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Posted by: Bryan Cornell
Today’s post is by David Sager, Research Assistant in the Recorded Sound Research Center This blog relies on recordings from the Library of Congress’s National Jukebox, a resource with over 10,000 early recordings which is well worth exploring. You can also hear thousands more rare recordings, including radio broadcasts from the 1930s, 40s, and 50s …
Posted in: Early Recording Industry, Jukebox, Recorded Sound, Uncategorized
Posted by: Bryan Cornell
Today’s guest post was written by David Sager, Reference Assistant in the Recorded Sound Section, Library of Congress. In recognition of the harvest moon today, this blog entry is dedicated to one of the most popular and enduring songs of the early 20th century and a lamented lost recording of that era. Back during the …
Posted in: Early Recording Industry, Jukebox, Musical Theater, Recorded Sound, Vaudeville
Posted by: Bryan Cornell
Today's post is by David Sager, Reference Assistant in the Recorded Sound Section, Library of Congress. A momentous happening occurred on February 26, 1917 at the Victor Talking Machine Company, although no one quite suspected so at the time. Among the artists to be recorded that day—consisting of operatic baritone Reinald Werrenrath and tenor Lambert …
Posted in: Early Recording Industry, Jazz, Jukebox, Uncategorized
Posted by: Bryan Cornell
Today’s entry is a guest post by Jan McKee, Reference Librarian, Recorded Sound Research Center. I have always wondered about the Edison tone tests. Is it really possible that an audience could not tell the difference between an Edison Diamond Disc being played on a phonograph and the live performer singing while standing next to …
Posted in: Advertising, Early Recording Industry, Recorded Sound, Uncategorized
Posted by: Bryan Cornell
Folklorist Norm Cohen has astutely observed that “[f]olklore thrives where danger threatens” (The Long Steel Rail, cited below, p. 169). The annals of commercially recorded traditional and popular song provide abundant support for this conclusion. In fact, by the early twentieth century — especially the decades of the teens and twenties — nearly every imaginable disaster or mishap was memorialized in song. Natural disasters are …
Posted in: Early Recording Industry, Jukebox, Recorded Sound, Uncategorized
Posted by: Bryan Cornell
Be sure to tune into the 57th Annual Grammy Awards this Sunday. We’ll be watching it with great interest here in the Recorded Sound Section at the Library of Congress as two members of our technical staff have been nominated! Robert Friedrich, Audio Preservation Specialist at the Library’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, has been nominated …
Posted in: Early Recording Industry, National Audio-Visual Conservation Center, Recorded Sound, Uncategorized
Posted by: Bryan Cornell
At some point time around the year 2008 the last physical audio format, the cd, seems to have nearly winked out of existence. Its replacement? An army of wispy, intangible files including mp3, .aiff, wave, ogg vorbis, flac and many others. Of course, many of these formats produce very high-quality audio, and I can now pack a collection of …
Posted in: Early Recording Industry, Recorded Sound
Posted by: Bryan Cornell
The following post is by David Sager, Processing Technician in the Recorded Sound Section, Library of Congress. This post is in commemoration of the 84th anniversary of Buddy Bolden’s death and the never-ending discussion of his legendary lost cylinder recording. Charles “Buddy” Bolden, 1877-1931, often referred to as the “first man of jazz,” holds an …
Posted in: Early Recording Industry, Jukebox, Recorded Sound, Uncategorized
Posted by: Bryan Cornell
This week’s recorded sound update is a guest post by Jan McKee, Reference Librarian, Recorded Sound Section, Library of Congress. Mark Twain was known to have made recordings on three occasions; unfortunately none of them are known to have survived. The earliest recording was made by Thomas Edison in 1888. In 1891, the author himself …
Posted in: Early Recording Industry, Recorded Sound