the name going. My husband and I call our music duo "The Seagulls" misspellings abound with "Siegel" just look at the thread title : )

    Jim, is correct that he played the vaudeville circuit. Much if not all the family had of his was lost in a fire.

    Annette Siegel

    www.livingtreemusic.com

    Quote Originally Posted by brunello97 View Post
    I don't have a scan of the page, (check out page 119 in "Washburn: Prewar Instrument Styles") but Mr. Siegel also endorsed (exclusively!) Washburn mandolins, as Annette says.

    Annette, I would love to hear more about your family links back to SS.

    Paul Sparks also has an extended section on Siegel in "The Classical Mandolin" pp. 123-25 in my edition. My scanner no longer works with my Mac OS so I can't get these images/texts up! Maybe someone else can help John out with this..

    Mick

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    Mando-Accumulator Jim Garber's Avatar
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    Default Re: Samuel Seigel

    Wow, Annette! I just looked up Don Siegel on IMDB. An illustrious family! DS was the director of Dirty Harry and had a long friendship with Mr. Eastwood.
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    Default Re: Samuel Seigel

    This may be the best website on the internet. What a cool set of convergences and stories.

    Jamie
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    Default Re: Samuel Seigel

    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Garber View Post
    Wow, Annette! I just looked up Don Siegel on IMDB. An illustrious family! DS was the director of Dirty Harry and had a long friendship with Mr. Eastwood.
    Eastwood Schmeastwood. Don Siegel directed the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." What a pity Samuel Siegel wasn't around to do a Carmine Coppola-esque score.

    Mick
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    Default Re: Samuel Seigel

    One real life tidbit on the Samuel Siegel front. He tried as he could to have a musical influence on his son (Don) even so far as getting him lessons from famous guitarist Andres Segovia. But as children often do he chose a different path.

    Annette

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    Default Re: Samuel Seigel

    Siegel's recordings are certainly worth hearing. That guy was fast. I have a small stack of "moderate difficulty" chamber pieces he published around 1901 or so. It includes a somewhat dumbed-down (compared to his recording) version of Volunteer Patrol. One of his unaccompanied solos, variations on "O Come Ye Disconsolate," is one of the most absurdly difficult pieces I've ever looked at and never played. Siegel's version of classical virtuosity was strongly flavored with vaudeville-ian aural spice.

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    Default Re: Samuel Seigel

    This mornign I played through Siegel's "Caprice de Concert" from Neil Gladd's collection ("Three Centuries"). Relatively speaking, it is not too difficult and is a very fine piece (and usually don't feel that way about early 20th century American mandolin solos). Definitely worth thinking about if one were planning a "history of the mandolin" type solo program.
    Robert A. Margo

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    Default Re: Samuel Seigel

    Does anybody know what Samuel's family background was? I can't find any pocket biographies of him, but I'm intrigued by the fact that his son (Annette's father-in-law) was born in Chicago, but went to university in England, at Cambridge no less, which back then was still very much an upper-crust institution and not a natural choice for a Jewish-American boy. I wonder whether he was able to obtain such a classy education solely on the back of the money Samuel made from his career as a concert mandolinist, or whether the family was independently wealthy. Given that he started out in vaudeville in the 1890s, I presume that he was a self-made man. Not too many rich boys in such a disreputable career as vaudeville performers.

    Martin

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    Mando-Accumulator Jim Garber's Avatar
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    Default Re: Samuel Siegel

    BTW John Goodin has posted a vintage folio of tunes arranged by Siegel on this page (among others):

    Whitney Warner Collection of Mandolin & Guitar Music. Arranged by Samuel Siegel. Detroit: Whitney-Warner Publishing Co., [1902?]

    Third from the bottom of the page.

    I also corrected the spelling in my reply to this thread.
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    Default Re: Samuel Seigel

    Thanks, Jim. I like the low-key endorsement by Siegel on the front cover: he recommends the collection because it is "better than the average book of its nature".

    Martin

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    Default Re: Samuel Seigel

    For all you students of tremolo, listen to Siegel's La Bonita waltz on the Library of Congress recording highlighted in the OP
    Lee

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    Default Re: Samuel Seigel

    Does anybody know what Samuel's family background was? I can't find any pocket biographies of him, but I'm intrigued by the fact that his son (Annette's father-in-law) was born in Chicago, but went to university in England, at Cambridge no less, which back then was still very much an upper-crust institution and not a natural choice for a Jewish-American boy. I wonder whether he was able to obtain such a classy education solely on the back of the money Samuel made from his career as a concert mandolinist, or whether the family was independently wealthy. Given that he started out in vaudeville in the 1890s, I presume that he was a self-made man. Not too many rich boys in such a disreputable career as vaudeville performers.
    Sometime ago one of the surviving Siegel's got in touch with me (having orignally gotten in touch with Mark Davis) asking for further information about Samuel Siegel. I put him in touch with Paul Sparks. There is a fair amount of discussion of Siegel in Paul's book as well as a separate stand-alone article in the mandolin quarterly. Some of the back and forth with the relative included further family information -- I'll see if I can find the emails. There was a separate cafe thread about this.

    One of interesting things that I discovered in the course of digging up material to pass along to the relative is that one of Siegel's turn of the century students was African-American, and evidently a virtuoso performer. This increases the number of known African-American classical "golden age" mandolinists from one (Seth Weeks) to two.
    Last edited by MikeEdgerton; May-06-2016 at 9:10pm. Reason: Fixed quote syntax
    Robert A. Margo

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    Mando-Accumulator Jim Garber's Avatar
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    Default Re: Samuel Seigel

    Here is one older thread about Siegel.
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    Default Re: Samuel Seigel

    Annette, my name is David Shiffman, but I was born David Siegel, in London, Oct. 1939. My father was Clarence Isaac Siegel, youngest brother and one-time protege of Samuel. I do NOT remember ever meeting any other member of the Siegel family, but my parents left London in 1940 for Los Angeles. Clarence died in Dec.,1946, when I was 7 and my brother Ed was 21 months. I suppose Samuel would have attended the funeral. I am NOT musical, but Ed always was, and he eventually had the guitar (Washburn) and ukulele. I remember a banjo, but neither a mandolin or violin - but I might have seen a chin cushion, like violinists use. A few years ago, Ed did some ancestry research that you might want to see, so send me a note.

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    Default Re: Samuel Seigel

    Reading back through this great thread tonight I noticed that the link Jim Garber provided to the Whitney Warner Collection of Mandolin and Guitar Music, edited by S. Seigel, is broken. It was correct back in 2012 but I have since moved that page of links to Golden Era collections to a new host.

    The current address is: http://www.mandotopia.com/mandolinPD3.htm

    The Seigel edited collection is still 3rd from the bottom.

    John G.

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    Default Re: Samuel Seigel

    Quote Originally Posted by margora View Post
    "Does anybody know what Samuel's family background was? I can't find any pocket biographies of him, but I'm intrigued by the fact that his son (Annette's father-in-law) was born in Chicago, but went to university in England, at Cambridge no less, which back then was still very much an upper-crust institution and not a natural choice for a Jewish-American boy. I wonder whether he was able to obtain such a classy education solely on the back of the money Samuel made from his career as a concert mandolinist, or whether the family was independently wealthy. Given that he started out in vaudeville in the 1890s, I presume that he was a self-made man. Not too many rich boys in such a disreputable career as vaudeville performers."

    Sometime ago one of the surviving Siegel's got in touch with me (having orignally gotten in touch with Mark Davis) asking for further information about Samuel Siegel. I put him in touch with Paul Sparks. There is a fair amount of discussion of Siegel in Paul's book as well as a separate stand-alone article in the mandolin quarterly. Some of the back and forth with the relative included further family information -- I'll see if I can find the emails. There was a separate cafe thread about this.


    One of interesting things that I discovered in the course of digging up material to pass along to the relative is that one of Siegel's turn of the century students was African-American, and evidently a virtuoso performer. This increases the number of known African-American classical "golden age" mandolinists from one (Seth Weeks) to two.
    My name is David Shiffman, but I was born David Michael Siegel in London, England, October 1939. Clarence Isaac Siegel and my Mother, Jeanette Nina Schremser (Ann Arbor, MI 1908) met and married in England, and returned to USA in mid-1940, before the London Blitz. Clarence was the only other sibling that studied music and performed with Samuel a few times, but did not stay with it, perhaps due to polio. Samuel lived in LA, where we settled. Clarence died when I was 7 and my brother about 21 months. He might have attended the funeral, but I cannot recall meeting any other family member.
    Last edited by MikeEdgerton; May-06-2016 at 9:09pm.

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    Default Re: Samuel Seigel

    I need to correct some earlier errors, and add some more details. Clarence Siegel died on 12/28/1947, when I was 8. He and my Mother had met several years earlier, and they did marry in London, earlier in 1939. He owned and operated Parker-Holladay company (advertising) with offices in Chicago, London, Paris, and Berlin. In 1928, Samuel had ended his touring career and become corporate secretary of the company in London. His son Donald (born 10/26/1912 in Chicago) attended and graduated from Cambridge. He had an uncle - Jack Saper, perhaps a brother of Samuel's wife #2, Anna Saperstein - working for a Hollywood studio that arranged an interview for him at Warner Bros. where he began his long and illustrious Hollywood career. Samuel returned to the USA about the same time, also to California. Samuel died in Los Angeles on January 14, 1948.

    My parents remained in Europe through 1939, the year of their marriage and my birth, and returned to the USA in 1940, also to California. I have no memory whatsoever of meeting ANY member of the Siegel family other than my father, his daughter Anita from his first marriage, and my younger brother Edward. As mentioned above, Samuel worked in my father's business in London for several years after he stopped performing. Samuel died 17 days after Clarence, and I have no memory of him.

    Samuel Siegel was the 4th child (and first son) of David and Rachel Siegel, both from Baden, Germany. Louis was the second son, followed by Ida and finally, my father, Clarence. Clarence was listed in records as a musician, but for only 2 years. He seems to have been very close to Samuel, and certainly learned his own musical skills from his older brother. The entire family seems to have been extremely industrious, and worked at various businesses, together and separately for most of their lives. Samuel married twice, and had 2 children with his second wife, Anna Saperstein of Chicago. A daughter I could not find, and Donald Siegel, who made quite a name for himself in Hollywood.

    Donald Siegel married 3 times. He had a son, Christopher Donald Siegel, but after his mother divorced & remarried, he changed it to Kristoffer Tabori. Don and his second wife adopted 4 children - Nowell Siegel, Anney Mary Margaret Siegel, Katherine Dorothy Salvaderi, and Jack Siegel, then divorced. His third wife was Carol Rydall, who remained with him until his death. If I had done this research a few decades ago, I might have had a chance to meet him, because I lived in Los Angeles until 1962.

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