Dan T. Craine

Buffalo's Impresario of Feathered Song Stars

Dan T. Craine was quite a remarkable man.  He achieved the highest order in the Masonic organization as a 33rd degree mason.  The newly married railroad man brought his wife Florence Elbertine Blackley and daughters Marge and Dorothy to the booming city of Buffalo from neighboring Lockport where the ticket agent was part of the grand opening of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Terminal February 1, 1917. 

My mother adored her father but didn't speak often of him, it was a painful memory to lose the dad she so dearly loved when she was only 13 in 1929.  Mom was still coping with the loss of her mother 4 years earlier in 1925.  It was only recently I discovered through old newspapers online at the Fulton History website that his hobby was more than just a casual thing, for at the time of his passing he had 400 songbirds in the attic of his Voorhees Avenue home.  He and his feathered troupe performed on radio at WGR in the 1920's. 

Restaurants, department stores, and banks all through downtown Buffalo had Dan's trained songbirds which the patrons and employees all enjoyed.  Long before background music or Musak came along Dan T. Craine provided his own special entertainment for the people of Buffalo all through the 20's.  

Many thanks to http://www.fultonhistory.com/

From The Buffalo Morning Express: Friday May 16, 1924

CANARY GRAND

OPERA TROUPE

GIVES PREMIERE

Dan Craine, impresario of feathered

song stars, will entertain

Mercerites

Out In Voorhees avenue there's a man who holds the unusual job of bird Impresario. Dan T. Craine has for years had a hobby for songbirds, and now conducts in a third story room of his home, a combination opera house and singing school.  Here a dozen or more canaries, yellow and marble feathered, some of the Seifert roller and others of the Quedlenberg songster varieties, the latter with a wild sweet note like a nightingale's, are housed each in its own cage, and are given painstaking care. No prima donna or chesty tenor was ever more faithfully tended and trained than have been this aviary troupe, the older birds being drilled to teach the younger ones just the right notes and how to deliver them with the most artistic effect.  Temperamental complexes are sometimes manifest and discord—or worse still, silence—sometimes, for a brief span, reigns.  But both Mr. and Mrs. Craine have so strong a personal influence over their little charges that such outbursts are few and far between. Now that the troupe has reached real concert pitch, groups of three or four are beginning to appear in public recital. One pair are installed in a downtown cafeteria for the delectation of the rush hour luncheoners, and at the dinner given at the Central Park Methodist Episcopal church for Bishop Burt a short time ago, others won much applause for their delightfully rendered program.  At the Mercer club luncheon next Tuesday a canary quartette from the Craine company will entertain with classic selections interspersed with the latest bird Jazz.