The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

While re-reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's excellent debut book "This side of Paradise" (1920) I noticed an interesting thing.
Something that I haven't thought of before, since I haven't read it since phonographs took over my life.

In at least three different pages he mentions "Graphophone" like "playing on the Graphophone" "the music came from the Graphophone"
Not once does he write about "The Victrola" or "The Phonograph" only "Graphophone".
And its different settings & places, so it is definitely several Graphophones he writes about.

A bit interesting, since he was an American and by the end of the teens, Victrola had a massive grip on the US-market.

For those of you who doesn't know about F. Scott, he is considered to be the most prominent writer of the jazz-age. Or any age for that matter!
And in my humble opinion there is no writer that has ever described the era & the music that we Talking Machine Nuts love so much so greatly & with so much life.

Interesting observation. It has long been common wisdom that broadly speaking, Edison products were most popular with rural folks, Columbia products with city folks (with the exception of what was sold by the mail order houses), and Victor with the more well-heeled in general. While Fitzgerald may have been exposed to any of the above, certainly, I would have guessed Victor. Of course, he may not have been so finely attuned to what it was he was listening to at any given time, and his earliest or most profound exposure may have been to a Graphophone, hence they are all "Graphophones".

I always cringe slightly during the flood scene near the end of 'O Brother Where Art Thou' when a Victor morning glory horn floats by . . . more correctly, it should have been an Edison IMHO.

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