sound recording

Fadings: low fidelity

Disc 1: the United States ends its neutrality and enters the Great War. Track by track, one side of one historical record sings:

Disc 2: in the same date range, the title of a song has promised its hearers a charm, and those who made the song audible have pledged their fidelity to its magic. But what ever remains of the music of time? Little did they seem to know, Madame Case and Mr. Edison and the performer of the obbligato, how breakable records are.

https://archive.org/details/edison-82078_01_2460

 

Audio: Stephen Crane

At the Library of Congress’s wonderful National Jukebox site (new last May) I recently discovered this item, “Coming Home from Coney Isle,” by a duo, Ada Jones and Len Spencer, who recorded a whole stack of dialect novelty songs in 1905 and 1906.

http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/1068

When I heard the disdainful “Aw, gee” and the plaintive, “Will I open the window?” I thought, “This sounds just like the dialogue in Maggie, A Girl of the Streets.” Well, it turns out that that was no accident. Your proof:

http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/recordings/detail/id/6020

— a song called “Chimmie and Maggie at the Hippodrome.”

Americanists may want to give this site a listen.