The Golden Melody Boys

Also known as "Demps and Phil",  Dempsy Jones (vocal and tiple )  and Phil Featherstonhaugh or Featherstonehaugh or Featherstone (mandolin) was an Iowa country duet of the 20's.
As told by Tony Russell in "Country Music Originals: The Legends and the Lost" Dempsy Jones was a baseball player and lately manager and the Linn County Recorder, Featherstonehaugh "didn't have much a profession" and was run in for transporting liquor in an automobile and fined 300$ in 1925 but he was a fine mandolin player.
The duet was locally successful around 1925 and recorded for paramount in Chicago during1927.
Fans could follow them on stage and on local radio shows to hear an old time repertoire with comedy tunes and a few instrumentals with "modern" chords & strums ornamentation and nice melodies .







A description of their string complementarity by Tony Russell :

5 tunes could be find on the Davey O'Hoolahan blog with this vinyl compilation , but the blog description is wrong when speaking about a guitar mandolin duet ( except for guitar rag for my opinion)

The complete Paramount recordings can be found in this tremendous 600 mp3 20's/30's old time music compilation for 10$ (J15108 Parker and Woolbright - Golden Melody Boys)

"Down in Arkansas" :


"Freak Melody" :


"Sabula Blues" :

The Ukulele Occasional #1

You can find in this 2002 first issue of the magnificant ukulele devoted magazine a very complete article about the tiple, Michael Simmons wrote  it, former staffer at Gryphon Stringed Instruments he contributed to Acoustic Guitar magazine, Fretboard Journal and others specialised publications.
He goes deep in the instrument history back in the 1500's in South America and scrolls along the complicated familiy tree on the continent and west indies to the north american 20's Martin rebirth with the "my dog has fleas" similar tuning.
Complete information can be found about the company models and fabrication boards, and of course the Regal, Lyon & Healy and other brands models.

A wide chronologic panorama of tiple players is presented with of course the swing era groups but also a lot of players from the 20's to 90's decades, obscure or not.
Here are some of the name droped that could be focused on in future pages...






20's-40's :
Dr Humphrey Bate and the Possum Hunters
Nortfolk Jazz Quartet "novelty singing with Tiple" Decca rec label
Wendell Hall
Dempsey and Phil Jones (the Golden Melody Boys)
Jimmy Chu
The Lewis Bronzeville five

60's-90's :
Osborne Brothers (bluegrass tiple)
Highwaymen  
Andrew Hardin Tom Russell
Grady Nutt
Tonny Cuff
Ry Cooder
Phil Manzanera
Mark Orton Tin Hat Trio
Nick Didkovsky
Eugene Chadbourne

Ukulele Occasional #1  for sale at Elderly

present & future quotes of the article
Courtesy of "Michael Simmons"