Columbia 27079-F
Here is an excerpt from an article written by Richard Spottswood on Pawlo from http://www.mustrad.org.uk/
"It is not difficult to think of Pawlo Humeniuk as a major fiddler of his time - a man whose recorded accomplishments were on a par with those of Eck Robertson, Clark Kessinger and Pappy McMichen - even if they were as ignorant of him as he undoubtedly was of them. But he shares with them an important legacy of recordings, and most of them bear witness to the depth and broad scope of his work.
Though he lived a full eighty years, biographical details are few. An undated obituary in the Ukrainian-language newspaper Svoboda of Jersey City, NJ, gives the place of his birth as Pidvolochyska, a village in Western Ukraine. Photo courtesy Library of CongressHe died on 24 January 1965, and we may infer from his age that he was born in 1884. He arrived in the United States around 1902, according to another brief article, which also states that he studied privately in New York with a Professor Makhnovetsky, a graduate of the St Petersburg Conservatory. 'Pawlo Humeniuk', unsigned article in Anniversary Almanac of the Surma Bookstore (NY: Surma Book and Music Co, 1945).1 A statement that he founded an ensemble which was popular at weddings and concerts is probably true only in part. The shifting instrumentation suggests that he worked both record dates and social functions with musicians available at the moment, rather than maintaining a single group. Myron Surmach remembers that Humeniuk was a skilled instrument maker and repairer, and an early undated catalogue of violins from the Homenick Brothers Violin Shop (printed bilingually in Ukrainian and Polish) bears this out.
Myron Surmach himself is a figure of interest and importance in the history of Ukrainian music in America. His story is documented at length (albeit in Ukrainian only) in his autobiography, History of my Surma Bookstore. NY: Surma; 1982.2 Born in Galicia in 1893, Surmach followed an older brother to America in 1910, joining him in the anthracite mines in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. Soon he graduated to work in a carriage shop, earning extra income by selling Ukrainian prayer books and calendars door to door. His success emboldened him to move to New York City, where he opened a bookstore on East Seventh Street in 1916. Over the years he became increasingly involved with publishing, wholesaling and retailing sheet music and, by 1920, becoming involved in record retailing as well. As his business grew, he developed friendships with record company executives and eventually music on Ukrainian-American recordings became a strong reflection of Myron Surmach's judgements of his community's musical tastes. At first the records were relatively formal performances of standard popular material and folksongs, usually sung by trained voices with studio orchestras. The records were not a reflection of the tastes of the real villagers of Surmach's generation who treasured their old world traditions, ceremonies and music, even as they were making radical adjustments to New World conditions.
Surmach and Humeniuk met in the early twenties. One day in 1925 they were informally visiting in the bookshop when a representative from Okeh Records came in. The company had been trying without notable success to activate a line of Ukrainian discs, drawn from Odeon masters produced in Europe. There was no village music on these records and the man said that he would like to record musicians who could play it. Surmach introduced Humeniuk to Okeh on the spot; Okeh followed up by scheduling a session on December 3. The energetic quartet Humeniuk assembled turned in a pair of kolomyikas and two kozachoks. All four were also released as horas in Okeh's Romanian series (as the Orchestra Nationala Din Sibiu), reflecting a practice of recycling instrumental music from one ethnic series to another prevalent among all major companies at the time."
[ FULL ARTICLE: http://www.mustrad.org.uk/articles/hu... ]
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