A BETTER LIFE - The Collectors
Interview of Collectors
A BETTER LIFE - The Collectors
Society and The Phonograph: Part 2 of My Conversation with Jack Stanley.
Step back in time with our latest podcast episode as we dive into the revolutionary world of the phonograph and how it forever changed society's interaction with sound. Thomas Edison’s invention began as an audacious experiment, sparking skepticism among the public who initially viewed it as a clever trick rather than a genuine technological breakthrough. We explore the fascinating trajectory of the phonograph's evolution, revealing the path from its early days of skepticism to its widespread acceptance in homes worldwide.
In this episode, we uncover how the phonograph not only transformed individual lives by making recorded music accessible but also acted as a social catalyst. The incorporation of music into the home changed family dynamics and cultural interactions. We examine the adventurous spirit of Edison, his challenges with public perception, and how he ultimately conquered these hurdles through innovation and perseverance.
Listen as we take you through the whimsical challenges Edison faced, including the unexpected resistance from the public and experts alike, who questioned whether sound recording was even possible. You’ll hear about the dazzling transition from simple tinfoil recordings to the rich experience of wax cylinders, which propelled the phonograph into popular culture.
As the phonograph evolved, so too did music. The emergence of jazz and its cultural significance is discussed, highlighting the societal implications of this vibrant genre and its roots in American history. We also touch on Edison's marketing strategies to promote the phonograph, including the rare Edison Realism Test designed to immerse listeners in the experience of sound.
Listen in and get a taste of how the phonograph served as both a historical artifact and a reflection of the changes in human experience related to music and interaction. Each story and anecdote shared reveals just how deeply the phonograph has influenced the way we hear, produce, and engage with sound in our lives today. Don’t miss this journey through time as we unravel the rich legacy of Edison's phonograph. We invite you to subscribe, leave a review, and share your thoughts on your own experiences with music and sound in modern life!
The first words I spoke in the original pornograph, a little piece of practical poetry. Mary had a little lamb. Its feet were quite as slow, and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.
Speaker 2:Hello everybody and welcome back to A Better Life the Collectors. I thank you all for such a warm reception. The last few episodes had gotten in between our first talk with Jack Stanley and also the tour I got from Brett of his unbelievable collection and shop. Jack is back with us today. He's part of this multi-part conversation we're having regarding phonographs and today Welcome Jack. Well, thank you Nice to be here.
Speaker 2:Nice to have you back and we look forward to a lot of these talks. I know you're busy, but we'll always have time, I hope, yeah.
Speaker 3:Do my best yeah.
Speaker 2:We've got a very warm reception from your first, your first conversation. I actually posted it on the antique society. A lot, of, a lot of people clicked on that as well, and you know hundreds of audio listeners and video listeners and there were hundreds and hundreds of people from all over. So I appreciate your time and I appreciate your expertise. So I'll leave it up to you where you want to start today.
Speaker 3:Well, as we had discussed, I thought it would be a lot of fun to, instead of looking at the phonographs in general, let's talk about how the people reacted to them. You know, it's a fascinating thing. What was public's reception? What's the social history? You know, if you think about it with the phonograph, and how did it affect us? You've got to look at it this way, first off, and with anyone alive today, we cannot imagine our world without sound recording. It's as natural to us today as breathing. If you think about it, we don't think about it, it's there. You go into a mall, you go into a store, you go into this, that and everything else is sound recording. True, but how it started was really rather shocking. You know, as we talked about in our last thing, that Edison of course understands theater, and he introduced the tinfoil phonograph in the offices of Scientific American, got everybody excited. So many people poured into that office, by the way, they were afraid the floor was going to give out.
Speaker 3:And as soon as that happened and everyone started to write about it, the public started to react, and they reacted in various ways. I mean, first off, they said it's impossible. And professors at various universities said recording sounds impossible. It's of the ether, it's of the air. It's not tangible. And they understood physics. The problem was that Edison didn't. And of course, edison just did what he did by observation, and of course, once it was proven that he could record it, people didn't believe it really worked. They thought it might be a ventriloquist, there might be someone behind a curtain, and of all things. The one thing that was mentioned quite often was it's an American machine, therefore it only understands English. And so what would happen? Many people would come in and challenge the phonograph and speak to it in Latin, or speak to it in Latin, or speak to it in German, or just do some silly stuff that only they were able to do.
Speaker 3:You know, bishop Vincent and Miller from Chautauqua came to visit Edison to prove him a fraud, and Bishop Vincent was very famous for his rapid patter biblical verse. And so they came and they said we do not believe you to be real, mr Edison with the phonograph. We believe you a fraud, demonstrate it to us. And he said no, why don't you record on it? And they had Bishop Vincent do his rapid fire biblical recitation and all the begots were in the right order, everything was all set and they walked away with their tail between their legs. They had been totally gobsmacked. They had been totally gobsmacked, you might say, by what Edison had just done Once again, theater. He understood it. And these folks were totally, totally destroyed in their mission.
Speaker 3:Interesting thing that Miller, of course, was the father of his second wife, mina Miller. And you know, 10 years after this, edison would marry her Kind of an interesting thing. And he tried to prove Edison a fraud. And of course everyone around the world was trying to figure it out. People would talk to it in different languages and it would talk back. They couldn't figure that out at all, it didn't make any sense, and the whole world, as we know, was talking about it. But within a year the bubble burst because there wasn't much to do with the phonograph. You could make a recording on foil, and then what do you do with it? And so it kind of went into a hiatus.
Speaker 3:You might say that by 1880, um, the tinfoil phonograph was pretty much dead well, not even the, not even edison knew what to do with it, right, oh, but, oh, he did, but you also got to remember, yeah, also you got to remember that at this point he's very immersed in incandescent lighting and so the phonograph has been put on the shelf and he could care less about it at this point, very focused on what he was doing and also the money was coming in from JP Morgan to do this, so he wasn't going to do anything to upset the apple cart. By the way, speaking of social interactions, edison and JP Morgan got along famously. Both of them loved to giggle, tell jokes, like to dance, and they entertained each other, and Edison would always wear a sombrero hat sometimes and dance around the room and JP Morgan was famous for doing Sailor's Hornpipes. I mean, this is a match made in heaven with these two. And so they got along rather famously and so JP Morgan was very, very happy to support Edison in his work. Of course there were problems, you know there were arguments and questions and whatever. But you got to remember the first lighting of New York City was where JP Morgan wired it, right on Pearl Street, right by its offices. So I mean it was done in that matter. The Pearl Street station.
Speaker 3:Once Edison kind of lets the phonograph rest a little bit, the bell tainter crowd gets together, they take a tinfoil, put wax in the grooves and they recite Shakespeare, which we mentioned before. They said they didn't want to mention a silly nursery rhyme. And as soon as that starts they use wax. That spurs Edison into action and he tells them he'll develop the phonograph in spite of them, because they actually came to him and said let's work together. And he said to hell with you, I'm going to do it on my own. And so war was declared between the Beltane Group and the Edison Group and of course Edison develops his machine and uses some theater as well. I mean, you see the photograph of Edison looking totally exhausted right by the phonograph after working it on for three days straight. Of course there's another photograph taken about a half an hour later, where he's sitting there pretty happy with the whole crowd. But that's, that's something else.
Speaker 3:And so once the phonograph becomes part Of our existence and and it's interesting to note that it all started by the Columbia Phonograph Division of Edison's company they started issuing musical cylinders instead of business, because they had the National Phonograph Company thing that they were doing. I don't think it was called National Phonograph. I can't think of the name of it right now Someone will correct me when they're watching this but with Jesse Lippincott Edison and Jesse Lippincott got together and created a whole series of districts to do business machines. That was a little bit of a renegade was the Washington DC District of Columbia District and that was headed by Edward Easton and they were renegades and they started putting out musical cylinders and eventually that is the group that wrote from the Edison Group and formed the Columbia Phonograph Company and eventually they merged with Bell and Tinker, which had created the Graphophone Company, and collectively they became the Columbia Graphophone, they became the Columbia graph of them and of course at that point, once we start having musical cylinders, it becomes something that's used in the home and people would hear music.
Speaker 3:It wouldn't sound that good. In fact I remember talking to people when I was young and starting this that were around in the 1890s and they would talk about how their parents would react to the phonographs and what they would often say. They would say it sounds better in the next room. It took on the room resonance perhaps, and it didn't sound so tinny and kind of nasty.
Speaker 3:But that's a comment that was made by someone in the 1890s on the early phonograph and so you had music starting and all kinds of stuff like that started a whole new genre where people would collect recordings of perhaps popular operatic classical spoken word and they would start to put these in the house and display them sort of almost like fancy books. You had your photograph, which is an extremely expensive expense in those days, and you had your cylinders and eventually you had the Berliner disc and all of these devices started to become a feature within the home and it would influence how the home worked and how people understood music. You know, you got to think about it Years ago. A home entertainment system was your mother at a piano, I mean, that was about it and so all of a sudden you could listen to music from an opera, or listening to something from a classical waltz, or hear the spoken word of something from a Broadway show.
Speaker 2:Because at that time only affluent people could afford to go to Broadway shows or couldn't go to the opera. The common man, especially in rural areas, never could earn an opera.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's true. Only with a traveling show and a lot of time you didn't get that kind of quality. You had to go to a vaudeville house in those days and you would see the eight shows and they usually had one person doing classical and they usually weren't of the highest order and you didn't get to hear the quality singers. And, to be honest, on the phonograph you didn't get to that point either. In many respects it wasn't until the 20th century, you know, and with the gramophone and typewriter were the really strong advocates of recording operatic and classical voices, ahead of just about everybody else. In the United States we were doing band music, coon songs and of the like. It was very light fare and occasionally some classical music. But G&T, which incidentally introduced that image of Nipper looking into the gramophone, which was taken from an Edison Bell cylinder machine initially, which was taken from an Edison Bell cylinder machine initially, that eventually became a copyrighted image for the Victor Company. Interesting thing how that came about is that Berliner copyrighted that image while he was still in business in the United States image while he was still in business in the United States and of course once he joined Eldridge Johnson and creating the Victor Talking Machine Company on October 3rd 1901, that image was made part of Victor and it became the most well-known image in the world. You know, for many years, until well into the 20th century, nipper looking into the gramophone was probably one of the 10 most well-known advertising images known, you know, with Coca-Cola and stuff like that. So just to mention the fact, with social history of course, is all of these various things, all of these expensive recordings, as it was said by people back then, that they have in a way replaced Dickens and Thoreau and many other great writers on the shelves. There would be the books of the Red Seal records that cost a small fortune. You know you could buy a Caruso recording but it was going to set you back $3. That's a hell of a lot of money. Back in, you know the first decade of the 20th century. You know when the average salary was about $5 a week and it also led to some social humor too, when the first Lucia Sextet was recorded in 1908, I believe Its English translation was what restrains me? And the answer was $7. And that was the price of the record. It was a $7 record. Oh, luteus, extech, what restrains me? $7. And that was a standing joke for a long long time, right from the Victor catalog.
Speaker 3:Victor had a very interesting philosophy when it came to recordings. If you got one great singer, it was $3. If you got two, it was $4. If you got three, it was like five or six, and then if you got four or more, it was seven, and think about that $7. That's an amazing amount of money. And there was inter-office letters going back and forth in Victor and everyone saying don't you think it's a little high? And he said no, this will attract them like crazy. And it did. People saved up and bought these seven dollar records and three and a half minutes of entertainment at the cost of a week's salary Plus. That's pretty amazing, a week's salary plus.
Speaker 2:That's pretty amazing. So were there machines? Were they giving away some certain machines at that time when you bought music? Or is that more cylinders?
Speaker 3:No, victor had their premium machine. It was a Victor P and if you went to a dealer or if you were spending a lot of money in one thing or another, a company could present you with a machine, or Victor could present you with a machine, or a dealer could present you with a machine. A machine or a dealer could present you with a machine. And there again I mean usually the people if they were buying lots and lots of records. They had a machine already and the premium machine was, you know, kind of a simple little thing, but that was something that could be done. But you got to think about the price of these records. That was an awful lot of money. And here's some stuff I wanted to share with you and I would love questions. If you've got questions, it would be great. It makes it easier to toss some stuff back at you.
Speaker 2:Well, it was the premium. Was the O as well the O, of freebie or no?
Speaker 3:No, no, it's just the P.
Speaker 2:Just the P. There were a few different versions, I don't know.
Speaker 3:I think there was three different versions, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you have one, I have one and ours is. If you compare them, they're like I think we have, they're like totally different.
Speaker 3:Yeah, mine is. Is is right from the very beginning of it. Uh, what was the number of it? It was six, 30, six, 34, 34. Just the P, it's the first one. It's right at the very beginning. There's a handful of machines that are older than that, but it's right at the beginning as far as I know. But you know, think about a couple of things just to throw at you real quick. The Victor Company was really savvy in getting the public involved really realize that the way to sell stuff, the way to get people involved, was to look at it in a social manner. And they started doing things like creating the Victor Book of the Opera and what we hear in various types of music and this type of music and educational programs, all of these things to get people involved in recording. This is one of the more unusual ones that you don't see very often, this one here move it a little bit the other way.
Speaker 3:The other way.
Speaker 2:In the center a little bit, just move, there you go.
Speaker 3:This is the Sherlock in correlation with English and American literature. That's really quite a stretch, but I mean this is examples of the stuff that they did. This is one of the more unusual sides of it, because they had to challenge all the battles that were going against the recording industry. Perhaps one of the loudest critics was John Philip Sousa Interestingly enough, I mean, he goes back with that term, can music. And then something absolutely devastating happened Jazz started coming out on records which he hated and he would sure did. Oh, hated, and he would Did. He hate it. And he wrote articles for magazines where he was talking about those moaning sex offenders and people dancing and swaying in dangerous ways, and a woman going to a dance wearing a corset is called old Ironsides and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:I have a cylinder that even before, when they were calling it jazz, they were calling it jazz.
Speaker 3:Yes, j-a-s-s, there was a term for jazz.
Speaker 3:By the way, there was. Yeah. It was used by a lot of musicians years ago as kind of a catchphrase of gonna have some fun tonight, gonna get jazzed, and polite society got a little upset about that. Soon became jazz. But yeah, it started out with jazz and there was different spellings of it J-A-S, j-a-s-s and J-A-Z-Z, whichever area you were from. And of course that had a profound effect.
Speaker 3:And Sousa used to commiserate with Thomas Edison and they could both sit there and fume over the whole world of jazz surrounding. That must have been fascinating conversations. And now because Edison. Edison was not an ardent fan of jazz either, but he understood that to be successful in the biz, as he liked to call it, you had to let some of that music come in. And so he started listening to it. And it's hilarious to read his comments because he says wow, this has got face, this has got snap, this is good. And you hear another one. He said this has too much bass. I put the record on and it started dancing across the floor and took off. Or another time he listened to it and said this is great stuff, flappers will like this.
Speaker 3:And perhaps my favorite comment by Thomas Edison listening to a song he said how do you dance to this? And one has this image of Edison in his bunny slippers and listening to the music, trying to figure out how to kind of dance to this music, because he liked dancing, as we know, and so I can kind of imagine that stuff. It was fascinating when I was reading through some of that stuff and he said you know, the saxophone was never made for jazz. He was an expert on the issue, of course, as we know, and of course the public decided what was popular, what was good, Social, social response.
Speaker 3:And the phonograph would, as time would go on, inspire, influence, change and totally color life. And totally color life Because life would be changed by what was recorded and people could change how life was by recording certain types of music, certain types of singers. It totally changed the fabric of the world. It's really quite profound. You know what happened with sound recording, how it basically was invented and was basically a toy, but eventually it became something that could convey ideas, images, thought and, of course, most importantly, entertainment, and that would, sorry, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Go ahead. Well, you had this time period you think about the time period when you're beginning of the 1900s that this jazz is coming in. You know, new Orleans kind of music, and it's a little different. And of course New Orleans kind of music, and it's a little different. And of course New Orleans is predominantly French. But I mean, even the country, even the state's still set up differently than all the other states. The other ones are almost like a common law district and Louisiana tends to be more French, which is more of a codification system.
Speaker 2:And at that time you have this great migration right. You have Jim Crow laws that get substantiated by a case in the United States Supreme Court called Plessy versus Ferguson, which is separate but equal. It becomes the law of the land, right. So now Supreme Court says you do have to sit in the back of the bus. So everybody starts migrating north, right when these things is, and with them comes jazz to Chicago, with them comes jazz to New York, and now it spreads. It's affluent people are now seeing, you know, affluent people that happen to be white are now seeing these clubs and going to these clubs that they never have been before.
Speaker 3:That's true, that they never have been before, that's true. It's interesting to note with that early jazz that the African-American community is more or less left out of the recording industry. Like the original Dixieland Jazz Band is basically New Orleans jazz, but they're all white musicians copying what they heard by a lot of the African-American community. However, soon you have WC Handy starts recording and Noble and Sissel you know, I got to talk to UB Blake, to UB Blake and Noble Sissel and UB Blake started in the teens and I got to talk to UB Blake in the early 1980s and he was fascinating to talk, to Talk to him on the phone, and the interesting thing was he mentioned that much of his work in his early days was playing piano in houses of ill repute, as he put it. And of course they did that a lot of music and that whole Broadway show which I can't think of the name of right off the top of my head, but it was Noble and Blake or Cecil and Blake, excuse me and they did their first Broadway show which became a big, big, big hit and of course UB Blake, of course, would live until 1983.
Speaker 3:And he actually he and Cecil made a recording for Edison and the other thing that's kind of interesting about that is that the African-American community would start to become a part of the industry. You had race records with some, but also, what is very interesting, you had a lot of small independent labels. You know Black Swan and things like that. That would record a lot of these great, great jazz performances you know and you know, and a lot of the the torch singers of the 20, a lot of them in Chicago. A lot of this was all in Chicago because that was one of the jazz centers of that movement with a lot of the African American community.
Speaker 2:It's funny, it's so similar to what happened with rock and roll. Sure, it all came from the South and it all came up and there were these Cadillac records and Sun Records, which is in the South, but Cadillac, I believe, was in Chicago, and they all did about the same type of things where people migrated and then, obviously, white people started copying how they played and how they wrote their songs.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's so true. It's very true, because and you have to remember that there was so many barriers to individuals to make recordings or to even be heard by, you know, the talent agents looking for people, even in the North, it wasn't just the South, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Though you know you may not have had to sit in the back of the bus in Chicago, there's still the opportunities were not available.
Speaker 3:Certainly, certainly, certainly, very, very true. You know, another thing that was kind of interesting as well is the Edison company tried a lot of things to garner an understanding with the public and to share the phonograph, to try to find ways of selling things. And Edison came up with an idea. Things. And Edison came up with an idea. It was in his notebooks. It was going to be they would send a Edison diamond disc phonograph to barber shops all over the country. And he said where do people hang out and talk? In the barbershop. And so they worked out these deals where they would send the phonographs to the barbershops. And the unfortunate thing that happened is the phonographs rarely got played. They were too busy talking to each other and that died pretty quick.
Speaker 3:And of course we had the tone tests. And they also had something else that's very, very unique and it was called the Edison Realism Test. And how this worked is they would get people off the street. Bring you into a dealer, let's say bring you into a dealer, let's say and then they would give you this, which you can't see here, but I'll read this to you because it's really quite fascinating. The realism test was this they would sit you with the bag with your back to the phonograph. You couldn't see what was happening with the phonograph.
Speaker 3:And then they would ask you some questions. Number one state the kind of voice soprano, tenor, etc. Or kind of musical instrument you wish to hear. Number two sit with your back toward the instrument as mentioned. Three spend two minutes looking through the scrapbook which will be handed to you by the demonstrator. Now, they had this wonderful scrapbook. They had all kinds of newspaper articles about the great singers and the, the great entertainers and the great this and that that that were recording for Edison, and a lot of the tone tests and whatever, and so this was all put together carefully so people would look at it and get a sense of how important Edison recordings were.
Speaker 3:It says then select one of the clippings at random and read it carefully. Five having read the clipping, recall the last time you heard the kind of voice or instrument in which you were asked to hear? Picture the scene. When it is clearly in your mind, say to the demonstrator I am ready. Then, number six after about 45 seconds after the music begins, close your eyes slowly and keep them closed for a minute or more. Then open your eyes for 15 seconds but do not gaze at your surroundings After this, close your eyes again and keep them closed until the end of the selection. This is some pretty wild instructions. And then the result Are you ready? The result is you should get the same emotional reaction experienced when you last heard the same kind of voice or instrument. If you did not attain this reaction at the first test, it is due to the fact that you have not totally shaken off the influence of your surrounding. In that case, you should repeat the test until you are no longer influenced by your surroundings.
Speaker 2:They want you to get lost in the moment.
Speaker 3:This is your instruction manual. This was given to me by a wonderful collector. He's long gone now. His name was Dave Heights and Dave Heights had his own museum building in this yard. It was a big barn, two floors, filled with every kind of machine you can imagine, and he had the scrapbooks. He had everything. It was amazing.
Speaker 3:I mean, he was a pharmacist who had developed some patents, so he was able to purchase quite a bit of stuff and he created a massive collection like right from the get-go. And I used to work with him sometimes and we were thinking of doing a book together and so I would go up there and we'd just sit down and start going through stuff and every once in a while he'd say here, take this, you should have one of these. I said thank you, and he used to share some of the stuff that he had with me. He used to share some of the stuff that he had with me and unfortunately he got ill and passed away 20 years ago. He was quite young, he was like 60 years of age at the time, unfortunately, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:There's so much I said this to someone the other day there's so much of this hobby is the oral tradition, there's money, is even though there's books and things. It's really from one collector or one observer to the Sure. Sure, so much of it that hasn't been deposited down. Oh, I, and so much of it. We're not sure if it's what is true and what's.
Speaker 3:That's the unfortunate problem with a lot of history, really, if you think about history, history is relative sometimes, but you know there is some of this stuff Like. This is something that's not really talked about much at all and it's a fascinating chapter in sound recording. I mean the Edison realism test. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:I wanted to ask you about that. So was that done with diamond discs? Yes, or with everything? Diamond discs, diamond discs.
Speaker 3:Cylinder never was used in that kind of fashion, for several reasons. First off, Edison was not really that involved with the cylinder. Let's say from 1895, let's say to like 1910. You know, think of Edison cement, you know, and there was so much going on with cement. Cement was one of the biggest products of the Edison company and probably the least talked about. The Panama Canal is partially made of Edison cement.
Speaker 2:Right, but what about? He did pick the music, though, didn't he for cylinders, or no did?
Speaker 3:someone else do it. No, that's the interesting thing, a lot of the music for the cylinders he didn't. He had people that were picking a lot of the music there were times he did. He had Victor Herbert working for him for a short while and Victor Herbert of course was a composer musician of the highest order and he worked with Edison for a very short time and Herbert couldn't tolerate Edison because Edison's views on music drove Herbert nuts and eventually Herbert told Edison what to do with his ideas about music and left and refused to ever deal with Edison again music and left and refused to ever deal with Edison again.
Speaker 3:With the disc it was something totally different because the cylinder industry, the cylinder biz as Edison liked to call it, you know its biggest moments were in that period of time, 1895 to 1910. That was the major time of the cylinder. The cylinder was starting to die after, like 1908, with the introduction of the four-minute cylinder. It wasn't dying fast, but it was dying. It was a slow progression. When the disc finally starts it's at the end of this period.
Speaker 3:Edison's in his 60s, he's not in his 40s, he's not at that busy point in his life and also his health has taken a slight turn. And you know, as I mentioned before, he's a diabetic and Mrs Edison kind of reads him the riot act and said we're going to slow down. And so he finds out that there are experiments going on with disc records Because everybody in the company is saying we're dealing with a dying animal here, the cylinder we need to get to the disc industry. He could have purchased interest, deciding interest, in the Columbia Phonograph Company. It was offered to him and he turned it down, which would have given access to a disc industry and a cylinder industry, if you think about it. But when he discovers that there is interest and some experimentation, he announces to everyone that I am ready to do the disc and I'm going to head the projects which to many they said you know, you ought to look at some cement. And so he takes over.
Speaker 2:When you look at the diamond discs I don't know how many, I have, probably 500 or 600. When you look at them you can see where he was and maybe somebody else started taking control.
Speaker 3:Well, you know, the interesting thing about the diamond disc is a composite record. Of course Much of it was developed by Jonas Alsworth, which is a name we don't hear very often. That was Edison's chemist we don't hear very often. That was Edison's chemist. Aldworth developed a lot of all the chemical variations for Edison. He dies, I think, around 1914 or so 1915. And it's a big loss for Edison.
Speaker 3:But he develops the condensate, that whole plastic, that it's like a phenol kind of plastic, very much like Bakelite I mean, and so much like Bakelite that Bakelite and the condensate company are suing each other like crazy because they're basically developed around the same time and basically the same kind of thing. And what's really fascinating, they're about eight miles apart. Theodore Bakeland is in Newark, new Jersey, and Edison is in West Orange, new Jersey. I mean, they're practically closing up the wave at each other and the battle goes on and on and on between Bakelite and cadensite. What's really interesting, just to jump way past this, is, once Edison's done with the phonograph and it's all left to go, the Dow Chemical Company purchases not only bakelite but also cadensite. So the cadensite company is under the umbrella of the Dow Company today, which is kind of an interesting thing but to go back that diamond disc, it took a lot of research, practice and experimentation to make it what it was. I mean, it is perhaps the most phenomenal acoustic system developed and that is due a lot to Edison. I mean, edison was anal with this disc and he just focused and I went through tons and tons of his notebooks and reading the stuff that he would just go through and they would experiment on one little thing and it would be an entire book focused on that one little issue and then this and that and everything else and the quality of sounds incredible.
Speaker 3:What was on the record sometimes is a little debatable because as Edison ran everything and did pick the music at this point he is judge, jury, educator, I should say he has complete control over the phonograph and if anyone goes against his views, look out, because he would pick the music. There was a music book and that would be the allowable music. Nobody could come and make a record of their greatest hit. They had to see if the music was in the music book and if it wasn't, they would try to convince that singer, that instrumentalist, that whatever, to do something that Edison liked and that led to a lot of problems.
Speaker 3:One other thing real quick to mention about that he didn't think you needed the name of the artist on the record. Now if you want to talk about understanding the star system, which Edison did for himself, he should have known that you need the name of the artist. I mean, if you're going to sell a recording by a famous singer, put their name on it. You know you don't want to see tenor with orchestra, bass with orchestra violinist string quartet. Well, who are they? That's insane. But for a while, the Edison disc and I'm sure you see that on your Edison discs there's no name. It just says what it is, and it could be anybody.
Speaker 2:You have to look at the matrix number and then go back to the, to the, to the database, and then look up the matrix. And then you back to the database and then look up the matrix, and then you find out.
Speaker 2:So, simple, isn't it? Yeah, so simple. Well, if we didn't have the database, it would be less simple. Yeah, and what's interesting is that you go and you see the same matrix recording matrix, the same recordings, and see, see the same matrix recording, matrix of the same recordings, and see where the same recordings were used over and over again by different companies and different you know. You'll see the same matrix that was on a four-minute ambarola and now it's on a diamond desk. It's interesting the same recordings were used over and over and over again.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was. How can I put it? It was a very confusing period of time and once they got over that mess and Edison finally was convinced you know something, you should put their name on the record. World War I starts. And those records used a lot of chemicals from Germany and suddenly the chemicals weren't coming anymore and so they tried to make their own copies of the chemicals and they worked, but they weren't great. And if you notice, there's a great great deal of noise. Those records made like 1917, 1918, they're noisier than hell. Even on that recording called Greetings from the Group at Orange or the Gang at Orange, there's someone that's on that record says I was not responsible for the Black Labels record well, you know a lot of the chemicals from in germany.
Speaker 2:You know you bring a war or were owned by companies in america. Right, the duponts tried to sue the united states for destroying their chemical plants during the war. Oh yeah and so? And then somebody said you better knock it off.
Speaker 3:That same thing happened in World War II with Henry Ford.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:But the Edison company was doing all that. And then, speaking of World War I, there was also another issue the entire factory complex burned down.
Speaker 2:Right. And everything Everybody had a fire, right, Victor had a fire, Edison had a fire, and that's just the nature of the way factories were in those days.
Speaker 3:I'm saying Sure, I would say so. I mean, victor had a number of fires actually, but none were as spectacular as the Edison fire, because in fact Edison was on top of his battery building, which is the one building that didn't get damaged. I think the administrative building wasn't damaged either, but he was on the roof and he was talking to Charles, his son, and said go get your mother. She's never going to see a fire like this. And because it was every color in the rainbow, because you know there was every chemical, you know all those phenol plastics, you know, and the film and the nitrates, everything else.
Speaker 3:The people, the companies, they all kind of work together. They all kind of shared ideas. The companies would listen to what the public liked and try to satisfy it. Sometimes the public didn't hear what it liked and it would complain, or they wouldn't buy their records or they didn't like the way they were done. It's interesting how all of that happens and how people dislike certain types of music. Some people like this, that and everything else. As you look at it all the phonograph recorded sound transformed. Humanity changed. Humanity will never be the same as we were before 1877. We totally became a different animal after that event. It totally changed the way we look at everything and how we listen to it.
Speaker 2:Thank you, it seems like a good place to leave it, if you want.
Speaker 3:I think it's a good place to stop.
Speaker 2:Great. Thank you again for coming. We look forward to having you again.
Speaker 3:A little book dabber on and some stuff. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Some other. You're going to be busy, right.
Speaker 3:You have a project coming up. Yeah, we're going to be doing this thing with Lincoln's funeral. I have the sheet music for his funeral, his funeral march, and Gavin Rice is orchestrating it and we're going to do a little documentary thing on it. I also have you know, it's kind of a fun thing. I've got it right here next to me so I can share it. I have the Lincoln Funeral Programs. I thought I had them here but I don't. They're in another shelf somewhere. But we're going to do that whole thing On the Lincoln Funeral. It's the 160th anniversary. People love 0's and 5's With anniversaries, so we're going to have that funeral march and Gavin's going to have that all put together. And I haven't talked to Wyatt, but I thought this would be a great thing to record on So&Do.
Speaker 2:I agree.
Speaker 3:I think that would be kind of a cool thing to do. Maybe Wyatt will see that before I get to talk to him. Nonetheless, it's a pleasure joining you again and look forward to joining us some more. It's a pleasure, it's mine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is great. Everyone's going to love it. I thank you very much.
Speaker 3:Yes, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you everybody. Please like and subscribe our site and thank you, jack again, for just a great hour of great stories and significant facts we all need to remember.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. All right, take care. Bye everybody, bye-bye, bye.
Speaker 1:The first words I spoke in the original pornograph, a little piece of practical poetry. Mary had a little lamb. Its feet were quite as slow, and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.