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The A side of Paramount 4004, both sides of which were electrically recorded in 1924 by Orlando Marsh, who built his own recording equipment, and operated out of Chicago, Illinois.

His facility, known as Marsh Laboratories, was one of the first independent recording studios. He offered his services both to local talent wishing to make custom records for family and friends, and also furnished master recordings for several labels whose acts were in the Chicago area when new recordings were needed. There are a number of exceedingly rare sides by Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver amongst Marsh's recordings.

The Marsh studio was also the first facility to record the radio programme AMOS 'N' ANDY.

Marsh started his own label, Autograph, in 1924, and with it, was the first label to use nothing but electrically recorded masters for its output. This was also stated on their labels, over two years before any mention of it was to be seen on records from any other label.

Marsh's recording machine was reasonably portable, permitting making recordings on location in such venues as the Tivoli Theatre in Chicago. It was there that Jesse Crawford made what must surely be the first electrical recordings of a theatre pipe organ, in 1924. The records were released on Autograph.

Here's Crawford at the Tivoli's organ console; Marsh can be seen on the right, on the Tivoli's stage, at the controls of his recording machine.



Here is one of Marsh's recordings of Crawford's successor as the Tivoli's organist, Milton Charles.



One thing I noticed in the dead wax of the record, is an encircled M logo, on both sides, no doubt a mark identifying them as Marsh recordings.



Just like many of Victor's records of the same era, this sounds 'on key' to me at 76.5 rpm, hence I have transferred this at that speed.

Click on the Paramount label to hear it.

I was just reading this chapter in Allan Sutton's recently issued volume, "Recording the Twenties".

By the way, I think he gets it a bit wrong in recounting Brunswick's early electric history (explored in another thread recently). He states that the Chicago studio was shut down for conversion to electric recording in February (I think), and didn't reopen until mid-summer. Rust, however, states that Isham Jones's recordings of Riverboat Shuffle (acoustic), Ida I Do, and Sweet Georgia Brown (both electric) were recorded in Chicago, respectively in March, and then in May-June of '25 (these are approximate dates; my Rust is back home at the moment), so clearly the studio closed later than February for the converison, which took much less time than he supposes. The earliest Chicago Brunswick electrics weren't nearly as bad as he states, furthermore...Those recorded later in the year in New York were much worse from a technical standpoint.

The Marsh recordings are tied with those of Herbert Berliner here in Canada in the sweepstakes for the first electricals to be sold to the general public. And of course Canadian Victor " told all" in banner advertisements in June 1925, and their first electricals were labeled as such from June onwards. Speaking of the Sutton book, I'm told that Sutton cites my article about the introduction of electrical recording in Canada in his bibliography. I wish he'd used my ARSC presentation instead of the earlier research!

Jim

I listened to this recording earlier today, a great transfer and an interesting background to it to. I didn't realise that electric recordings were out in the public arena at such an early date. I had heard that there were Columbia electrics out there around '25 / '26 but this pushes the bar back to 1924. Given that the equipment / microphones must have been very primative the recording is extreemely good AND clear.

THanks for posting and supplying that information.

RJ

The recording with jesse crawford in 1924 with Marsh on the stage was done at the Chicago theatre, not the tivoli.

The first issued electric recording afaik was the memorial service from Westminster Abbey in 1919, issued by HMV. Recorded with two carbon microphones and relayed by telephone lines to the HMV studios. Issued on two sides on a 12" record. British members, please correct me if I'm wrong.