1.
George W. Johnson (singer)
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George Washington Johnson was a singer and pioneer sound recording artist, the first African-American recording star of the phonograph. Johnson was born in Virginia, either in Fluvanna County or near Wheatland in Loudoun County and his father may have been a slave, if so, he was likely freed in 1853. From an early age, Johnson was raised near Wheatland as the companion, during his time with this family, he developed his musical ability and even learned to read and write, which was unusual for a black child in Virginia before the American Civil War. Johnson later worked as a laborer, and in his twenties he moved to New York City. By the late 1870s he was making his living as an entertainer in New York. Some time between January and May 1890, Johnson was recruited by two different regional phonograph distributors who were looking for recording artists for their coin-operated machines. Both of them invited Johnson to record his loud raggy whistling on wax cylinders for a fee of twenty cents per two-minute performance. Although Johnson could whistle all the tunes of the day, one of his first recordings for both companies was a popular vaudeville novelty song called The Whistling Coon, Johnson sang as well as whistled, and also was able to give a boisterous laugh in musical pitch. From this he developed the second performance that made him famous, in the earliest days of the recording industry, every record was a master. A singer with a voice could make three or four usable recordings at once, with as many machines running simultaneously with their recording horns pointed towards the singers mouth. Johnson would sometimes sing the song over and over again in the recording studio fifty or more times a day. By 1895, Johnsons two tunes The Whistling Coon and The Laughing Song were the recordings in the United States. The total sales of his wax cylinders between 1890 and 1895 have been estimated at 25,000 to 50,000, each one recorded individually by Johnson. Remarkably, the New Jersey record company marketed Johnson as a black man, the Whistling Coon was characterized by a light-hearted tune and lyrics which would be unacceptable today, in which a Black man is compared to a baboon. Johnson continued recording for the New York and New Jersey companies, and in 1891 also started recording for their parent company, at least one of his 1891 recording sessions was held at Thomas Edisons laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey. Johnson also made appearances on Vaudeville and his repertory on stage was pretty much limited to his two famous songs, but this was sufficient to get him bookings on bills. In 1894, Johnson began recording with Len Spencer, a Vaudeville star of the era, in 1895, Johnson made his first recordings on the new disc technology for Berliner Gramophone. In 1897, Johnson recorded two new songs, The Laughing Coon and The Whistling Girl and they remained in the Edison and Columbia catalogs for years, although neither was as popular as his two original tunes
2.
Phonograph cylinder
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Phonograph cylinders are the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. In the 1910s, the disc record system triumphed in the marketplace to become the dominant commercial audio medium. The phonograph was invented by Thomas Edison and his team on July 18,1877 and his first successful recording and reproduction of intelligible sounds, achieved early in the following December, used a thin sheet of tin foil wrapped around a hand-cranked grooved metal cylinder. Tin foil was not a recording medium for either commercial or artistic purposes. Edison moved on to developing a practical incandescent electric light and the improvements to sound recording technology were made by others. After this system was demonstrated to Edisons representatives, Edison quickly resumed work on the phonograph and he settled on a thicker all-wax cylinder, the surface of which could be repeatedly shaved down for reuse. Both the Graphophone and Edisons Perfected Phonograph were commercialized in 1888, eventually, a patent-sharing agreement was signed and the wax-coated cardboard tubes were abandoned in favor of Edisons all-wax cylinders as an interchangeable standard format. Beginning in 1889, prerecorded wax cylinders were marketed and these have professionally made recordings of songs, instrumental music or humorous monologues in their grooves. Each cylinder can easily be placed on and removed from the mandrel of the used to play them. Unlike later, shorter-playing high-speed cylinders, early recordings were usually cut at a speed of about 120 rpm. They were made of a soft wax formulation and would wear out after they were played a few dozen times. The buyer could then use a mechanism which left their surfaces shaved smooth so new recordings could be made on them, Cylinder machines of the late 1880s and the 1890s were usually sold with recording attachments. In the earliest stages of phonograph manufacturing various competing incompatible types of recordings were made. A standard system was decided upon by Edison Records, Columbia Phonograph, the standard cylinders are about 4 inches long, 2¼ inches in diameter, and play about two minutes of music or other sound. Over the years the type of wax used in cylinders was improved and hardened so that cylinders could be played with good quality over 100 times, in 1902 Edison Records launched a line of improved hard wax cylinders marketed as Edison Gold Molded Records. The impressive mention of gold referred only to the extremely thin gold coating deposited onto the wax cylinder to make it electrically conductive. Originally all cylinders sold had to be recorded live on the softer brown wax which wore out in as few as twenty playings, later cylinders were reproduced either mechanically or by linking phonographs together with rubber tubes. Although not completely satisfactory, the result was enough to be sold
3.
Phonograph
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The phonograph is a device invented in 1877 for the mechanical recording and reproduction of sound. In its later forms it is called a gramophone. To recreate the sound, the surface is rotated while a playback stylus traces the groove and is therefore vibrated by it. In later electric phonographs, the motions of the stylus are converted into an electrical signal by a transducer. The phonograph was invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison, while other inventors had produced devices that could record sounds, Edisons phonograph was the first to be able to reproduce the recorded sound. His phonograph originally recorded sound onto a sheet wrapped around a rotating cylinder. A stylus responding to sound vibrations produced an up and down or hill-and-dale groove in the foil, in the 1890s, Emile Berliner initiated the transition from phonograph cylinders to flat discs with a spiral groove running from the periphery to near the center. Later improvements through the years included modifications to the turntable and its system, the stylus or needle. The disc phonograph record was the dominant audio recording format throughout most of the 20th century, from the mid-1980s on, phonograph use on a standard record player declined sharply because of the rise of the cassette tape, compact disc and other digital recording formats. Records are still a favorite format for some audiophiles and DJs, vinyl records are still used by some DJs and musicians in their concert performances. Musicians continue to release their recordings on vinyl records, the original recordings of musicians are sometimes re-issued on vinyl. Usage of terminology is not uniform across the English-speaking world, in more modern usage, the playback device is often called a turntable, record player, or record changer. When used in conjunction with a mixer as part of a DJ setup, the term phonograph was derived from the Greek words φωνή and γραφή. The similar related terms gramophone and graphophone have similar root meanings, the roots were already familiar from existing 19th-century words such as photograph, telegraph, and telephone. In British English, gramophone may refer to any sound-reproducing machine using disc records, the term phonograph was usually restricted to machines that used cylinder records. Gramophone generally referred to a wind-up machine, after the introduction of the softer vinyl records, 33 1⁄3-rpm LPs and 45-rpm single or two-song records, and EPs, the common name became record player or turntable. Often the home record player was part of a system that included a radio and, later, from about 1960, such a system began to be described as a hi-fi or a stereo. In American English, phonograph, properly specific to machines made by Edison, was used in a generic sense as early as the 1890s to include cylinder-playing machines made by others
4.
Emile Berliner
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Emile Berliner, originally Emil Berliner, was a German-born American inventor. He is best known for inventing the flat disc phonograph record, Berliner was born in Hanover, Germany, in 1851 into a Jewish merchant family. Though raised in a Jewish family, he became an agnostic. He completed an apprenticeship to become a merchant, as was family tradition, while his real hobby was invention, he worked as an accountant to make ends meet. To avoid being drafted for the Franco-Prussian War, Berliner migrated to the United States of America in 1870 with a friend of his fathers, in whose shop he worked in Washington, D. C. He moved to New York and, living off temporary work, such as doing the paper route and cleaning bottles, after some time working in a livery stable, he became interested in the new audio technology of the telephone and phonograph, and invented an improved telephone transmitter. The patent was acquired by the Bell Telephone Company, in America, Thomas Edison and Berliner fought a long legal battle over the patent rights. Berliner subsequently moved to Boston in 1877 and worked for Bell Telephone until 1883, emile Berliner became a United States citizen in 1881. Berliner also invented what was probably the first radial engine, a helicopter. In 1886 Berliner began experimenting with methods of sound recording and he was granted his first patent for what he called the Gramophone in 1887. By 1890 a Berliner licensee in Germany was manufacturing a toy Gramophone and five-inch hard rubber discs, but because key US patents were still pending they were sold only in Europe. Berliner meant his Gramophone to be more than a mere toy and he began marketing seven-inch records and a more substantial Gramophone, which was, however, still hand-propelled like the smaller toy machine. The difficulty in using early hand-driven Gramophones was getting the turntable to rotate at a steady speed while playing a disc. The US Berliner Gramophone Company shut down in mid-1900 and Berliner moved to Canada, the Berliner Gramophone Co. of Canada was chartered on 8 April 1904 and reorganized as the Berliner Gramophone Co. in 1909 in Montreals district Saint Henri. Berliners other inventions include a new type of loom for mass-production of cloth, a tile. Moore, also a Scientist and Inventor, as his assistant, Berliner obtained automobile engines from the Adams Company in Dubuque Iowa. This car used air cooled three or five cylinder rotary engines which were developed in-house by Fay Oliver Farwell, Berliner and Farwell adapted them for use in perfecting “machines” produced for vertical flight. His realizations allowed him to move away from the heavy in-line engines to lighter rotary models and it was these experiments that led to the formal creation of the Gyro Motor Company in 1909
5.
Eldridge R. Johnson
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Johnson was born in Wilmington, Delaware on February 18,1867 to Asa S. Johnson and Caroline Reeves Johnson. Upon his mother’s death in 1869 he was sent to live with his mother’s sister and her husband on their farm in northern Kent County near Smyrna, Asa remarried, and at age ten young Johnson moved to Dover to live with his father and stepmother. Thus, in 1883 Johnson was apprenticed to J. Lodge & Son, in 1888, his apprenticeship was completed and Johnson became a machinist at the recently established Scull Machine Shop in Camden, New Jersey. Later that year, John W. Scull died suddenly, Johnson became foreman and manager, while Sculls father continued on as owner. At the time of his death, John W. Scull had been working on the development of a bookbinding machine, Johnson completed the design of the machine but shortly thereafter decided to head west to seek his fortune. He ultimately made it as far west as Washington State, by 1891 he had returned to Philadelphia. During Johnson’s absence, Scull had been unable to market the bookbinding machine. Upon Johnson’s return east, Scull proposed a partnership, in 1894, Johnson bought out Scull’s share of the company and the Eldridge R. Johnson Manufacturing Company was born. In addition to the manufacture of wire stitching and bookbinding machines, Johnson’s shop executed a variety of jobs involving steam models. A customer named Henry Whitaker brought a manually driven, hand-cranked Berliner Gramophone, developed by Emile Berliner, into Johnson’s shop, Johnson did so, but Whitaker found the result unsatisfactory. Of his initial introduction to the gramophone Johnson later wrote that “the little instrument was badly designed and it sounded much like a partially educated parrot with a sore throat and a cold in the head. But the little wheezy instrument caught my attention and held it fast, I became interested in it as I had never been interested before in anything. It was exactly what I was looking for. ”In the summer of 1895, while cylinder phonographs had been equipped with clockwork motors for some time, the disc playing gramophone presented a number of design challenges in this regard. Foremost was the drag that the needle and soundbox created when applied to the edge of the disc. This required that the motor provide sufficient torque at start up while retaining a constant speed, representatives of the Berliner company were satisfied with Johnson’s design, and within a year Johnson had begun producing motors for Berliner. Johnson continued to refine the motor during this period, externalizing the motor, Johnson also spent a winter in Philadelphia collaborating on various gramophone refinements with Alfred C. Clark, the most significant of these was a vastly improved soundbox, along with Johnson’s new motor, the Clark-Johnson soundbox became the foundation for Berliner’s Improved Gramophone of 1897. At about this time, Johnson began experimenting with recording and disc duplicating technologies under a cloud of secrecy, Berliner’s process for creating master records involved covering a zinc disc with an acid-resistant fatty coating and then scratching the coating away with a recording stylus
6.
Stethoscope
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The stethoscope is an acoustic medical device for auscultation, or listening to the internal sounds of an animal or human body. It typically has a small disc-shaped resonator that is placed against the chest and it is often used to listen to lung and heart sounds. It is also used to listen to intestines and blood flow in arteries, in combination with a sphygmomanometer, it is commonly used for measurements of blood pressure. Less commonly, mechanics stethoscopes are used to listen to sounds made by machines. Stethoscopes can also be used to check scientific vacuum chambers for leaks, a stethoscope that intensifies auscultatory sounds is called phonendoscope. The stethoscope was invented in France in 1816 by René Laennec at the Necker-Enfants Malades Hospital in Paris and it consisted of a wooden tube and was monaural. Laennec invented the stethoscope because he was placing his ear on womens chests to hear heart sounds. He observed that a notebook, placed between the patients chest and his ear, could amplify heart sounds without requiring physical contact. Laennec called his device the stethoscope, and he called its use mediate auscultation, the first flexible stethoscope of any sort may have been a binaural instrument with articulated joints not very clearly described in 1829. In 1840, Golding Bird described a stethoscope he had been using with a flexible tube, Bird was the first to publish a description of such a stethoscope but he noted in his paper the prior existence of an earlier design which he described as the snake ear trumpet. Birds stethoscope had a single earpiece, cammann also wrote a major treatise on diagnosis by auscultation, which the refined binaural stethoscope made possible. This re-conceptualiization occurred in part, Duffin argues, because prior to the stethoscopes, the Rappaport-Sprague was later made by Hewlett-Packard. HPs medical products division was spun off as part of Agilent Technologies, Agilent Healthcare was purchased by Philips which became Philips Medical Systems, before the walnut-boxed, $300, original Rappaport-Sprague stethoscope was finally abandoned ca. 2004, along with Philips brand electronic stethoscope model and this raises the frequency bias by shortening the wavelength to auscultate a higher range of physiological sounds. In 1999, Richard Deslauriers patented the first external noise reducing stethoscope and it featured two parallel lumens containing two steel coils which dissipated infiltrating noise as inaudible heat energy. The steel coil insulation added.30 lb to each stethoscope, in 2005, DRGs diagnostics division was acquired by TRIMLINE Medical Products. In 2015, Dr. Tarek Loubani announced an open-source 3D-printed stethoscope based on the 1960s-era Littmann Cardiology 3 stethoscope, stethoscopes are often considered as a symbol of healthcare professionals, as various healthcare providers are often seen or depicted with stethoscopes hanging around their necks. A2012 research paper claimed that the stethoscope, when compared to medical equipment, had the highest positive impact on the perceived trustworthiness of the practitioner seen with it
7.
Victor Talking Machine Company
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The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American flagship record company headquartered in Camden, New Jersey. The company was founded by Eldridge R. Johnson, who had previously made gramophones to play Emile Berliners disc records, Victor Talking Machine Co. was incorporated officially in 1901 shortly before agreeing to allow Columbia Records use of its disc record patent. Victor had acquired the Pan-American rights to use the trademark of the fox terrier Nipper listening to a gramophone when Berliner. Barraud noticed that whenever he played a recorded by his brother. Barrauds original depicts Nipper staring intently into the horn of an Edison-Bell while both sit on a wooden surface. The London branch was managed by an American, William Barry Owen, Barraud paid a visit with a photograph of the painting and asked to borrow a horn. Owen gave Barraud an entire gramophone and asked him to paint it into the picture, the original painting still shows the contours of the Edison-Bell phonograph beneath the paint of the gramophone when viewed in the correct light. Only 13 originally commissioned His Masters Voice paintings were commissioned by the company, in 1915, the His Masters Voice logo was rendered in immense circular leaded-glass windows in the tower of the Victrola factory building. The tower remains today with replica windows installed during Radio Corporation of Americas ownership of the plant in its later years, today, one of the original windows is located at the Smithsonian museum in Washington, D. C. There are different accounts as to how the Victor name came about, a second account is that Johnson emerged as the Victor from the lengthy and costly patent litigations involving Berliner and Frank Seamans Zonophone. A third story is that Johnsons partner, Leon Douglass, derived the word from his wifes name Victoria, finally, a fourth story is that Johnson took the name from the popular Victor bicycle, which he had admired for its superior engineering. Of these four accounts the first two are the most generally accepted, perhaps coincidentally, the first use of the Victor title on a letterhead, on March 28,1901, was only nine weeks after the death of British Queen Victoria. Before 1925, recording was done by the purely mechanical. No microphone was involved and there was no means of amplification, the recording machine was essentially an exposed-horn acoustical record player functioning in reverse. The sound-vibrated center of the diaphragm was linked to a stylus that was guided across the surface of a very thick wax disc. The wax was too soft to be played back even once without seriously damaging it, although test recordings were sometimes made, although sound quality was gradually improved by a series of small refinements, the process was inherently insensitive. From the start, Victor innovated manufacturing processes and soon rose to preeminence by recording famous performers, in 1903, it instituted a three-step mother-stamper process to produce more stampers and records than previously possible. These new celebrity recordings bore red labels, and were marketed as Red Seal records, for many years these records were single-sided, only in 1923 did Victor begin offering Red Seals in double-sided form
8.
Fred Gaisberg
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Frederick William Gaisberg was an American-born musician, recording engineer and one of the earliest classical music producers for the gramophone. He himself did not use the term producer, and was not an impresario like his protégé Walter Legge of EMI or an innovator like John Culshaw of Decca, Gaisberg concentrated on talent-scouting and persuading performers to make recordings for the newly invented gramophone. Gaisberg began working in the industry in America as a young man, becoming a pioneer of early recording. In 1898, he joined the Gramophone Company in England as its first recording engineer, in 1902, he recorded music sung by the tenor Enrico Caruso and the recordings became a sensation. By 1921, Gaisberg was artistic director of HMVs international artistes department, after 1925, he concentrated on artist management. In 1939, he retired from his position but continued as a consultant in the industry through the 1940s, Gaisberg was born in Washington, DC. His father Wilhelm was the son of German immigrants, Gaisberg was educated in Washington and was a chorister at St. Johns Episcopal Church. A musically talented youngster, he encountered the fledgling recording technology in the early 1890s, poor sound quality and short playing time, however, meant that recordings were more of an amusing novelty than a serious means of reproducing music. In this decade the first of the recording industrys format wars was taking place, Gaisberg played an important role in this war, helping to establish 78 revolutions per minute as the standard playing speed and shellac as the standard material for making discs. In 1898, the Gramophone Company was formed in London, Gaisberg, by then working as piano accompanist and recording supervisor for Emile Berliner, left New York for London to join the Gramophone Company as its first recording engineer. He landed in Liverpool with recording outfit, a $25 bicycle, among his first recordings in London were several made by Syria Lamonte, an Australian singer working at Rules Restaurant in Maiden Lane. Gaisberg made some of the first recordings of the tenor Enrico Caruso, the voice recorded well even on the primitive equipment of the time, and the entire enterprise paid off financially as well as artistically. It also sparked a long and happy transatlantic arrangement, in the US the recordings were issued under the label of the Victor Talking Machine Company, spearheading the March 1903 introduction of Victors new premium Red Seal line. Caruso moved to the U. S. later in 1903, Caruso himself said, My Victor records will be my biography. Gaisbergs brother William worked with him and they signed up and/or recorded such international stars as Adelina Patti, Francesco Tamagno, Feodor Chaliapin, Beniamino Gigli, Nellie Melba, John McCormack and Fritz Kreisler. Gaisberg was the record producer to record a castrato singer. He cut Indias first gramophone recordings, which featured Gauhar Jaan singing a khayal and these sessions took place in a makeshift studio rigged up in two rooms of a Calcutta hotel. In Japan, he recorded more than 270 titles in one month of 1903
9.
Auguste Aramini
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Auguste Aramini was a French-born Canadian singer. Aramini was born in Agen, France and he is thought to have emigrated to Canada as a singer in the theatre performance company of René Harmant, who arrived in Canada in 1897. While in Montreal, he made recordings for the Berliner label, including Faut te faire vacciner. In 1905, the Ligues de Vertu à Montréal applied pressure to the industry of Montreal to stop the display of questionable morality, they say. Harmants company departed for New York that year, and Aramini accompanied them, in 1947, he married Jeanne Maubourg in Montreal
10.
Buffalo Bill
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William Frederick Buffalo Bill Cody was an American scout, bison hunter, and showman. Buffalo Bill started working at the age of eleven, after his fathers death, during the American Civil War, he served the Union from 1863 to the end of the war in 1865. Later he served as a scout for the US Army during the Indian Wars. One of the most colorful figures of the American Old West, shortly thereafter he started performing in shows that displayed cowboy themes and episodes from the frontier and Indian Wars. He founded Buffalo Bills Wild West in 1883, taking his company on tours in the United States and, beginning in 1887, in Great Britain. Cody was born on February 26,1846, on a farm just outside Le Claire and his father, Isaac Cody, was born on September 5,1811, in Toronto Township, Upper Canada, now part of Mississauga, Ontario, directly west of Toronto. Mary Ann Bonsell Laycock, Bills mother, was born about 1817 in New Jersey and she moved to Cincinnati to teach school, and there she met and married Isaac. She was a descendant of Josiah Bunting, a Quaker who had settled in Pennsylvania, there is no evidence to indicate Buffalo Bill was raised as a Quaker. In 1847 the couple moved to Ontario, having their son baptized in 1847, as William Cody, at the Dixie Union Chapel in Peel County, the chapel was built with Cody money, and the land was donated by Philip Cody of Toronto Township. They lived in Ontario for several years, in 1853, Isaac Cody sold his land in rural Scott County, Iowa, for $2000, and the family moved to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Territory. In the years before the Civil War, Kansas was overtaken by political and physical conflict over the slavery question and he was invited to speak at Rivelys store, a local trading post where pro-slavery men often held meetings. His antislavery speech so angered the crowd that they threatened to kill him if he didnt step down, a man jumped up and stabbed him twice with a Bowie knife. Rively, the owner, rushed Cody to get treatment. In Kansas, the family was persecuted by pro-slavery supporters. Codys father spent time away from home for his safety and his enemies learned of a planned visit to his family and plotted to kill him on the way. Bill, despite his youth and being ill at the time, Isaac Cody went to Cleveland, Ohio, to organize a group of thirty families to bring back to Kansas, in order to add to the antislavery population. During his return trip he caught an infection which, compounded by the lingering effects of his stabbing and complications from kidney disease. After his death, the family suffered financially, at age 11, Bill took a job with a freight carrier as a boy extra
11.
Albert Campbell (singer)
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Albert Charles Campbell was an American popular music singer who recorded between the late 1890s and the 1920s. He also began touring as a vaudeville singer, a tenor, he first recorded for Berliner Records in 1897, and then also recorded for Columbia and several other cylinder recording companies. Among his early successes were My Wild Irish Rose, Ma Blushin Rosie, and Love Me. Campbell also recorded, after the late 1890s, as part of the Columbia Male Quartet and their most successful recordings over the period included I Want A Girl, I Didnt Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier, and Over There. Campbell made few recordings after 1907, but formed a highly successful recording partnership with Henry Burr. The pair had a succession of commercial hits between 1911 and 1925. Campbell and Burr, together with John Meyer and Frank Croxton, continued to perform and record as the Peerless Quartet with some success until 1925, when the group disbanded. Campbell then formed a duo with Frank Kaufman, they recorded as Murphy and Shea, Collins and Reynolds, or Wheeler. Albert Campbell died in New York in 1947 at the age of 74
12.
Arthur Collins (singer)
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Arthur Francis Collins was an American baritone who was one of the most prolific and beloved of pioneer recording artists, regarded in his day as King of the Ragtime Singers. However, his baritone voice – heard in church and in local concert appearances – convinced Collins family to send him back to Philadelphia for formal training. After concluding his studies, Collins spent some 15 years touring with various stock companies and he specialized in what were then called coon songs, popular African-American dialect numbers associated with vaudeville and minstrel shows. Collins also utilized an array of effects and caricature voices which gave the impression that there were multiple persons at the horn on his recordings. Harlan within the context of the Big Four Quartet, and from then until the end of Collins career in the early 1920s, Collins & Harlan were probably the most famous and popular male duo on early records. During a personal appearance at the Princess Theater in Medina, Ohio on October 20,1921, while he recovered well enough to resume his singing and recording career, his health began to decline afterward and in 1926, Collins retired, relocating to Florida with his wife. He died at the age of 69 in Tice, Florida on August 3,1933, Arthur Collins recorded hundreds of songs, and in many cases he recorded the same song multiple times for various recording outfits. His signature song was The Preacher and the Bear, which he first recorded in 1905 and his rendition, widely dispersed among a variety of releases, constitutes the most popular non-operatic record made during the first decade of the twentieth century. His recording sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc, Collins lived up to his reputation as the King of Ragtime Singers and recorded more ragtime songs than any other singer during the era when ragtime was at its peak of popularity. Collins recorded some of Bert Williamss songs before Williams did, Collins survived into the early years of the Jazz Age, and he and Harlan recorded the earliest record known to mention jazz, That Funny Jas Band from Dixieland. 1898 Happy Days in Dixie Zizzy ze zum zum 1899 All Coons Look Alike To Me Hello and my Irish Molly O Nobody What You Goin to Do When De Rent Comes Round. Whos There 1906 Abraham Jefferson Washington Lee Bill Simmons The Ghost of a Banjo Coon Jessamine Pretty Desdamone Whats the Use of Knocking When a Man is Down, discography sources Arthur Collins cylinder recordings. University of California, Santa Barbara Library, university of California, Santa Barbara Library. Arthur Collins at Find a Grave Arthur Collins at the Songwriters Hall of Fame Virtual Museum Rare Arthur Collins Recordings, from the Archive. org
13.
Charles D'Almaine
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Charles DAlmaine, was a violinist with the New York Metropolitan Opera, and a chiropractor, but best known today for his prolific activity as a pioneer recording artist. Charles DAlmaine was born in Hull, England on June 13,1871 and he grew up an orphan in the London area. At some point he came to the United States and played first violin at the Grand Opera House in Chicago in the 1890s and he married his second wife, Cornelia Helen on December 24,1897. After his marriage he stayed in Chicago a short time to teach violin students, in 1898 he relocated to New York City, the only major recording center of the time. One of the earliest violinists to make recordings, DAlmaines first was recorded in 1899 and he went to the Berliner Gramophone studios in January and February 1900, where at least 13 of his recordings were issued. When a standing orchestra was established at the Edison studios, DAlmaine was made concertmaster, beginning his association with the Victor company in 1901, he eventually became concertmaster of the house unit, the Victor Orchestra. He also made recordings for Columbia, where sometimes the pseudonym Charles Gordon was used and his musical duties outside the recording studio included positions at the Metropolitan Opera House. In addition to performing, he made several violins. In April 1914 he and his wife Helen enrolled at the Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa and he made his final recordings for Pathé Records. He and his wife operated chiropractic practices in New York City and Newark, in addition to his medical duties, he continued his musical career. He was second-violinist with the New York Metropolitan Opera orchestra, for the 1921–1922 season, and was employed there until the 1924–1925 season in the violin section. He was released, having spent 17 years at the Met, DAlmaine spent the following summer season with the Arthur Pryor band. His last professional musical activity was to tour with Harry Lauder, after which he abandoned music to himself to his chiropractic practice. On June 17,1943 he died, childless, in Newark, many of DAlmaines recordings used the Stroh violin, and he was the first to record using that instrument. In addition to pieces and straight renditions of popular songs, his output of fiddle-tunes was significant to the genre. DAlmaine was the player on Len Spencers immensely popular Arkansas Traveler, as well as the first to record The Irish Washerwoman, Flowers of Edinburgh. He also made novelty records such as Donkey and Driver, which sound effects generated on his instrument. As the violin soloist of choice for Victor Records and Edison Records and he also recorded for Berliner Gramophone, Columbia Records, and other, smaller companies
14.
Lil Hawthorne
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Lil Hawthorne was an American-born British stage beauty, music hall performer and pantomime Principal Boy who was involved in bringing Dr. Crippen to justice. After her sisters marriage and retirement, Hawthorne remained in the United Kingdom where she became popular in music halls all over the country. She made the first of many appearances in pantomime at the Empire Palace Theatre, Edinburgh in 1898. Hawthornes repertoire of songs included Lucy Loo, Tessie, You are the Only, Only, Only and Mamie May, all of which she recorded, as well as Kitty Mahone and Dont Cry Little Girl, in 1899 she married John Edward Nash, who became her manager. Also in 1899 she recorded the song Sweet Rosie OGrady for Berliner Gramophone, in 1900 she starred in Walter Gibbons Anglo-American Bio-Tableaux film Kitty Mahone. She was the Principal Boy in the pantomimes Puss in Boots and Sleeping Beauty, on 6 December 1909 Hawthorne topped the bill at the opening night of the Hippodrome Theatre in Bishop Auckland. Hawthorne was a friend of Cora Turner, the estranged wife. She and Elmore were members of the Music Hall Ladies Guild and they were able to prove that, despite Crippens assertion to the contrary, his wife had not died in America. Lil Hawthorne died in 1926 aged 49, photographs of Hawthorne on the National Portrait Gallery website Hawthorne on the Footlight Notes website
15.
Dwight L. Moody
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Dwight Lyman Moody, also known as D. L. Dwight Moody was born in Northfield, Massachusetts, to a large family. His father, Edwin J. Moody, a farmer and stonemason, died at the age of 41. They had five sons and a daughter before Dwights birth, with twins, a boy and his mother struggled to support the family, but even with her best effort, some of her children had to be sent off to work for their room and board. Dwight too was sent off, where he received cornmeal, porridge and he complained to his mother, but when she found out that he got all that he wanted to eat, she sent him back. Even during that time she continued to send them to church, together with his eight siblings he was raised in the Unitarian church. His oldest brother ran away and was not heard from by the family many years later. When Moody turned 17, he moved to Boston to work in a shoe store. One of the requirements was that Moody attend the Congregational Church of Mount Vernon where Dr. Edward Norris Kirk served as the pastor. In April 1855 Moody was then converted to evangelical Christianity when his Sunday school teacher, Edward Kimball and his conversion sparked the start of his career as an evangelist. However, his first application for membership, in May 1855, was rejected. He was not received as a member until May 4,1856. The first meeting I ever saw him at was in an old shanty that had been abandoned by a saloon-keeper. Mr. Moody had got the place to hold the meetings in at night, I thought, If the Lord can ever use such an instrument as that for His honor and glory, it will astonish me. As a result of his tireless labor, within a year the attendance at his school was 650. It became so known that the just-elected President Lincoln visited. Moody could not conscientiously enlist in the Union Army during the Civil War, on August 28,1862, he married Emma C. Revell, with whom he had a daughter, Emma Reynolds Moody, the growing Sunday School congregation needed a permanent home, so Moody started a church in Chicago, the Illinois Street Church. In June 1871 at an International Sunday School Convention in Indianapolis, Dwight Moody met Ira D. Sankey, up to then a single-gospel-singer, with whom he soon began to cooperate and collaborate
16.
Vess Ossman
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Sylvester Louis Vess Ossman was a leading 5-string banjoist and popular recording artist of the early 20th century. Sylvester Louis Ossman was born in Hudson, New York, and he became one of the most recorded musicians of his day, recording marches, cakewalks, rags, and other instrumentals. He also accompanied singers including Arthur Collins and Len Spencer. Ossman married Eunice Smith and they had three children, Vess Jr. Raymond, and Annadele, in 1900 and 1903, when Ossmans reputation and fame had spread internationally, he went on tour, as well as recorded, in England. Together with Audley Dudley and Roy Butin, he performed in the Ossman-Dudley Trio and he also led his own dance band, the Ossmans Singing and Playing Orchestra, in Dayton, Ohio and Indianapolis, Indiana. The increasing popularity of his rival Fred Van Eps, after 1910 and he temporarily ceased recording in 1913 but resumed his recording career in late 1915. In April 1917, he became a member of the Popular Talking Machine Artists, by the early 1920s, he had left the touring act. On December 14,1917 he made his recordings for the Columbia label. He continued to travel with his dance orchestra working in all over the Midwest while living in Dayton with his family. In 1923, he joined B. F. Keiths Vaudeville houses on tour together with his son Vess Jr, at a theater show in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Ossman suffered a heart attack. He was brought to hospital but soon returned to the show, later, in Fairmont, Minnesota, he suffered another heart attack, this time fatal, after his last performance on stage. He was buried in Valhalla Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri, Ossman played in what is now known as the Classic banjo style. He fingerpicked gut strings using a similar to classical guitarists. Vim Records Gracyk, Tim - Hoffmann, Frank W. Popular American Recording Pioneers, 1895-1925, Routledge Heier, Uli, Lotz, Rainer E
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Arthur Pryor
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Arthur Willard Pryor was a trombone virtuoso, bandleader, and soloist with the Sousa Band. He was a composer of band music, his best-known composition being The Whistler. In later life, he became a Democratic Party politician from New Jersey, Pryor was born on the second floor of the Lyceum Theater in Saint Joseph, Missouri. He was the son of Samuel Pryor, bandmaster and founder of the original Pryor band, Arthur first took up music at a very young age under the tutelage of his father and was playing the valve trombone by age 11. The story goes that whenever he hit a sour note while practicing, the boy developed until he was so skilled that he won a place in the John Philip Sousas band. He was hailed as a prodigy after this, Pryor went on to direct the Stanley Opera Company in Denver, Colorado until joining the John Philip Sousa Band in 1892. He played his first solo with the Sousa Band at age 22 during the 1893 Worlds Columbian Exposition in Chicago, during his 12 years with the Sousa Band, Pryor estimated that he played 10,000 solos. From 1895 to 1903, Pryor was assistant conductor of the Sousa Band, during his association with the March King, Pryor toured throughout the USA and Europe. While in Europe, he entertained King Edward VII of England, once while in Germany, all the trombonists of the German Army bands were ordered to hear him play. They were so amazed at his playing that they insisted on taking his trombone apart, finally one German said, No one can play so well. In 1902 after the death of his father, Pryor ended his association with Sousa and took over the reorganized Pryor band, for 30 years thereafter, Pryors band was an American institution. He made his first appearance in Asbury Park, New Jersey at the Shore in 1904, the Pryor Band toured until 1909, when he decided to settle down and make Asbury Park the home of the band. Also at this time, he became a conductor and arranger for the Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden. He organized a band that played at the entertainment complex of Coney Island, New York. Pryor retired from conducting in 1933. On November 7 of that year, he and Henry W. Herbert were elected to the Monmouth County Board of Chosen Freeholders, newcomb and his running mate, Arthur Johnson. Pryor and Herbert would each serve one, three-year term in office, in the 1936 election, they were defeated by Republicans J. Russell Woolley and Edgar O. Murphy. Pryor was married to Maude Russell Pryor and their son Roger Pryor also became a bandleader and a film actor
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John Philip Sousa
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John Philip Sousa was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era, known primarily for American military and patriotic marches. Because of his mastery of composition, he is known as The March King. Among his best-known marches are The Stars and Stripes Forever, Semper Fidelis, The Liberty Bell, The Thunderer, Sousa began his career playing violin and studying music theory and composition under John Esputa and George Felix Benkert. His father enlisted him in the United States Marine Band as an apprentice in 1868, after departing the band in 1875, Sousa learned to conduct. From 1880 until his death, he focused exclusively on conducting and he eventually rejoined the Marine Band and served there for 12 years as director. On leaving the Marine Band, Sousa organized his own band and he toured Europe and Australia and developed the sousaphone, a large brass instrument similar to the helicon and tuba. At the outbreak of World War I, Sousa was commissioned as a lieutenant commander, following his tenure, he returned to conduct the Sousa Band until his death in 1932. In the 1920s he was promoted to lieutenant commander in the naval reserve, Sousa started his music education by playing the violin as a pupil of John Esputa and George Felix Benkert for harmony and musical composition at the age of six. He was found to have absolute pitch, during his childhood, Sousa studied voice, violin, piano, flute, cornet, baritone horn, trombone, and alto horn. When Sousa was 13, his father, a trombonist in the Marine Band, several years long after serving his apprenticeship, Sousa joined a theatrical orchestra where he learned to conduct. He returned to the U. S. Marine Band as its head in 1880, Sousa led The Presidents Own band under five presidents from Rutherford B. Hayes to Benjamin Harrison. Sousas band played at two Inaugural Balls, those of James A. Garfield in 1881, and Benjamin Harrison in 1889 and he wanted a tuba that could sound upward and over the band whether its player was seated or marching. The sousaphone was re-created in 1898 by C. G. Conn and he organized The Sousa Band the year he left the Marine Band. The Sousa Band toured from 1892 to 1931, performing at 15,623 concerts both in America and around the world, including at the World Exposition in Paris, France and at the Royal Albert Hall in London. In Paris, the Sousa Band marched through the streets to the Arc de Triomphe – one of only eight parades the band marched in over its forty years, on December 30,1879, Sousa married Jane van Middlesworth Bellis. They had three children, John Philip, Jr. Jane Priscilla, and Helen, All were buried in the John Philip Sousa plot in the Congressional Cemetery. Wife Jane, daughters Jane Priscilla and Helen Abert joined the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1907 and their ancestor was Adam Bellis, who served under several different commands for the New Jersey troops in the American Revolutionary War. Late in his life, Sousa lived in Sands Point, New York, Sousa died of heart failure at the age of 77 on March 6,1932, in his room at the Abraham Lincoln Hotel in Reading, Pennsylvania
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United States Marine Band
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The United States Marine Band is the premier band of the United States Marine Corps. Established by act of Congress on July 11,1798, it is the oldest of the United States military bands, today, the Marine Band also includes the Marine Chamber Orchestra and Marine Chamber Ensembles. The Marine Band is entirely separate from its military band, the United States Marine Drum and Bugle Corps. The Marine Band has been known as The Presidents Own since 1801 because of its historic connection to the President of the United States. The relationship between the Marine Band and the White House began on New Years Day 1801, when President John Adams invited the band to perform at the Executive Mansion. Later that year, Thomas Jefferson initiated the tradition of Marine Band performances by requesting that it perform at his inauguration, the Marine Band has played at every United States presidential inauguration since. President Thomas Jefferson gave the title The Presidents Own in 1801, today, the Marine Band performs in approximately 500 events every year including state funerals, state arrival ceremonies, state dinners, parades, concerts, and other social events. The Marine Band also travels across the country each October and November during its concert tour. The Marine Band recruits experienced musicians, members are selected through a rigorous procedure and must satisfy additional security. Selected band members serve under a contract as active duty enlisted Marines and are subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. They are the members of the United States Armed Forces not required to undergo recruit training. Also, they are not assigned to any other than the Marine Band. The band members start at the rank of Staff Sergeant, as of 2010, the USMC spends about $10 million annually to support the band. The full band has a complement of about 130 members, a 42-piece Marine Band is used for all Pentagon and formal military arrivals and patriotic openers for large events. Patriotic openers are 15 minutes of music, including the presentation and retirement of the colors, the The Star-Spangled Banner. Patriotic openers are performed throughout the Washington Metropolitan Area at a variety of events for organizations, federal agencies. Events that the Marine Band participates in include, United States presidential inaugurations, the Marine Band has participated in every presidential inauguration since Thomas Jeffersons in 1801. The Marine Band is positioned at the United States Capitol for the swearing-in ceremony, the band also performs for celebrations following the official ceremony and parade
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Phonograph record
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The groove usually starts near the periphery and ends near the center of the disc. The phonograph disc record was the medium used for music reproduction until late in the 20th century. It had co-existed with the cylinder from the late 1880s. Records retained the largest market share even when new formats such as compact cassette were mass-marketed, by the late 1980s, digital media, in the form of the compact disc, had gained a larger market share, and the vinyl record left the mainstream in 1991. The phonograph record has made a resurgence in the early 21st century –9.2 million records were sold in the U. S. in 2014. Likewise, in the UK sales have increased five-fold from 2009 to 2014, as of 2017,48 record pressing facilities remain worldwide,18 in the United States and 30 in other countries. The increased popularity of vinyl has led to the investment in new, only two producers of lacquers remains, Apollo Masters in California, USA, and MDC in Japan. Vinyl records may be scratched or warped if stored incorrectly but if they are not exposed to heat or broken. The large cover are valued by collectors and artists for the space given for visual expression, in the 2000s, these tracings were first scanned by audio engineers and digitally converted into audible sound. Phonautograms of singing and speech made by Scott in 1860 were played back as sound for the first time in 2008, along with a tuning fork tone and unintelligible snippets recorded as early as 1857, these are the earliest known recordings of sound. In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph, unlike the phonautograph, it was capable of both recording and reproducing sound. Despite the similarity of name, there is no evidence that Edisons phonograph was based on Scotts phonautograph. Edison first tried recording sound on a paper tape, with the idea of creating a telephone repeater analogous to the telegraph repeater he had been working on. The tinfoil was wrapped around a metal cylinder and a sound-vibrated stylus indented the tinfoil while the cylinder was rotated. The recording could be played back immediately, Edison also invented variations of the phonograph that used tape and disc formats. A decade later, Edison developed a greatly improved phonograph that used a wax cylinder instead of a foil sheet. This proved to be both a better-sounding and far more useful and durable device, the wax phonograph cylinder created the recorded sound market at the end of the 1880s and dominated it through the early years of the 20th century. Berliners earliest discs, first marketed in 1889, but only in Europe, were 12.5 cm in diameter, both the records and the machine were adequate only for use as a toy or curiosity, due to the limited sound quality
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Gramophone Company
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This article is about the company which operated the HMV record label. For the HMV Records label, see His Masters Voice, the Gramophone Company, based in the United Kingdom, was one of the early recording companies, and was the parent organisation for the famous His Masters Voice label. The Gramophone Company was founded in 1898 by William Barry Owen and Trevor Williams in London, Owen was acting as agent for Emile Berliner, inventor of the gramophone record, whilst Williams provided the finances. Most of the early discs were made in Hanover, Germany at a plant operated by members of Berliners family. In 1898, Fred Gaisberg moved from the U. S. to London to set up the first disc recording studio in Europe, among early artists he recorded was the Syria Lamont, an Australian soprano whose single Coming through the Rye was one of the first ever issued. In December 1900, Owen gained the rights for the Lambert Typewriter Company. This was an attempt to diversify the business model, in response to a series of lawsuits brought about by Edison Bell. In 1900, the U. S. parent of Gramophone lost a patent infringement suit brought on by Columbia Records and Zonophone, the agreement allowed Columbia to produce flat records themselves, which they began doing in 1901, Columbias records had previously been cylinders. Thus, Victor and Columbia began making records in the U. S. with UK Gramophone. This left Edison the only player in the making of cylinders. Emile Berliner went out of the business, all he had left were the masters of his earlier records. These he took to Canada and reformed his Berliner label in Montreal, Edison would soon join the flat record market with his diamond discs and their players. A public relations effort of 1907 involved Alfred Clark, a New York representative of the company, Clark persuaded the Paris Opera to seal and lock 24 records in two iron and lead containers in a basement storage room. These were to be opened in 100 years, in 1912,24 more records were added in two additional containers, along with a wind-up gramophone and a supply of needles to insure the records could be played when unsealed. In 1989, it was discovered one of the 1912 containers had been opened and emptied. The three remaining containers were moved to the French National Library, when opened in December 2007, some of the records were broken, but copies of the missing and broken records were located in the French National Library. EMI digitized the collection and released it on three discs in February 2009 as Les Urnes de lOpera. The latter had designed by Theodore Birnbaum, an executive of the Gramophone Company pressing plant in Hanover
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Deutsche Grammophon
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Deutsche Grammophon is a German classical record label that was the foundation of the future corporation to be known as PolyGram. It is now part of Universal Music Group since its merger with the MCA family of labels in 1999 and it is the oldest surviving established record company. Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft was founded in 1898 by German-born United States citizen Emile Berliner as the German branch of his Berliner Gramophone Company, Berliner sent his nephew Joseph Sanders from America to set up operations. Based in the city of Hanover, the company had links with the U. S, victor Talking Machine Company and the British Gramophone Company, but those links were severed at the onset of World War I. Early labels bore the legend Grammophon and the painting His Masters Voice featuring the dog Nipper, in 1941, Deutsche Grammophon was purchased by the Siemens & Halske electronics company. In 1949, Deutsche Grammophon sold the German rights of the His Masters Voice trademark to the Electrola unit of EMI, the dog and gramophone were replaced by the crown of tulips, designed by Siemens advertising consultant Hans Domizlaff. In 1962 Siemens formed a joint venture with Netherlands-based Philips to create the DGG/PPI Record Group, by this time, DGG had built a solid reputation for high-quality recording in the classical field as well as a very notable roster of contracted singers, musicians, and conductors. The fine quality both of recording and of pressings helped DGG especially succeed and attract Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra to DGG/Polydor, in 1987 Siemens sold off its interest in PolyGram, and Philips became the majority shareholder. In 1998, the Seagram Company Ltd. of Canada purchased Deutsche Grammophon, since then, Deutsche Grammophon was merged into Universal Music Group, a division of Vivendi. Deutsche Grammophon has a back catalogue of notable recordings. The company is reissuing a portion of it in its Originals series and it also released the majority of the compositions of Karlheinz Stockhausen until the composer bought the rights to the recordings and re-released them on his own label. Other German composers associated with the label included Paul Hindemith and Hans Werner Henze, in 2011, Tori Amos signed to the label. The conductor most associated with the label is Herbert von Karajan, other conductors under contract included Ferenc Fricsay, Carlos Kleiber, Karl Böhm, Eugen Jochum, Rafael Kubelik, Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, Claudio Abbado, and Christian Thielemann. Recent signings include Gustavo Dudamel and Myung-whun Chung
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Library of Congress
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The Library of Congress is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the de facto national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States, the Library is housed in three buildings on Capitol Hill in Washington, D. C. it also maintains the Packard Campus in Culpeper, Virginia, which houses the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center. The Library of Congress claims to be the largest library in the world and its collections are universal, not limited by subject, format, or national boundary, and include research materials from all parts of the world and in more than 450 languages. Two-thirds of the books it acquires each year are in other than English. The Library of Congress moved to Washington in 1800, after sitting for years in the temporary national capitals of New York. John J. Beckley, who became the first Librarian of Congress, was two dollars per day and was required to also serve as the Clerk of the House of Representatives. The small Congressional Library was housed in the United States Capitol for most of the 19th century until the early 1890s, most of the original collection had been destroyed by the British in 1814, during the War of 1812. To restore its collection in 1815, the bought from former president Thomas Jefferson his entire personal collection of 6,487 books. After a period of growth, another fire struck the Library in its Capitol chambers in 1851, again destroying a large amount of the collection. The Library received the right of transference of all copyrighted works to have two copies deposited of books, maps, illustrations and diagrams printed in the United States. It also began to build its collections of British and other European works and it included several stories built underground of steel and cast iron stacks. Although the Library is open to the public, only high-ranking government officials may check out books, the Library promotes literacy and American literature through projects such as the American Folklife Center, American Memory, Center for the Book, and Poet Laureate. James Madison is credited with the idea for creating a congressional library, part of the legislation appropriated $5,000 for the purchase of such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress. And for fitting up an apartment for containing them. Books were ordered from London and the collection, consisting of 740 books and 3 maps, was housed in the new Capitol, as president, Thomas Jefferson played an important role in establishing the structure of the Library of Congress. The new law also extended to the president and vice president the ability to borrow books and these volumes had been left in the Senate wing of the Capitol. One of the only congressional volumes to have survived was a government account book of receipts and it was taken as a souvenir by a British Commander whose family later returned it to the United States government in 1940. Within a month, former president Jefferson offered to sell his library as a replacement
