OUT OF PRINT — MINT SEALED COPY

 

GRAMOPHONE RECORDS IN AMERICA
A Discography

 

By Paul Charosh

Mainspring Press (2012)

ISBN 978-0-9852004-1-1
290 pages, illustrated / 7” x 10” quality softcover

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Emile Berliner’s gramophone was a revolutionary device, a machine that played flat discs rather than cylinders. Ultimately Berliner’s concept won out over the cylinder and provided a firm foundation for the new American recording industry.

Gramophone advertising boated that it would bring the voices of celebrities into people’s homes, and recordings were offered by the likes of “Buffalo Bill” Cody and some early Broadway stars. Much of the catalog, however, comprised recordings by pioneer vaudeville and studio performers who left us a fascinating snapshot of American musical life in the 1890s.

Berliner Gramophone Records in America adds substantial data to the author’s earlier Greenwood Press edition. (Note that due to the author’s licensing agreement with Greenwood, this new edition omits the original historical introduction and label photos, but substitutes a gallery of rare Berliner ads not included in that work.) Data include:

·         Recording locations and dates for all known takes

·         Remade and alternate versions

·         Composer and show credits

·         User's guide and description of discs

·         Twenty-four page gallery of Berliner and National Gramophone ads

·         Artist and title indexes

 

PAUL CHAROSH is a widely published researcher of historic sound recordings and nineteenth-century American popular music. A retired educator, he taught for many years in the Sociology and Computer Information Science Departments at Brooklyn College.

This is a mint-condition first printing, from a small cache of Mainspring Press books recently recovered from a former distributor.

Condition: NEW, in original shrink-wrap

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