From Lake Placid bell hop to bass virtuoso

“A voice of exceeding promise,” touted the San Francisco Chronicle on April 11, 1921, writing about bass soloist Charles Carver, when he toured with Metropolitan Opera contralto star Margaret Matzenauer and pianist Frank La Forge.

“He will go far,” the San Francisco Examiner predicted of Carver, a rising music star from Brooklyn who paid for college and music lessons by working summers as a bell hop at the Lake Placid Club in the Adirondacks.

“Mr. Carver stands six feet, four inches tall and is making rapid growth in concert artistry,” the Portland Oregonian reported on April 14, 1921.

These are among excerpts of 17 West Coast newspaper reviews about Carver quoted from in a May 28, 1921 Pacific Coast Musical Review article about “the extraordinary bass soloist.”

Later in 1921, Carver and La Forge, Carver’s music teacher, performed a matinee afternoon concert Aug. 3 at “Woodhome,” the Lake George summer home of Mr. and Mrs. H.W. Guernsey.

The Post-Star called Carver “a splendid example of the American-trained artist.”

Carver also studied, for a time with Madame Marcella Sembrich, the Ticonderoga Sentinel noted on Jan. 8, 1920, reporting on Carver’s Jan. 2 debut at the 1,100-seat Aeolian Hall in New York City.

Lake Placid music critics recognized Carver’s talent much earlier, when he sang Sept. 10, 1916 at Adirondack Baptist Church in Lake Placid, just before Carver began his first semester as a student at Cornell University.

“Mr. Carver has a marvelously rich voice,” The Lake Placid News reported. “There’s a fortune in it, but Mr.Carver chooses the broad general foundation for manhood of a full university course before specializing in music.”