Leonard Garfield Spencer (February 12, 1867 – December 15, 1914) was an early American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 recording artist. He recorded numerous popular songs in the pre-1920s, the most popular of which was "Arkansaw Traveler

The Arkansas Traveler (song)

"The Arkansas Traveler" was the state song of Arkansas from 1949 to 1963; it has been the state historical song since 1987. The music was composed in the 19th century by Colonel Sanford C...

" (sic) (1902). The song is an early novelty record and consists of a back-and-forth banter with an Arkansas

Arkansas

Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...

 local who is playing a fiddle

Fiddle

The term fiddle may refer to any bowed string musical instrument, most often the violin. It is also a colloquial term for the instrument used by players in all genres, including classical music...

. Examples from the conversation include asking "How far is it to the next crossroads?", to which the answer is given, "You just follow your nose and you’ll come to it." One man asks, "How long have you lived here?" The answer, "See that mule? It was here when I got here." In another, a man asks another why he doesn’t fix the leak in his roof, to which the man replies that it’s been raining. The first man then asks him why he doesn’t fix it when it isn’t leaking. The answer is that doesn’t leak when it doesn’t rain. The song ends with the first man completing the fiddle tune for the Arkansan.

Some of his most popular recordings include:

• "Ta-Ra-Ra-Boom Der E
  Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay
  "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay" is a vaudeville and music hall song, copyrighted by Henry J. Sayers, and introduced in Boston, Massachusetts in Tuxedo in 1891. The song was best known in the version sung by Lottie Collins in London music halls in 1892....
  
  " (1892)
• "The Old Folks at Home" (1892)
• "Little Alabama Coon" (1895)
• "Dat New Bully" (1895)
• "A Hot Time in the Old Town" (1897)
• "Hello! Ma Baby" (1899)
• "Ma Tiger Lily" (1900)
• "Arkansaw Traveler" (1902)

External links

• Len Spencer cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project
  Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project
  The Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project is a free digital collection maintained by the University of California, Santa Barbara Libraries with streaming and downloadable versions of over 10,000 phonograph cylinders manufactured between 1893 and the mid 1920s.- History :The project began...
  
   at the University of California, Santa Barbara
  University of California, Santa Barbara
  The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...
  
   Library.
• Discography of Len Spencer on Victor Records
  Victor Talking Machine Company
  The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American corporation, the leading American producer of phonographs and phonograph records and one of the leading phonograph companies in the world at the time. It was headquartered in Camden, New Jersey....
  
   from the Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings (EDVR)
• http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Len+Spencer%22 Len Spencer's works at Archive.org