The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

In another thread, Valecnik was valiantly trying to provide evidence that Thos. A. Edison did indeed put decent music on his Diamond Discs...

And the you-tube links he furnished were indeed encouraging...


So, a while later, I'm surfing e-bay to see what I might see, and I find THIS:



( I know Edison wasn't the only label with recordings of questionable merit, but they almost seem to have taken pride in cornering the market ! )

Okay, maybe I'm missing the point, and perhaps this is a novelty solo... (gosh I hope so.... )

What next - the "Meditation" from Thais, played on solo saw ?

There's more like that in the Edison DD catalog. Something like the Lucia Sextette played on xylophone (or banjo or whatever) seems like something carried over from the days of 2 min cylinders.

Strange to continue the practice on a substantial medium such as the Edison Diamond Disc.

De Soto Frank wrote: What next - the "Meditation" from Thais, played on solo saw ?

Don't be surprised if you encounter exactly that.

Although I cannot fathom why, apparently Louis Frank Chiha ("Signor Frisco") was a popular Edison performer based on the number of discs I've come across. I can almost understand parlor songs and such performed on a xylophone, but a selection from an opera? IMHO, ouch.

Knowing that Edison was almost completely deaf, and also knowing that he had the final say about what was recorded and issued, it is quite possible that the xylophone was one of the instruments he COULD hear (or feel thru his teeth biting on the edge of the phonograph).
Mind you, xylophones were immensely popular from the middle 10s right up to the late twenties, when the vibraharp aka vibraphone took over. Probably because the acoustic recording process was able to capture them well.
After 1930 there was only one musician who stayed famous for playing the xylophone: Mr. Red Norvo. The history of the vibraphone is legend.

syncopeter wrote: After 1930 there was only one musician who stayed famous for playing the xylophone: Mr. Red Norvo. The history of the vibraphone is legend.

Lionel Hampton and Milt Jackson???

Sean

Edison surely had a "questionable" taste in music.

As many of you would know, He called Lucrezia Bori as "No Talent", Rachmaninoff "A Pounder", even they were his own Recording artists. Also, he would demand that a harp accompaniment would be used on a Vaudeville number, or accompanying a Operatic air with only 5-6 string instruments to give a "clarity" on voices without "tremolo".

I also read somewhere that Edison wrote very unkind things about Enrico Caruso (it made me really shocked), which went something like this ; "No Tune, Is this what they call a true Italian talent? If Italians like this guy, they would enjoy small-pox."

By the way, I heard that he made a recording of himself playing the piano on a cylinder - anyone who knows about it?

Edison recorded his voice on cylinder 3756, Let Us Not Forget. I have that record and listened to it. After listening to it, I prefer Caruso, but i'll keep my cylinder.
Harvey Kravitz

I was writing about xylophones. What Adrian Rollini, Hampton and Jackson did for the vibraphone is stuff for legends. Red Norvo was afaik the only jazz musician to keep playing the xylophone.

Even his wife< the delightful Mina, was guoted as a saying " Papa never seems to like the great artists.." Mina should have used her influence more . She was in later years on the Board of the New York Philharmonic, I seem to recall reading . But there is another side to this saga: Edison's public seems to have bought the stuff! In some ways he was " preaching to the converted " in terms of musical taste .
The oddest thing they ever did was to omit the names of the artists on the early diamond discs, because Edison had the notion that the performance and quality of recording would carry the day. Even he had to to cave in and list the artist on the record jacket ( and soon on the labels.) I think the publicity department brought him around on this fairly soon. I have always wondered why Walter Miller , his director of recording , didn't have a nervous breakdown.
The pounder story has been told and re-told but I wonder if it's been sort of buffed up in the telling. I can't imagine Edison being quite THAT crass. This story has been cited as the reason that Rachmaninoff crossed over to Victor, but the real reason was a) he hated that foul upright piano that that they had him record with, and b) the fact that the company issued a couple of takes that Rachmaninoff hadn't approved. I still can't believe they had him record on an upright, and I'll bet that was the idea of one T.A.E.

Jim