Devotee of old 78s captures long-lost refrains

[mjzee]

(The original can be found at http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/scn-g...,4761375.story)

Devotee of old 78s captures long-lost refrains

By Martin B. Cassidy

November 4, 2007

After cranking up his Edison Diamond Disc Phonograph by hand, Timothy Brooks gingerly drops a needle onto the black plastic disc, bringing forth a boisterous jazz tune.

Along the walls of his Glenville home, Brooks has more than 10,000 other antique records, representing almost a half century of collecting 78 rpm records at rummage sales, auctions and through the Internet.

While showing off several of the ancient phonographs, Brooks explained how the primitive state of recording technology forced singers to belt out every song at top volume to imprint a sound.

"There wasn't a lot of crooning in the old days," Brooks said.

Brooks, 65, a television executive and writer, said that from the melodies of minstrels and street singers to spoken orations by world figures, old records are a portal that provide important historical insights into early 20th century America.

"I think there is a lot to learn from them," Brooks said of old records. "They should be part of the historical record and add another layer to what life was like."

In recent years, Brooks has focused his energy on preserving the history and recordings of pioneering African American singers and musicians who documented songs in the first flush of recorded music between 1890 and 1919.

In 2004, Brooks published his book, "Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry," which featured the stories of dozens of African American singers and musicians from that era, forgotten outside of a small community of collectors.

In 2005, Brooks compiled a two-record audio companion to the book featuring 43 of the artists, which was released on Archeophone Records, which specializes in historic music. "Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1891-1922," received a Grammy Award last year as Best Historical Album, with Brooks nominated for a separate Grammy for his well-researched liner notes.

While a majority of the selections on the set were drawn from Brooks' collection, preparing and, in more than one case, salvaging the primitively recorded and often damaged songs required diligence and ingenuity.

While working on the project, Brooks used a specially designed adjustable speed turntable to play the antique records, which were often manufactured to play at speeds other than 78 rpm.

Some of the songs were recorded on wax cylinders, a medium so delicate that Brooks and other collectors risked destroying them by playing them.

"It is very soft material and you only play them once to make a copy and put them away," Brooks said.

Hoping to include "The Whistling Coon," a song recorded by George C. Johnson, a street singer who enjoyed more than a decade of success at the turn of the century, Brooks knew the sole surviving copy of the song was a shattered record, he said.

A dentist who had expertise in putting together broken records was enlisted to repair it, and a coherent version of the song was pieced together using digital files, Brooks said.

"It's a good example of how the stuff gets lost," Brooks said. "I knew a collector who had heard the record in 1980 and it sounded fine but by the time I got to it it was completely deteriorated."

A small percentage of Brooks' thousands of 78s are recordings not of songs, but of speeches and talks by presidents, athletes and other notables that helps bring them to life and shed light on the times in which they lived, Brooks said.

In the case of Jack Johnson, the famous African American boxer, a recording of him describing a fight and praising his white opponent after defeating him belies the sometimes arrogant reputation with which the athlete was stigmatized.

"You realize that you can learn a lot about these people," Brooks said.

Brooks, who is executive vice president of audience research for the Lifetime network, is also the co-writer of an exhaustive encyclopedia of night-time network and cable shows which has sold 500,000 copies in its nine editions.

"Keeping up with that amount of TV is Herculean," Brooks said. "It might be time to hand that off to another generation."

As a high school student growing up in Hampton, N.H., in the 1950s, Brooks' passion for 78 rpm records was sparked by reading a regular feature in Billboard magazine, which each week included a chart listing from a previous decade.

"The hits of the day were Elvis but I started to get curious about Glenn Miller and what were these artists and songs all about?" Brooks said.

Unlike other pastimes such as collecting fine art, jewelry or other arcana, Brooks said collecting 78 rpm records has remained an affordable hobby.

He corresponds by computer and mail with a network of like-minded collectors to buy his records, or if necessary purchase a copy of the recording if the owner won't part with it.

"It's nice to have an original but it is the sound that matters," Brooks said.

Brooks said he plans to retire from his job at the end of this year, which should allow him to put more energy into studying the early history of recorded sound.

"It's something I want to continue because I think there is a lot of important insight that can be gained," Brooks said.