The Passing of the Circus Parade, by Len Spencer and Gilbert Girard!
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Chapter four opens by defining two distinctive modes of phonographic representation: a descriptive mode, in which a phonogram depicts its subject for detached eavesdropping (e.g., we overhear a speech or performance), and a substitutive mode, in which the phonogram is designed as a fully engaging functional replacement for its subject (e.g., someone is speaking to us, performing for us). The remainder of the chapter is devoted to early “audio theater,” in which sound is used to depict imaginary scenes analogous to those in a fiction film. Borrowing techniques from “descriptive” music, ventriloquism, vocal mimicry, and the conventionalized imitation of ethnic speech styles, early phonography evolved a rich fictional idiom, albeit one that has been largely forgotten in favor of the radio drama that eventually superseded it. For purposes of analysis, pieces of this kind—like all selections offered commercially in early phonography—bear more resemblance to mutable live traditions than they do to fixed “texts,” in that each one exists in innumerable variants, so this chapter also begins exploring the extent and significance of that variability. Chapter five examines the early phonographic representation of two performance genres—dance calling and the sales pitch—which ordinarily required very specific kinds of engagement from their audiences in order to be regarded as successful: dancing and buying. Because these two types of performance anticipated such specific responses, it is relatively easy to distinguish between the descriptive and substitutive modes and to explore the implications of both modes for the form phonograms would take and the uses to which they could be put. Chapter six then covers the translation into phonography of two complex popular entertainments: the minstrel show and vaudeville. “Minstrel records” and “vaudeville records” display a variety of approaches to their subjects in terms of both temporal structure and audience involvement, shedding further light on how early commercial phonography went about representing performance in a meaningful way rather than merely “reproducing” it. Industry-wide conventions arose to govern the recording of many of these performance genres as recordists and performers hit upon approaches that worked, and those conventions changed over time to reflect shifts in both aesthetic sensibilities and the social and technological bases of the new medium. I have chosen this particular combination of examples to present here because it seems best to illustrate the range of techniques I have found useful in “opening up” early commercial phonograms for analysis and reveals some significant aspects of early phonographic culture that other approaches have missed. It by no means exhausts the material available for investigation, or even the material I have already worked through myself. However, it should provide a fair introduction to the approach I am advocating, as well as a foundation on which additional studies of early phonograms can build. 1 Transcribed from Spencer & Girard, Passing of a Circus Parade (Victor M-1382-[1], recorded May 9, 1902) §. 2 William Howland Kenney, Recorded Music in American Life: The Phonograph and Popular Memory, 1890-1945 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 3 Lisa Gitelman, Scripts, Grooves, and Writing Machines: Representing Technology in the Edison Era (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1999). 4 Jonathan Sterne, The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2003). 5 For one such recording-and-reproduction device, see Thomas Edison, “Improvement in Automatic Telegraphs,” U. S. Patent 213,554, filed Mar. 26, 1877, granted Mar. 25, 1879, which also cites a precursor from 1860. Telegraphic sending did have an element of performance about it. Individual senders’ styles were recognizable (George B. Prescott, History, Theory, and Practice of the Electric Telegraph [Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1866], 337) and could serve as markers of identity; thus, a story of 1877 contrasts the “nervous and staccato” sending of a country girl with the “smooth, legato and placid” sending of a city girl (“Kate: An Electro-Mechanical Romance,” in Lightning Flashes and Electric Dashes [New York: W. J. Johnston, 1877], quoted in Sterne, Audible Past, 152-3). Edison himself was criticized for his “jerky, spasmodic style,” which branded him socially as a “sort of ‘Erie Railroad sender’” (“A Visit to Edison,” Boston Daily Globe, May 28, 1878 [TAEM 25:223]). Telegraphers also tapped out the rhythms of songs over the wire in their spare time (Prescott, History, Theory, and Practice, 334-5). 6 At first, the term had to be qualified when used in this sense to distinguish it from stenography, as in the article title “Automatic Phonography,” Manufacturer and Builder 10 (Apr. 1878), 84. The usage of “phonography” in connection with the phonograph was actually somewhat rare during the period I am covering here, but instances of it can be found. For instance, Charles Marshall stated that a new form of phonograph exhibition with electrically produced visual effects would “surpass anything of the kind in the history of electricity and phonography” (“Fun in a Phonograph,” New York Morning Advertiser, Apr. 8, 1894 [TAEM 146:907]), and the recording of the presidential campaign phonograms of 1908 was said to be “the most remarkable thing that has happened in phonography in the last five years” (“What Bryan and Taft Advertising Means to You,” Edison Phonograph Monthly 6:9 [Sept. 1908], 8). 7 Eric W. Rothenbuhler and John Durham Peters, “Defining Phonography: An Experiment in Theory,” Musical Quarterly 81 (1997), 242-64. The shift from analog to digital sound mediation has admittedly had far-reaching consequences, but to restrict the definition of “phonography” as Rothenbuhler and Peters propose would strip our language of the one single-word term potentially broad enough to cover the whole gamut of technologies from tinfoil to mp3. We recognize that digital photography is still a form of photography, even though the photographic negative is physically very unlike the data stored in the memory of a digital camera. Why should phonography be any different? I suggest that what we are experiencing now is not post-phonography but digital phonography, the latest variation on an old theme, constituting neither more nor less of a disjuncture than has the digitization of text documents or images or telephone signals or anything else. To argue otherwise would mean arbitrarily subordinating the many continuities in phonographic practice to a technical detail that in other cases has not been accorded the same degree of importance. 8 Yitzchak Dumiel (Isaac Sterling), “What is Phonography?” http://www.phonography.org/whatis.html, accessed Feb. 27, 2004. 9 Jaap Kunst, who coined the term “ethnomusicology,” claims that it “could never have grown into an independent science if the gramophone had not been invented” (Jaap Kunst, Ethnomusicology: A study of its nature, its problems, methods and representative personalities to which is added a bibliography, reprint of 3rd Edition [The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974], 12). 10 Dennis Tedlock writes: “Earlier field workers…were hampered in their recognition of the poetic qualities of spoken narratives by the fact that handwritten dictation was their only means of collection…. But now that the tape-recorder has become practical and accurate as a field instrument, it is possible to capture true performances and to listen closely, as many times as may be necessary, to all their sounds and silences” (Dennis Tedlock, Finding the Center: Narrative Poetry of the Zuni Indians [New York: Dial Press, 1972], xix). Working from taped performances, Tedlock found that Zuni narrative retained more of its power in translation if it was formatted not as prose but as poetry, with its pauses translated by line breaks and dots and spacing between lines and its shifts in pitch and volume shown through other conventions. Without the tape recorder, however, he would not have had access to this kind of detail and could not have incorporated it into his translations. 11 Albert Lord writes: “Before the advent of electrical recording machines, written texts of actual performances—not from dictation—were possible only in a very limited number of cases…. If the singer of oral epic always sang a song in exactly the same words, it would be possible, of course, to ask him to repeat the performance a number of times and thus to fill in on the second or third singing what was lost in notating the first singing. But bards never repeat a song exactly, as we have seen. This method, although it has been used often, never results in a text that truly represents any real performance” (Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales [Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1964], 125). Once again, sound-recording technology had created conditions in which texts of “real performances” could be made, allowing Lord and his mentor Milman Parry to reveal emergent qualities in the performance of Serbo-Croatian oral epic, specifically its reliance on formulas rather than verbatim memorization—the core principle of oral-formulaic theory. 12 “Spoken language data for discourse analysis consist in the first instance of recordings (audio or video) of people talking” (Deborah Cameron, Working with Spoken Discourse [London, Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 2001], 19). 13 Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Folklore’s Crisis,” Journal of American Folklore 111 (1998), 309. 14 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Folklore’s Crisis,” 315. 15 Milman Parry’s work on South Slavic epic would have been “inconceivable” before phonography, Kirshenblatt-Gimblett argues, “not only because sound recording allowed him to capture a performance and listen to it many times for the purposes of a detailed analysis not possible otherwise, but also because it encouraged him to conceptualize epic as a phonic event in the first place” (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Folklore’s Crisis,” 314). 16 Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Folklore’s Crisis,” 318. 17 Erika Brady, A Spiral Way: How the Phonograph Changed Ethnography (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1999), 6-7. 18 Erika Brady, The Box That Got the Flourishes: The Cylinder Phonograph in Folklore Fieldwork, 1890-1937 (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, Bloomington, 1985). 19 Cathleen C. Flanagan, “The Use of Commercial Sound Recordings in Scholarly Research,” ARSC Journal 11 (1979), 11. 20 Day does show some interest in the exigencies of the recording industry, their effect on the recorded repertoire, and so forth, but for the most part it is the documented musical performance that engages his attention: his book’s subtitle is “Listening to Musical History.” Like Erika Brady, he discusses how the practices and limitations of early phonography “distorted” its subject matter and seems to hope that his readers will actually put this knowledge to use in their listening, although he spends most of his time on the comparatively “undistorted” phonograms of later periods (Timothy Day, A Century of Recorded Music: Listening to Musical History [New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2000], esp. 6-12). 21 Robert Gireud Cogswell, Jokes in Blackface: A Discographic Folklore Study (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, Bloomington, 1984), 37. 22 Cogswell, Jokes in Blackface, 37-8. 23 Risto Pekka Pennanen, “The Nationalization of Ottoman Popular Music in Greece,” Ethnomusicology 48 (Winter 2004), 5. He does, however, believe the study of such material has a place in ethnomusicology; see his “Commercial Recordings and Music Research,” East European Meetings in Ethnomusicology 7 (2000), 101-4. 24 Archie Green, “Sound Recordings, Use and Challenge,” in Handbook of American Folklore, ed. Richard M. Dorson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), 440. 25 Roland Gelatt, The Fabulous Phonograph: 1877-1977, second revised edition (New York: Collier Books, 1977). 26 Oliver Read and Walter L. Welch, From Tin Foil to Stereo: Evolution of the Phonograph, second edition (Indianapolis: Howard W. Sams & Co., 1976). In 1994, a pared-down but somewhat more readable version of this book appeared under the authorship of Walter Welch and Leah Burt: Walter L. Welch and Leah Brodbeck Stenzel Burt, From Tinfoil to Stereo, 1877-1929 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994). 27 Allen Koenigsberg, The Patent History of the Phonograph, 1877-1912, U. S. Patent Bi-Centennial Edition (Brooklyn, New York: APM Press, 1991). An earlier edition had appeared the previous year. This directory is even handier today than when it was first published, since the full text of any of the patents it lists can now be called up by its number and viewed online through the website of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html, accessed March 30, 2004). 28 Timothy C. Fabrizio and George F. Paul, The Talking Machine: An Illustrated Compendium, 1877-1929 (Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing Co., 1997); Antique Phonograph Gadgets, Gizmos, and Gimmicks (Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing Co., 1999); Discovering Antique Phonographs. (Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing Co., 2000); Phonographs With Flair: A Century of Style in Sound Reproduction (Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing Co., 2001); Antique Phonograph Advertising: An Illustrated History (Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing Co., 2002); Antique Phonograph Accessories & Contraptions (Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing Co., 2003); Phonographica: The Early History of Recorded Sound Observed (Atglen, Pennsylvania: Schiffer Publishing Co., 2004). 29 In practice, these terms are used somewhat loosely. For another set of definitions, see Brian Rust, The American Record Label Book (New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House, 1978), 335-6. 30 Ted Fagan and William R. Moran, The Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings, Pre-Matrix Series (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1983), 117. In fact, I have two copies of this disc, both of which sound like the same take. No take number is visible on either, which usually indicates take number one. However, the discography lists only take two as having been released. 31 Ed Kahn, “Will Roy Hearne: Peripheral Folklore Scholar,” Western Folklore 23:3 (July 1964) 173-9, reprinted in JEMF Quarterly 14:51 (Autumn 1978) 113-117. 32 For an introduction to what I would call the paleophonography of cylinders, see Peter Shambarger, “Cylinder Records: An Overview,” ARSC Journal 26 (Fall 1995), 133-61. 33 Rust, American Record Label Book, 9. 34 The key discographies available for the periods and topics to be covered here are Ted Fagan and William R. Moran, The Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings, Matrix Series 1 through 4999 (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1986); and their Encyclopedic Discography, Pre-Matrix Series; Tim Brooks and Brian Rust, Columbia Master Book Discography (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1999); Paul Charosh, Berliner Gramophone Records, American Issues 1892-1900 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1995); Allen Koenigsberg, Edison Cylinder Records, 1889-1912 (New York: Stellar Productions, 1969) and 2nd edition (Brooklyn: APM Press, 1988); Ernie Bayly and Michael Kinnear, The Zon-o-phone Record: A discography of recordings produced by the International Zonophone Company and associated companies in Europe and the Americas, 1901-1903 (Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia: Michael S. Kinnear, 2001); Allen Koenigsberg, “In the Pink: A Lambert Discography,” Antique Phonograph Monthly 6:8 (1981), 4-10; part two (five-inch concert cylinders), Antique Phonograph Monthly 6:9 (1981), 8-9; J. R. Manzo, “A Lambert Sampler,” New Amberola Graphic 32 (Spring 1980), 4-7; Christian Zwarg’s Edison cylinder list in the Truesound Online Discographies, http://www.truesoundtransfers.de/disco.htm; Kenneth M. Lorenz, Two Minute Brown Wax and XP Cylinder Records of the Columbia Phonograph Company (Wilmington, Delaware: Kastlemusick, 1981); see also the two-part pdf files listing of Columbia “XP” Cylinders (1901-1909) at http://www.mainspringpress.com/articles.html. There are further reference books dedicated specifically to changes in the designs of Victor and Columbia disc labels over time (Michael W. Sherman, Collector’s Guide to Victor Records [Dallas: Monarch Record Enterprises, 1992]; Michael W. Sherman and Kurt R. Nauck III, Note the Notes: An Illustrated History of the Columbia 78 rpm Record Label, 1901-1958 [New Orleans: Monarch Record Enterprises, 1998]), and yet others dealing with the histories of multiple “labels,” in both senses of the word (Allan Sutton and Kurt Nauck, American Record Labels and Companies: An Encyclopedia (1891-1943) [Denver, Colorado: Mainspring Press, 2000], containing a CD-ROM with label images; Rust, American Record Label Book, is both less comprehensive and less reliable. A somewhat outdated equivalent for cylinders is Duane D. Deakins, Cylinder Records, 2nd ed. [Stockton, California: Duane D. Deakins, 1958]). These, too, can be useful in determining when, where, how, and by whom particular phonograms were produced. Many discographies and “label” books also include histories of the recording companies they cover. Turning-points in company histories often correspond to changes in numbering systems and the physical characteristics of their products, so there is a lot of overlap between these areas of inquiry. However, there has also been some important work on company history not combined with a discography, such as Tim Brooks’ writings on Columbia’s prerecorded cylinder business in the 1890s (Tim Brooks, “Columbia Records in the 1890’s: Founding the Record Industry,” ARSC Journal 10 [1978], 5-36; “A Directory to Columbia Recording Artists of the 1890’s,” ARSC Journal 11 [1979], 102-143). 35 Tim Gracyk, “The Life and Writing Career of Ulysses ‘Jim’ Walsh,” Victrola and 78 Journal 13 (Autumn 1998) 44-59. 36 Randy McNutt, Cal Stewart: Your Uncle Josh (Fairfield, Ohio: Weathervane Books, 1981); Frank Hoffmann, Billy Murray: The Phonograph Company’s First Great Recording Artist (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1997). 37 Tim Gracyk, Popular American Recording Pioneers, 1895-1925 (New York, London, Oxford: Haworth Press, 2000). 38 Tim Brooks, Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890-1919 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004). 39 Tim Brooks, “The Artifacts of Recording History: Creators, Users, Losers, Keepers,” ARSC Journal 11:1 (1979), 21. 40 Guy Marco, ed. Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound in the United States (New York: Garland, 1993), xviii. 41 Michael Chanan, Repeated Takes: A Short History of Recording and its Effects on Music (London and New York: Verso, 1995). 42 Andre Millard, America on Record: A History of Recorded Sound (Cambridge, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995), vii. 43 Millard, America on Record, vii. For a phonographicist response, see Ron Dethlefson, review of America on Record, by Andre Millard, In the Groove 21:6 (June 1996), 7. 44 Kenney, Recorded Music. 45 David Morton, Off the Record: The Technology and Culture of Sound Recording in America (New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London: Rutgers University Press, 2000). 46 Gitelman, Scripts. 48 John M. Picker, Victorian Soundscapes (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 110-45; Steven Connor, Dumbstruck: A Cultural History of Ventriloquism (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 362-93. 49 Tim Brooks, review of Recorded Music in American Life, by William Kenney, ARSC Journal 31 (Fall 2001), 308. 50 Tim Fabrizio, review of The Audible Past, by Jonathan Sterne, ARSC Journal 34 (Fall 2003) 225-6. 51 Steve Frangos, “Large Record Collectors: The Unrecognized Authorities,” Resound: A Quarterly of the Archives of Traditional Music 10 (April 1991), 1. 52 Cogswell, Jokes in Blackface, 51. It should be noted that he defines discography as “the study of the phonograph industry and its products” (28). For him, it spans “the historical investigation of the phonograph and the recording industry, the compilation of data about recordings, and the improvement of sound collections and archives” (29). This is roughly what I am calling phonographics as a whole. However, his own methodology is closely tied to “discography” in the narrower sense of phonographic bibliography and classification. 53 Kenney, Recorded Music, 210, n. 41. The note refers to some comments on Cal Stewart’s “Uncle Josh” recordings (33). Probably this listening experience is also the basis of his apparent familiarity with Len Spencer and Ada Jones. 54 Sterne, Audible Past, 395, n. 45. 55 Day, Century of Recorded Music, 244. 56 Kenney, Recorded Music, 36. 57 Sterne, Audible Past, 244-5. Although he does not cite any specific titles, he apparently listened to Roosevelt’s Inaugural Parade (which actually describes the inaugural parade rather than the inauguration itself) and In a Clock Store. 58 See, for instance, Brooks, Lost Sounds; Fabrizio and Paul, Antique Phonograph Advertising, 9, 51-8; Gracyk, Popular American Recording Pioneers, 51-2, 70-1; Michael G. Corenthal, Download 256.87 Kb. Share with your friends:
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