Lost sounds : Blacks and the birth of the recording industry, 1890-1919 / Tim Brooks ; appendix of Caribbean and South American recordings by Dick Spottswood.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brooks, Tim.

Contributor:

Spottswood, Richard K. (Richard Keith)

Series:

Music in American life

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African Americans--Music--History and criticism.

African Americans.

African Americans--Music.

Sound recording industry--History.

Sound recording industry.

History.

Music--United States--History and criticism.

Music.

United States.

Physical Description:

x, 634 pages : illustrations ; 27 cm.

Place of Publication:

Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2004]

Summary:

The first in-depth history of the involvement of African Americans in the earliest years of recording, this book examines the first three decades of sound recording in the United States, charting the surprising role black artists played in the period leading up to the Jazz Age. Applying more than thirty years of scholarship, Tim Brooks identifies key black artists who recorded commercially in a wide range of genres and provides revealing biographies of some forty of these audio pioneers. Brooks assesses the careers and recordings of George W. Johnson, Bert Williams, George Walker, Noble Sissle, Eubie Blake, the Fisk Jubilee Singers, W. C. Handy, James Reese Europe, Wilbur Sweatman, Harry T. Burleigh, Roland Hayes, Booker T. Washington, and boxing champion Jack Johnson, as well as a host of lesser-known voices.

Many of these pioneers faced a difficult struggle to be heard in an era of rampant discrimination and "the color line," and their stories illuminate the forces -- both black and white -- that gradually allowed African Americans greater entree into the mainstream American entertainment industry. The role played by the new mass medium of sound recording in enabling change is also explored. Because they were viewed as "novelty" or "folk" artists, nearly all of these African Americans were allowed to record in their own distinctive styles, and in practically every genre: popular music, ragtime, jazz, cabaret, classical, spoken word, poetry, and more. The sounds they preserved reflect the evolving black culture of that tumultuous and creative period. The book also discusses how many of these historic recordings are withheld from students and scholars today because of stringent U.S. copyright laws. Lost Sounds includes Brooks's selected discography of CD reissues, and an appendix by Dick Spottswood describing early recordings by black artists in the Caribbean and South America.

Contents:

George W. Johnson, the first Black recording artist. The early years ; Talking machines! ; The trial of George W. Johnson

Black recording artists, 1890-99. The Unique Quartette ; Louis "Bebe" Vasnier : recording in nineteenth-century New Orleans ; The Standard Quartette and South before the War ; The Kentucky Jubilee Singers ; Bert Williams and George Walker ; Cousins and DeMoss ; Thomas Craig

Black recording artists, 1900-1909. The Dinwiddie Quartet ; Carroll Clark ; Charley Case : passing for White? ; The Fisk Jubilee Singers and the popularization of Negro spirituals ; Polk Miller and his Old South Quartette

Black recording artists, 1910-15. Jack Johnson ; Daisy Tapley ; Apollo Jubilee Quartette ; Edward Sterling Wright and the poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar ; James Reese Europe ; Will Marion Cook and the Afro-American Folk Song Singers ; Dan Kildare and Joan Sawyer's Persian Garden Orchestra ; The Tuskegee Institute Singers ; The Right Quintette

Black recording artists, 1916-19. Wilbur C. Sweatman : disrepecting Wilbur ; Opal D. Cooper ; Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake ; Ford T. Dabney : syncopation over Broadway ; W.C. Handy ; Roland Hayes ; The Four Harmony Kings ; Broome Special Phonograph Records ; Edward H. Boatner ; Harry T. Burleigh ; Florence Cole-Talbert ; R. Nathaniel Dett ; Clarence Cameron White

Other early recordings ; Miscellaneous recordings.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [589]-594), discography (pages [581]-587), and index.

ISBN:

0252028503

OCLC:

51511207