The Manhansett Quartet or Quartette, or Manhasset Quartet, was an American

vocal group A vocal group is a performing ensemble of vocalists who sing and harmonize together. The first well-known vocals groups emerged in the 19th century, and the style had reached widespread popularity by the 1940s. Types Vocal groups can come in se ...

. It was the first such group to make commercial recordings in its own name, between about 1891 and 1901. The group formed in the

Bowery The Bowery () is a street and neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in New York City. The street runs from Chatham Square at Park Row, Worth Street, and Mott Street in the south to Cooper Square at 4th Street in the north.Jackson, Kenneth L. "B ...

area of

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

, and originally comprised

George J. Gaskin George J. Gaskin (February 1863 – December 14, 1920) was one of the most popular singers in the United States during the 1890s and an early American recording artist. Biography Gaskin was born in Belfast, Ireland, but migrated to the United Sta ...

, Gilbert Girard, Joe Riley, and a fourth member remembered only as Evans.

Tenor A tenor is a type of classical music, classical male singing human voice, voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. The tenor's vocal range extends up to C5. The lo ...

singer

John Bieling John H. Bieling (March 15, 1869 – March 30, 1948) was an American tenor singer who was a pioneer recording artist in the early years of the twentieth century. He featured on thousands of recordings, especially as a member of The Haydn Quarte ...

became a member in 1894. The group made its first

cylinder recording Phonograph cylinders are the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity (c. 1896–1916), these hollow cylindrical objects have an audio recording engr ...

s in 1891 for the United States Phonograph Company in

Newark, New Jersey Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area.Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These invention ...

and Columbia. According to

Joel Whitburn Joel Carver Whitburn (November 29, 1939 – June 14, 2022) was an American author and music historian, responsible for setting up the Record Research, Inc. series of books on record chart placings. Early life Joel Carver Whitburn was born in Wau ...

, the quartet's most commercially successful recordings included "The Picture Turned Towards The Wall" and "Sally In Our Alley" (both 1891), and "The Old Oaken Bucket" (1894). The group dissolved about 1901, by which time Gaskin already had a well-established career as one of the era's leading recording artists, and Bieling had become a member of the Haydn Quartet.Vocal Hall of Fame: The American Quartet
. Retrieved 22 May 2013 Gilbert Girard also continued a successful recording and performing career, especially in a duo with

Len Spencer Leonard Garfield Spencer (February 12, 1867 – December 15, 1914) was an early American recording artist. He began recording for the Columbia Phonograph Company, in 1889 or 1890. Between 1892 and 1897 he recorded extensively for the New Jersey Ph ...

in which Girard used his talents for mimicking animal and bird sounds. Randy McNutt, ''Cal Stewart, Your Uncle Josh: America's King of Rural Comedy'', iUniverse, 2011, p.133
/ref>

References

Vocal quartets Pioneer recording artists {{US-singing-group-stub