Sun, 2 December 2018
Press Eldridge - a Confidential Chat 0:00 |
Sun, 4 November 2018
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Sun, 4 November 2018
Columbia Double - Disc Demo Record (Excerpt 1) 0:00 Orchestra Goldberg - Kleftico Vlachiko 0:12 Columbia Double - Disc Demo Record (Excerpt 2) 2:17 Zon-O-Phone Concert Band - The Smiler 2:50 Unknown - Sunderland Home Cylinder 34 5:15 Vess L. Ossman - Smiler Rag 5:23 Murray K. Hill - A Bunch Of Nonsense 7:25 Ada Jones & Billy Murray - Shine On, Harvest Moon 7:42 Ada Jones & Len Spencer - Henry & Hilda At The Schuetzenfest 9:46 Billy Murray & Ada Jones - Cohan's Pet Names 10:16 Len Spencer and Billy Murray - The liars 12:53 James Lent - The Ragtime Drummer 13:04 Thomas A. Edison - Electricity and progress 14:33 A. T. Berlyavsky - A Quiet Corner 14:51 Emile Berliner - An Address At Atlantic City 15:46 Indestructible Concert Band - Torch Dance 16:10 William Jennings Bryan - An Ideal Republic 17:32 Edison Concert Band - Pure As Snow 18:16 Taft & Bryan - Foreign Policy Debate 19:44 4 Flutes And Vocal - Music For The Lela Celebration 21:52 Taft & Bryan - Economic Debate 22:14 London Palace Orchestra - The Silken Ladder - Overture 24:43 Taft & Bryan - Labour Debate 25:38 Venetian Instrumental Trio - Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still 26:33 Joseph Taylor - Sprig O' Thyme 27:32 Harry Lauder - Hey, Donal! 28:18 Harry Lauder - The Wedding O' Sandy Macnab 29:31 Murray K. Hill - Grandma's Mustard Plaster 31:39 Marie Lloyd - Little Of What You Fancy Does You Good 32:19 Winifred Hare and Percy Clifton - The Plumber 33:43 George Formby Sr - John Willie Come On 35:23 Wilkie Bard - Sea Shells 36:23 Vesta Tilley - Following A Fellow With A Face Like Me 36:47 Steve Porter - He And She In Vaudeville 37:50 New York Military Band - I'm Afraid To Come Home In The Dark 38:28 Billy Murray - I'm Afraid To Come Home In The Dark 39:37 Billy Murray & Byron G Harlan & Steve Porter - Village Constable 40:51 Edward Meeker - Take Me Out To The Ball Game 41:24 Hadyn Quartet - Take Me Out to the Ball Game 42:20 Len Spencer & Gilbert Girard - Sheriff's Sale Of A Stranded Circus 42:49 Arthur Collins - Rag Babe 43:18 Cal Stewart - Uncle Josh Keeps House 44:22 Indestructible Military Band - Eppler's whiskers 44:53 Elk's Minstrel Co. - Elks minstrels 45:39 Len Spencer and Mozarto - Krausmeyer's birthday party 46:08 Edison Symphony Orchestra - Suwannee River with orchestra variations 47:04 American Symphony Orchestra - By The Suwanee River 48:52 Ada Jones & Len Spencer - Jimmie And Maggie At The Merry Widow 49:41 Arthur Pryor's Band - Georgia Sunset 49:56 Cocadorus - Postpapier 52:25 Bérard - Le retour au pays 52:37 Fréjol - Le Marin Marseillais 53:42 Grupo K. Larangeira - Só para moer 54:22 Grupo Bahianinho - Destemido 56:09 Samuel Siegel and William Smith - Castilian echoes 57:16 Banda de Policía - La Tirolesa 59:25 William Moriarity - Ain't Dat a Shame Medley 1:00:34 Dmitry Bogemsky, acc. orchestra - Wedding in the Galley Harbor 1:01:28 Ignacy Podgorski & Jego Nadzwyczajna Orkiestra - Wesola Mania (Happy Mary-Polka) 1:01:46 Ignacy Podgorski & Jego Nadzwyczajna Orkiestra - Skowrenek-Oberek (Lark Oberek) 1:03:26 V.S.Varshavsky's 'Harmony' Orchestra - Jewish Revival, March 1:04:46 Varya Panina - I Long For Gaiety 1:05:13 Moscow Chudkovsky Choir - He That Dwelleth in the Secret Place 1:05:57 Aurelia Volskaya & Zinaida Ratmirova - Cradle Song 1:06:40 Emilio De Gogorza - O Sole Mio 1:07:58 Enrico Caruso - Lolita (Buzzi-Peccia) 1:09:42 Komitas Vardapet - Gutan Yerg 1:11:16 Brahma Sri T. Appadurai Aiyengar - Jalatharangam Instrumental 1:12:16 Gopal Chunder Singh Roy - Burdwan Dist. Beggar's Song 1:13:22 Nagaraja Rao - Rag Hamsadhwani 1:13:40 Miss Mankoo - Maro Joban Bito Jaya 1:14:22 Danakoti And Sister - Nadanamakriya-Eka 1:15:08 Booker T. Washington - Atlanta Exposition Speech 1:15:48 William Craig - Lady Binnie and shores of Lake Erie 1:16:16 Unknown - Sunderland Home Cylinder 16 1:18:10 Charles D'almaine - Violin Solo, Jigs and Reels 1:18:16 Buglers of the New York Military Band - U.S. Army bugle calls 1:18:43 Edison Military Band - Whistle 1:19:08 Billy Murray & Steve Porter - Laughing Spectator 1:20:16 John J. Kimmel - American Polka 1:21:00 Murray K. Hill - Stranded Minstrel Man 1:21:46 Chris Chapman - Dill Pickles Rag 1:23:09 Vess L. Ossman - Fun In A Barber Shop 1:24:25 Steve Porter with Edward Meeker - Sidewalk Conversation 1:25:40 Arthur Collins & Byron G. Harlan - My Gal Irene Indestructable 1:26:36 Billy Whitlock - Billy Whitlock's Christmas Waits 1:28:50 Indestructible Military Band - In Darkest Africa 1:29:03
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Thu, 4 October 2018
Enrico Caruso - Vesti La Giubba (I Pagliacci) 00:00 |
Thu, 6 September 2018
Williams & Walker are a great deal to blame for being the originators and establishing the name “coon” upon our race. They met a white man in San Francisco by the name of McConnell, who put them on the circuit. In order to achieve success and to attract the attention of the public they branded themselves as “the two real coons.” Their names, accompanied with “coon” songs, were soon heralded North, East, South and West…. Williams & Walker and Ernest Hogan were not old enough then to know the harm they had brought on the whole race. They needed the money, what little they received, and the white people needed the laugh [and made the money]. Colored men in general took no offense at the proceedings and laughed as heartily on hearing a “coon” song as the whites. But where the rub came is when the colored was called a “coon” outside of the [theater]. “Coon Songs Must Go,” Editorial in "Freeman", Jan. 2, 1909 Before I got through with 'Nobody', I could have wished that both the author of the words and the assembler of the tune had been strangled or drowned... 'Nobody' was a particularly hard song to replace. Bert Williams It's a tough gig to be the bridge to a much-needed change. The old guard will consider you a heretic, the next generation will view you as a link to an embarrassing past. Bert Williams is not only the first black star of the 20th century, he stands alone in the world of 1900s popular music, a figure to define the decade as much as Caruso. These days perhaps that's all the attention he gets - a paragraph in black histories, vaudeville histories, cultural histories of the progressive era, a footnote in histories of ragtime and jazz. But, here's the thing, his music is still with us! This mix features his signature piece, 'Nobody', a brilliant piece of work which showcases his dry wit, laconic delivery and universally-relatable humanity in an era of grotesque, lazy stereotypes. He would go on to make several other recordings of the song, but none would capture its essence quite as well. The mix also features two other Bert Williams songs - Pretty Desdemona, performed with backing from his stage parter George Walker, and He's a Cousin of Mine, written by Chris Smith and performed here by Bob Roberts, but made famous by Williams. We also have the final recording from the last generation's great black singer, George W Johnson. The other great pioneering black musician of the era was, of course, Scott Joplin, whose music has lasted a great deal better than Williams', even if not in the form it would have been heard in at the time. Joplin was more well-known as a writer than a performer, so we have no recordings of him playing, but his 'Maple Leaf Rag' was already selling enough copies to guarantee him an income for the rest of his short life. Though it was composed initially for the piano, it was a popular piece with both upworld brass bands and underworld dance bands, the like of which we will later hear mutating into early jazz. Here it's performed in a surprisingly swinging fashion (that is, perhaps 2% swinging) by Sousa's United States Marine Band. 1906 was also an important year for the way music was consumed. For the last decade both cylinders and disc records had been played on devices with large external horns. These worked well enough, but were large and ungainly, the focus of a parlour whether in use or not, and liable to be damaged by minor knocks. Victor, by now a major player on the scene, introduced a new phonograph named the "Victrola" which folded the horn down into the base of a large, luxurious cabinet designed by the Pooley Furniture Company of Philadelphia. Though the victrola was very expensive - more than double the price of other gramophones - it was an immediate success, and would be the standard design for the next couple of decades. In a sense it's a minor change, but it turned the gramophone from a novelty into a standard piece of household equipment, a democratisation which would broaden the audience enough to mean that recorded music was no longer the preserve of dedicated enthusiasts. Tracklist Herr Dr. Professor & George Donahue - Bringing In 1906 0:00 |
Fri, 10 August 2018
When we imagine the future, we often imagine new technologies, but we rarely take the time to consider how those technologies will change how we live our lives, or how we see the world. When the internet started becoming popular towards the end of the 1990s, who could have ever predicted what it would do to us in the next couple of decades. It turns out that connecting people in more and more effective ways didn't lead to a paradise of self-awareness, empathy and knowledge, but did lead to content bubbles, anonymous trolling, the devaluing of not just journalism but truth itself. Once created, a technology does not merely slip out of our control; it feeds back round into our souls. And the phonograph is no exception. No sooner had it begun to record than it began to influence, and then to homogenise. As much as the railway led to a unification of time zones and a dampening of regional accents, the phonograph turned an infinitely complex musical world into one where artists operated within genres, were influenced on micro and macro levels by famous recording artists, then reflected back these influences as they developed into the next generation of artists. Soon we will see genres springing up - not just in America, but around the world - with astonishing rapidity. We are too late to witness the first examples of this in the USA, and the pig-headed refusal to seek talent outside of a small group of professional recording artists doesn't help matters at all. Around the world, on the other hand, academics and musicans with an interest in exploration were beginning to travel around with portable phonographs, recording in hard-to-reach places with incredibly rich musical traditions, before any of the artists involved had a chance to be affected by this turbo-charged system of influence. 1905 saw the appointment of Erich Moritz von Horn-bostel as director of the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv, the world's first collection of ethnomusicological recordings. Professor Felix von Luschan was one of the first to take a phonograph with him on an expedition - to Sendshirli in present-day Turkey. Other members of the archive travelled to Turkestan, Mexico, Cameroon, Melanesia and many other places, armed only with a phonograph and a box of blank wax cylinders. These recordings then formed the basis of the new fields of comparative musicology and ethnomusicology. I can tell you very little as to what these researchers thought of the music they collected - how they understood it, whether they thought it somehow inferior to the western musical tradition. All I can say is that they seem to have acted in a more scientific manner than had previously been seen, collecting music as they found it rather than in a contrived way for a pre-concieved record-buying audience. As such, the recordings are nothing short of revelatory, "world music" as we will never be able to hear it again. This month's mix is then a bit different from previous mixes. We start in the USA and finish there, but in the middle we spend the majority of our time traveling to a huge variety of different places, some of them with music which I hope you find as eye-opening as I do. Tracks Russell Hunting - Casey Listening To The Phonograph 0:00
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Sun, 1 July 2018
Edison Modern Minstrels - Louisiana Minstrels 0:00 |
Sun, 3 June 2018
Bohumir Kryl - Arbucklenian Polka 0:00 |
Sun, 6 May 2018
Charles D' Almaine - Down At Finnegan's Jamboree (Excerpt 1) 0:00 |
Sun, 1 April 2018
Arthur Pryor with Sousa's Band - The Patriot 0:00 |
Sun, 4 March 2018
Emperor Franz Joseph - Oldest Magnetic Recording On Poulsen 0:00 |
Mon, 5 February 2018
Len Spencer - Promotional Message On The Edison Phonograph (Extract 1) 0:00 |
Mon, 8 January 2018
A. L. Sweet - Bugle Call |