Dinosaur Discs

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Caught a bit of a research break and managed to make what I think is a pretty good Wikipedia article for George Graham, medicine man. As far as I know, nobody had published his birth & death dates (the research is more difficult with common names), but I think I found our guy - the 1880 census describes his father as a “huckster” (which I think is funny in itself, but matches George Jr.’s patent medicine lifestyle described in other sources), the Alexandria Gazette of 4/19/92 describes recitations by Graham “a former resident of this city” (matching Graham’s VA birthplace in the 1880 census) among a company of Washington-based entertainers, and finally, Jim Walsh describes Graham as having died “by 1908″ in the Jan. 1968 FPRA. I would love to know how he died. I wonder if it’s among Walsh’s letters in the LC. I’ve been working with the Pioneer Recording Artists Facebook group to improve that scene on Wikipedia. Feel free to join the conversation if you’ve got ideas! Oh, p.s., first image here from 6/11/95 Washington Times (via Chronicling America), second from a Berliner Catalog via Ramona Baker (thanks!).

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1925 Montgomery Ward Radio catalog, via the APT Heritage Library on Archive.org. The beginning of the boom.

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A recent upload to the Great 78 Project is a rare Leeds & Catlin label I hadn’t seen. So glad UCSB recently added the Mainspring Press Leeds & Catlin discography (& front matter!) to DAHR.

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Cool! An Allen-Hough Phono-Link is for sale now on Ebay (not mine). The device linked the motive power of an acoustic phonograph with the electrical amplifier and speaker of a radio. At $7.50 it was less than a tenth the price of upgrading to a new Orthophonic Victrola. Third image via Talking Machine World August 1928. 

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Manufacture of Edison “Talking Dolls”, Edison Phonograph Works, early 1890, via Edison Talking Doll Recordings, 1888-1890.

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It’s officially out of my price range, but this neat piece of early recording ephemera popped up on ebay this week, and I’m excited just to see the picture. Owing to the 5¢ price, this is almost surely a program of records available for listening in a phonograph parlor / arcade, not a list of records available for sale, and it looks like they’re sourced from a few different companies. I’m usually skeptical of “early 1890s” claims on ebay (relative to recording), but the “latest hit” qualifiers for “The Cat Came Back” and “Do, Do” have me convinced this was probably from 1893. Cool! Congrats to the lucky collector who lands this one.

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Independent Cylinders in the Belfer Audio Archive

If you’re interested in historical audio there’s a good chance you’ve heard of the Belfer Audio Archive at Syracuse University, or its founder Walter Welch (author of From Tinfoil to Stereo). You may have even heard that its collection of cylinder records is one of the largest in the world. What you probably don’t know, unless you’ve spent a fair bit of time learning to navigate their web catalog, is that some of the Belfer’s brown wax cylinder holdings are the only extant examples of their kind and fill significant gaps in the early history of the recording industry.

The records, from the collections of L. Brevoort Odell and Duane Deakins, include the only known examples by early independent companies such as Leeds & Catlin, the American Phonograph Record Co., the Norcross Phonograph Co., Reed, Dawson & Co., and the Universal Phonograph Co. I had never even heard of the Three Star Record Co. or Pioneer Phonograph Co. but they have some of these too. They also have rare records from J.W. Myers’ Globe Phonograph Company, the Kansas City and Chicago Talking Machine Companies, the North American Phonograph Co., the Consolidated Phonograph Co., and more.

In addition to rare publishers, the archive holds rare records of obscure performers such as Charles A. Asbury, John P. Hogan, the Unique Quartette, the “Big Four” Quartette, W.C. Beckenbaugh, Ruby Brooks, Farmer & Curry, The Lyric Trio, and a bunch I’ve never heard from my favorites - Len and Harry Spencer.

Normally, one would request to hear these by visiting the research center or submitting a duplication request but the collection is currently closed because the Special Collections Research Center (now parent of the Belfer) are preparing to preserve the collection as soon as this year! I don’t know whether the audio will end up in the Belfer Cylinders Digital Collection but I certainly hope so! You can view a spreadsheet of the archive’s full brown wax holdings here - Belfer Audio Archive Brown Wax Cylinders (25kb)

Images via Cylinder Insert Collection, Belfer Books and Scores Collection, Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries.

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Charles A. Asbury: 4 Banjo Songs 1891-1897

Received the new Archeophone set on Charles A. Asbury today and got so excited I made a Wikipedia article. Also realized that of that iconic 1892 Phonogram ad only John C. Leach has no known surviving recordings (Bott/Clarance/Diamond/Hogan/Simonds). Congrats to Archeophone on another indispensable set! P.S. Haul the Woodpile Down is up at UCSB if you’re on the fence.

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Another remarkable phonograph in the Charles Cros Collection. It’s a combination phonograph and phonautograph custom built by Henri Lioret for the University of Paris Institute of Phonetics. It would allow the operator to make a recording on a cylinder and transcribe it to paper upon playback for visual study. It’s essentially the same purpose for which Bell made the ear phonautograph decades earlier. Neat! Browse the collection.

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Gorgeous Pathé recording phonograph in the Charles Cros collection of the French National Library. The wooden derrick behind the phonograph stand is a scaffold for a counterweight to drive the rotation of the cylinder, a system commonly called a “gravity motor” in the U.S. Many American recording companies used the same technology due to its low noise and reliability compared with electric or spring motors. You can also browse the collection.

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August 1893 catalog of the New England Phonograph Company, now on Archive.org. Thanks to John Levin for sending me photocopies of this rare catalog and allowing me to post scans online. The New England Phonograph Company was renowned for its high quality band records recorded by Calvin Child, who would go on to record for the United States Phonograph Company, Berliner, and Victor. I posted several recordings of Baldwin’s Cadet Band - their headliner - to Youtube recently. This catalog explicates something I theorized in my ARSC articles - that the company declined to list vocal selections, at least by performer name, because of the difficulty of reliably providing these records before they could reliably duplicate. Some of these would have been Russell Hunting, Edward M. Favor and Richard Jose. New England continued to sell records after North American shut down, and last advertised in Phonoscope in October 1898.

I also posted a July 1897 Columbia catalog to Archive.org recently. The records are in the Lorenz index but it’s interesting to me to see them presented in context - especially how they bridge the chaotic pre-numbered and orderly disc series.

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Visit Original Link

Found that uploading videos to Youtube isn’t as scary as I though and have built up a nice little channel from old uploads from here. I’d lost many of the original mp3s that I’d posted but I found this handy tutorial to retrieve the files from posts on Tumblr. I’ve continued using Audioship to convert mp3s and jpgs to videos and upload and think now that the speed of this process outweighs the value of picture slideshows, as some channels do.

I’ve started working through the LC brown wax and today found a nice illustration of Carlo Cappa in the NYPL Digital Collections that I think must not have been available when I wrote my NAPCo Locals post on the ARSC Blog and included kind of a crummy little illustration from Google Books (though better mustache!)

I’ve also become somewhat fascinated by three recordings by “Lou Dale” - the announcements and the quality of recording and musicianship suggest to me they’re not home recordings, but he’s also not listed in any of the catalogs I know of. My best guess (as I say in the video descriptions) is that he was either an exhibitor or an independent artist who recorded for exhibitors or coin-ops. Any other ideas or leads?

The Pardon Came Too Late

If You Love Me Darling, Tell Me With Your Eyes

Duffy’s Blunders

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Visit Original Link

One Sweetly Solemn Thought, recorded by Estella Mann for Zonophone Record in 1900. Many thanks to UC Santa Barbara Libraries for the audio. It’s really exciting to hear her voice solo, as she doesn’t really come out enough in the few pre-1900 Lyric Trio recordings online. She really does have a pretty voice. I think some of the uneven-ness is from the recording process. I would love to hear more from her so if you collect early disc records please check whether you have any! 

I do have a transfer of Berliner 3679 “Only Just A Little Yaller Coon” (also thanks to UCSB) but I’m reconsidering how I feel about putting that kind of stuff out there. Just a year or two ago I would have fought that it’s important, historical, etc. etc. - and I’m not saying they should be destroyed or anything - but most of the time when I post things it’s because I find them interesting and enjoyable as well as historical. Like I said I’m considering, not decided, but maybe Youtube isn’t the right venue. Am I overthinking it?

I also uploaded this one to Youtube. I used the Audioship online app, and while I was glad there wasn’t a watermark, I did hope to have the images I uploaded run as a slideshow. Can anyone here recommend an app or software? I do think Youtube is a better option for uploading audio (than Tumblr) in terms of keeping it available, so I may go through and upload some favorites from here there.

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Put together a basic Wiki for George H. Diamond. His 1893 recording of “When Summer Comes Again” for North American is one of my very favorites, and he’s one of those performer’s who I’d most like to see more turn up from. He also recorded for New Jersey and Columbia in 1892 and 1893, and was advertised pretty heavily, but none of the companies had really quite figured out the duplicating process at this point so it’s kind of a miracle we’ve got the one we have. His “There’s a Mother Old and Gray Who Needs Me Now” was also recorded a few times, and I like this 1931 version by the Virginia Dandies on Paramount pretty well.

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First black women recording artists

May C. Hyers was the first black woman on record. She was born May Reynolds in Tioga, Pennsylvania in June 1858. In 1882 she married Sam B. Hyers, father of the famous Hyers Sisters (Anna Madah and Emma Louise) who performed and composed comic operas and with famous minstrel songwriter Sam Lucas. In 1898 May Hyers recorded prolifically for the Kansas City Talking Machine Company. Though sadly none of these recordings are known to survive, a list of her repertoire is preserved in a catalog from that time. According to a family tree on Ancestry.com, Hyers died in Ontario Canada in 1920. Photo from “Noted Negro Women: Their Triumphs and Activities” (higher quality photo without text via NYPL).

As far as I know, the next earliest black woman recording artist, who does have a few surviving recordings, was Belle Davis. Davis was born in New Orleans in 1873 or 1874. By 1891 she was a member of Sam T. Jack’s Creole Show in New York, and in 1895 was a founding member of John Isham’s Octaroons. In 1901, Davis travelled to Europe where she would spend most of her career. In 1902, Davis began recording for the Gramophone Co. of England as “Miss Belle Davis and Pickaninnies” (sometimes “and her...”). She even recorded two short films of this performance for Pathé in 1907. Davis returned to the U.S. in 1919. Info via ARSC Journal, images via NYPL 1 / 2.

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Got lucky and found another image of Estella Mann in sheet music for “After A While” on Ebay.

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Countertenor Richard Jose, from sheet music for Paul Dresser’s “The Blue and the Gray” via NYPL.