The 1926 might have marked a high point in the early life of the San Francisco Community Music Center (then called the Community Music School). One of their notable successes was their string quartet. The San Francisco Examiner's esteemed music critic Redfern Mason wrote an May 16, 1926 article that brings to life this photograph from the Library's Historical Photograph Collection.
On Saturday afternoon of Music Week I heard four young people--children, most of them--play a Mozart string quartet. A week earlier I had listened to them at Santa Monica, when they played for the California Federation of Musical Clubs. They were Jeanette Davis, Preston Hartman, Alfred Bousquet and Emmet Peterson, and they played with such aplomb and put so much joy and beauty into their work that it was a privilege to be there to hear them.
It was no parading of geniuses; there was not a Wunderkind among them. What we saw and heard was much more encouraging to ordinary mortality than that. We sat in our places and, one after the other, little lads and lasses came and played the piano and fiddle--played with manifest pleasure, as if something had come into their lives which lent the moments gladness and took the dullness out of the daily round.Mason gives names to the members of the string quartet - Jeanette Davis playing first violin, Alfred Bousquet playing second violin, Preston Hartman playing viola, and Emmet Peterson playing 'cello.
The youngest person in the photograph was Jeanette B. Davis.
source: The Violinist (May 1918)
According to earlier newspaper coverage, Jeanette Davis began playing violin at age 5. After studying for only 5 months she was featured at a concert of the Greater San Francisco Conservatory of Music directed by Sigmund Anker. (Anker was Yehudi Menuhin's first teacher). At age 6 she performed at 1920 concert fundraiser for a Jewish temple to be built in the Western Addition. Later that year she performed at a Christmas program at the YMCA on Golden Gate Avenue.
She was featured in a 1924 article in the San Francisco Examiner where she described meeting and playing for virtuoso violinist Jascha Heifetz who told her that she would be "one of the great ones." The article noted that she was the first violinist in her orchestra at John Swett Junior High School. She also told the reporter that in addition to playing violin she liked raw carrots and outdoor sports.
She later graduated from Galileo High School in 1931.
Source: The Telescope, Galileo High School (Spring 1931).
That same year she was feted by the San Francisco Symphony for an essay she wrote about music for the San Francisco Young People's Symphony.
Little is known of Jeanette Davis's later music making. The 1924 article tells us that her mother was Emma Davis. A search in the Ancestry database revealed that her maiden name was Emma O. Hedberg. The 1930 census shows her working as a hairdresser and living in Daly City with Jeanette. During the mid-1930s she had a hair-dressing salon in the Outer Richmond. The same City Directory shows Jeanette living with her and working as a stenographer. By 1940, a sexagenarian Emma Davis was working as a housekeeper on Nob Hill with Jeanette living nearby. Mother and daughter lived together or as neighbors through the end of the 1950s.
Ancestry.com provides the following information about Jeanette Betty Davis recorded by the Social Security Administration:
| Birth Date: | 25 Jan 1915 |
|---|---|
| Birth Place: | San Francisco [San Francisco, California] |
| Death Date: | 23 Apr 2004 |
| Father: | Joseph Davis |
| Mother: | Emma O Hedberg |
After 1931, Jeanette Davis largely disappeared from visible concert life. There is only an announcement for a November 25, 1941 concert of the Chamber Orchestra of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. At this program Marcia Van Dyke (a future member of the San Francisco Symphony and a minor Hollywood star) and a Jeanette Davis played the solo parts the Bach Concerto for Two Violins.
Yet she must have kept up her violin playing. In the 1948-1949 Polk's Crocker-Langley San Francisco City Directory has an entry for Jeanette Davis and shows her working as a musician. In the 1961 and 1962 directories her profession is recorded as "music teacher." Around the time her last name changed to Van Oss in 1965 her name stopped appearing in the San Francisco directories.
Jeanette B. Davis never lived up to Jascha Heifitz's prediction. It seems that she had a rather difficult life and lived much of her life close to her widowed mother. But there is evidence that although she did not achieve a name for herself in music, music remained a part of her life and that she profited from it at times. And hopefully music was a "manifest pleasure" for her as it was when she was a young musician.
In the next entry we will see what became of the other Community Music School String Quartet members.
"Anker String Orchestra Concert," Pacific Coast Musical Review vol. 34, no. 1 (April 6, 1918), 4.
"Community Chest Music Work: Music Talk to Chest Kiddies," San Francisco Chronicle (January 3, 1926).
Ennis, Helen Lewis, "Great Future Expected for 11-Year Old Local Violinist," San Francisco Examiner (February 6, 1924).
"Essay Prize Winners Take Bow at Final Concert by Symphony," San Francisco Chronicle (January 31, 1931).
Mason, Redfern, "The Community Music School Brings Beauty Into Young Life and Helps the Old," San Francisco Examiner May 16, 1926.
"Plans for Jewish Temple To Be Built Here," San Francisco Chronicle (March 18, 1920).
The Telescope (Galileo High School, Spring 1931).
"Thanksgiving Concert To Be Given In San Francisco," Berkeley Daily Gazette (November 19, 1941).
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