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Posted by: Mike Mashon
The following is a guest post by Audio Preservation Specialist Brad McCoy. Collections tend to take pride of place in any discussion of moving images and sound recordings at the Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation. It’s understandable — we like talking about the more than 5 million items in our collective care. But we’re …
Posted in: Early Recording Industry, Recorded Sound
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: Karen Fishman
This blog post was co-written with Jan McKee, Reference Librarian, Recorded Sound Section, Library of Congress It wouldn’t be St. Patrick’s Day without some sentimental Irish ballads to listen to with our green beer, and the name that is most synonymous with Irish ballads is John McCormack. John McCormack (1884-1945) was an Irish born American …
Posted in: Early Recording Industry, Jukebox, National Recording Registry, 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: Karen Fishman
This blog post was co-written with Jan McKee, Reference Librarian, Recorded Sound Section, Library of Congress. The Recorded Sound Research Center not only provides access to the Library’s sound recordings but it also maintains a collection of reference books that support materials in the collection. These books include discographies, bio-discographies, directories, histories, and technical works …
Posted in: Early Recording Industry, Radio, Recorded Sound, Uncategorized