HISTORIC 1893 brown wax cylinder VERY EARLY RECORD! John Yorke AtLee & Fred Gaisberg piano Phonogram

Описание: This cylinder is very early--1893!

It is well-preserved, as evident by the clarity of that spoken introduction!

Some lyrics:

Wise and happy as a jay bird
that's sittin' on the limb or the
summer duck who's waddling
to the bank to take a swim
Or a turkey gobbling......
So why should I keep from whistling when it is?
And it is...When I give two girls a lip...is like 13...oh I whistle...

The studio was in Washington D. C.,

Piano is played by "Professor" Fred Gaisberg--he was not a "professor."

This cylinder has historic value since it is so early (1893) though records with whistling can be tedious. This at least has some singing!

A few words can be "made out" though not every line.

John Yorke AtLee was born in Washington, D. C., on March 22, 1853.

He worked in the nation's capital as a government clerk when the Columbia Phonograph Company was incorporated in January 1889.

AtLee was one of the first commercially successful recording artists, making mostly cylinders in the 1890s.

He sang but was best known as a whistler. An 1893 issue of The Phonogram states, "Mr. John Y. AtLee continues to afford great pleasure by his rendering of music produced by artistic whistling." He recorded earlier than 1893.

AtLee's signature tune was "The Mocking Bird."

He died in Philadelphia on November 24, 1933.

Now for some history of the industry's early days.

Thomas A. Edison invented the phonograph in 1877 but the technology had to be refined before recordings could be marketed.

The industry was essentially born when sales franchises were established in various regions of the United States in early 1889 for Jesse H. Lippincott's North American Phonograph Company, a syndicate begun several months earlier.

The Proceedings of the 1890 Convention of Local Phonograph Companies establish that the industry was truly in its infancy in 1890. Specific recording artists are not named in the transcript of the proceedings.

There were no "hit" records as early as 1890.

Edison at first though his invention would best serve businessmen, especially for dictation. Edison himself recorded messages for friends via cylinders. But some companies shrewdly promoted cylinder technology for entertainment, and the general public eagerly deposited coins into the machines set up where crowds gathered for amusement.

Because brown wax cylinders wore out quickly, demand for newly made cylinders was steady, including for new titles so the public would not weary of selections. This was before individuals had machines in homes. Only by the mid-1890s would a few companies make machines specifically for the home entertainment market, such as Columbia's Type G Baby Grand model.

Page 17 of the June 1907 issue of Edison Phonograph Monthly quotes an 1889 memorandum in which Edison employee Charles Batchelor writes of "enormous orders for musical cylinders."

Edison replied to Batchelor, "We are making about 50 [records] per day and I am rigging up to furnish 300 daily. Please send orders (written) to Laboratory. We will book them, fill the orders by sending them to Phono. Co., and make charges so that we will not be out of pocket."

The Edison trade publication adds analysis, citing current production figures of 1907: "As we have manufactured as many as 110,000 Records in a single day recently, it follows that for every one produced when this memo was written, 2,200 have since been turned out in the same space of time!"

Because of recordings shared on the internet, people today have an opportunity to hear early surviving recordings, including white wax and brown wax cylinders of the early 1890s.

Any collector who owns a copy of a pre-1895 record generally owns the sole surviving copy of that record. Tinfoil recordings of earlier years, which were not commercial products, are not played since to play them is to destroy them.

Most pre-1895 cylinders have deteriorated to such an extent that their contents are almost unrecognizable. Some brown wax cylinders and Berliner discs of the late 1890s that have survived are not much better (in fact, clean cylinders from this period on the right equipment deliver a more satisfying sound than Berliner discs of comparable condition).

Virtually nobody today plays records of the 1890s for the joy of listening--the sound can be unpleasant. Some superb musicians perform on records of the 1890s, but technology did not do justice to what was happening in the studio. Primitive!

Deterioration of original copies (mold) makes assessing performances even more difficult.

Nonetheless, such early records are valuable because they open a window into an era, allowing us to hear how memorable songs were interpreted long ago, helping us understand how the industry got on its feet, permitting us to hear, at the beginning of their careers, some artists who would become important.


HISTORIC 1893 brown wax cylinder VERY EARLY RECORD! John Yorke AtLee & Fred Gaisberg piano Phonogram