A historic recording session of sorts took place this month in the midwestern state of Illinois. A rock band called "Moe" put down some tracks in a studio there. But as we hear in this report, they did it by stepping back to the 1890s when Americans were enthralled by the music on...cylinders.
From the 1890s through the middle of the first decade of the 20th century, Americans were fascinated by the sounds coming out of the newly-invented phonograph. The phonograph played cylinders made of various materials like wax and celluloid. Early recordings were made using nothing but the pressure of sound. The sound moved a diaphragm and its attached stylus which cut grooves into the cylinder. Like this one: "Well, I gone and done it! Yessir, Nancy nagged at me till I bought a computer. Well, I happened to hear about computers while I was over at Emory Hopkins' grocery store."
What? Computers? On a cylinder recording? You bet. This cylinder was recorded last year by sound engineer Shawn Borri of La Moille, Illinois. Mr. Borri, heard on the cylinder, is president of the North American Phonograph Company, a recording studio which houses a modern digital system, but which also makes cylinders for collectors, and is now recording original works. "That was a test recording of myself doing Uncle Josh who was a character who made records from 1897 to 1919 when he passed away, his name was Cal Stewart, and I picked up on that," he said. "A lot of collectors say it sounds like him, so I carried on the character."
Mr. Borri has recorded modern day groups like the rock band "Moe", and country groups like "The Silver Pickers", heard in this recording made last year at a fair in La Moille, Illinois, Mr. Borri's home. "Many musicians have the idea that for natural sound, the wax cylinder has a more natural, flat tone, more true to life in some ways than electronic recording," he said. "I don't know where they get, but that's what they think, and it's pretty good for me."
For the first couple of decades following the invention the phonograph in 1877 by Thomas Edison, cylinders were the gold standard of recorded sound. And yes, Thomas Edison himself, did say that the first words he ever recorded were those of a famous nursery rhyme. "The first words I ever spoke into the original phonograph was a piece of practical poetry, 'Mary had a little lamb whose fleece was white as snow, and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go,'" he said.
Originally, Thomas Edison believed that the phonograph would be used for business applications like dictation machines. Edison and his rivals who included the cousin of Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone couldn't generate enough income from business sales. So after some technological improvements in the acoustic recording process, they turned to the world of entertainment.
This remarkable surviving recording of soprano Teffie Stewart of New York, made in January of 1889, hinted that profits could lie in musical cylinders. Coin-operated phonographs in arcades, saloons and ferries began turning substantial profits as audiences flocked to hear this new wonder and the performers on the cylinders. When further refinements in the technology of phonographs dropped the price to affordable levels for American consumers, the commercial recorded music industry was born.
Groups like the "Premier Quartet" which included John Bieling, Steve Porter, William F. Hooley and star vocalist Billy Murray; bands, singers, instrumentalists, and monologists, in fact, almost anyone walking the streets where studios were located, could suddenly find themselves as recording stars.
George Kipper, librarian and cataloger at the Library of Congress's Recorded Sound Section, says even whistlers, like this one, identified only as "Mrs. Shaw", became big stars. He recounts the tale of one whistler who led a double life. "We had a government clerk by day, who was a whistler at night, who was the world's first famous name recording artist," he said. "His name was John York Atlee, and he was born in 1842 and died, circa 1910. He cut quite a few records for the cylinder companies. He was gone by 1899 from the recording scene."
But others like the banjoist Fred Van Eps emerged to record cylinders and become famous. The Edison company established in-house bands which recorded everything from marches and polkas, to light classical selections and waltzes.