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Date 1916. Frances Densmore recording the music of a Blackfoot chief onto a phonograph.

Fascinating photo...


Can anyone tell from the machine if they are making a two or four-minute recording ?

( To my eyes, that looks like an Opera, which was a four-minute machine ? )

It's an Edison 'School' Phonograph, which is a metal-cased 'Opera'. The Native is Mountain Chief, a Piegan Blackfoot.

And because it's a School Model (Opera), it would be a four minute recording. Jerry

Thank you for the replies !

This is an Edison School Phonograph. It would be equipped with a four minute recorder, and for awhile the black wax four minute blanks. An attachment was added that goes into the reproducer holder, that contains a small, carrier eye for the recorder. Frances Densmore career went back to 1907 as an Ethnographer for the Smithsonian's Bureau of American Ethnology. Some of the tribes she worked with include the Chippewa, the Mandan, Hidatsa, the Sioux, the northern Pawnee of Oklahoma, the Papago of Arizona, Indians of Washington and British Columbia, Winnebago and Menominee of Wisconsin, Pueblo Indians of the southwest, the Seminoles of Florida,[4] and even the Kuna Indians of Panama. Her cylinder recordings are now located at the Library of Congress. In case you don't know, the sound recordings division is now in National Audio-Visual Conservation Center Library of Congress  
Public Library
Address: 19053 Mt Pony Rd, Culpeper, VA 22701

I have helped produce a similar series of cylinders,starting in about 2003, and ongoing in conjunction with Pablo Helguera, the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim. The cylinders contain dialects from Central and South America, stories about the Quakers, and Shakers, Friedrich Froebel, and Francis Foster Jenkins. It also has several cylinders of Chief Marie Smith Jones, the last speaker of the Eyak language. These Anthropological-Ethnographic Cylinders contained therein number about 400, the project is still added too from time to time. http://www.stanleypickergallery.org/pro ... elguera-2/ There is much added to this now.

Francis Foster Jenkins---any connection to Florence Foster Jenkins, the Pride of Wilkes-Barre and the nation's best worst soprano?

That would be the one, The horrible opera singer, that would pack a house!
It was a performance Peter Dilg, Myself and Pablo Helguera did at the Gramercy Theater in New York for The Museum of Modern Art. Each phonograph had a personality, and told a story.

http://kcstudio.org/event/artists-talk- ... languages/ This is the next addition to the Conservatory of Dying languages. We will be using the original professional recorder for this session.

We are in Kansas City and adding tomorrow another addition to the Conservatory of Dying languages. Part of this collection, which contains several hundred cylinders are now on display at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. This collection of voices is a modern collection like Densmore, and Fewkes and all of brown wax composition cylinders, the blanks were made by myself. This session tomorrow will be the first time the Edison studio recorder is used for this collection.