Steve Porter (singer)

Stephen Carl "Steve" Porter (1864 – January 13, 1946) was an American pioneer recording artist, who recorded prolifically for numerous recording companies in the 1890s and early 1900s. He was also an entrepreneur who helped establish the recording industry in India in the early years of the twentieth century, and successfully marketed a new form of hearing aid.

He was born in New York City. In the 1880s and 1890s he performed as a baritone singer in vaudeville, as a member of the Diamond Comedy Four with Albert Campbell, Jim Reynard, and Billy Jones, who worked as song pluggers in "Tin Pan Alley" for the music publishers Joe Stern and Edward B. Marks. He began recording for Berliner Records and Columbia Records by 1898, when his version of "On The Banks Of The Wabash" was a commercial success. He recorded primarily for Columbia over the next few years, with his most successful recordings including "She Was More To Be Pitied Than Censured" (1898), "A Picture No Artist Can Paint" (1899), "A Bird in a Gilded Cage" (1900), and "The Little Brown Jug" (1900).

In 1901, after an attempt to set up a motion picture company with fellow recording artist Russell Hunting failed, Porter established the American Phonograph Record Company of Brooklyn, with William F. Hooley and Samuel H. Rous of The Haydn Quartet as co-directors. However, this again failed, and in 1902 Porter sailed to London, where he recorded for Waterfield, Clifford & Company before joining the Nicole Record Co.. He worked there both as a recording engineer and as a performer, recording comic tunes, ballads and old standards, before sailing to India with John Watson Hawd to set up a recording business for Nicole Frères in Calcutta. Porter then traveled around India and Burma, finding musicians to be recorded in Nicole's Calcutta studio. He finally returned to the US in 1905.

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