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[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Allen Lowe recommended a couple of books on the history of recorded sound, which I bought from Amazon. They were 'America on record' by Andre Millard,

and 'Sound recording'; by David L Morton Jr.

I was attempting to find out why vocals became so much more popular than instrumentals in the mid twenties. The issue was that a big change seems to have occurred between 1925 and 1927. I can’t remember what prompted me but, in 2007 or 2008, I looked through that Whitburn Pop Memories book (which I know has its serious faults, but which can be useful if one treats it as a dated list of records that were pretty or very popular) picking out bands that had goodish careers through the twenties and into the thirties and counting the numbers that were instrumental or vocal. I’ve set out the results in this table.

Well, I've deleted the table, because it just comes out rubbish on the board. But in summary, these were the bands:

Benson Orch of Chicago

Ben Bernie

Carl Fenton

Fletcher Henderson

Isham Jones

Roger Wolfe Kahn

Sam Lanin

Ted Lewis

Vincent Lopez

Ray Miller

Leo Reisman

Ben Selvin

Nat Shilkret & Victor Orch

Paul Specht

Frankie Trumbauer

Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians

Ted Weems

Paul Whiteman

Of 363 early hits by those bands, only 37 were vocals. Of 562 later hits, only 36 were instrumentals.

Obviously, I picked bands because only bands have the capability of making vocal or instrumental records and I wanted to find bands whose policies had changed at some time. I didn’t, and still don’t, think these bands changed their tack because they were driven by aesthetic considerations; I think they changed to reflect what their audiences were looking for, maybe even asking for. So the results reflect a genuine change in audience preference.

Again, it’s clear that SOMETHING happened in the midtwenties. But one wonders what. It doesn’t seem to have been the emergence of a charismatic vocal stylist who changed people’s perception of what they should be listening to. The only people I can think of who might have done something like that were Al Jolson and Bing Crosby, but Jolson had been around for over ten years by 1920, and Crosby didn’t get going until about 1930.

So I was reading these books.

The Millard book is very good. He writes about the technology in a way which includes the reader, so that isn’t a problem. He also seems to understand very well what musicians’, singers’, companies’ and indies’ responses to the different technological developments were (though he did miss a point that Morton picked up), though I don’t know whether his comments on Rock and Punk are correct, because they’re pretty foreign to me – like Mbalax is to most westerners He covered a wide range of material and there’s a lot of meat in the book. The subject index is crap – no index entry for electrical recording!!! (OK, part 2 is headed “The electrical era” so it may be too big for an index entry, but Edison gets a whole section of indices.)

In contrast, Morton’s book is a bit lightweight, though he covers the Dictaphone business, which Millard misses. I had no idea Columbia was making cylinder Dictaphones up to 1950, and cylinders for the customers right through to the sixties! And he occasionally makes some telling points that Millard overlooked. For example, though there was no Federal ban on radio stations playing commercial records (as opposed to transcriptions) in the thirties, stations were warned by regulators that licences might not be renewed for those that didn’t provide “high quality material”. But he points out that “use of live network programmes was a business strategy designed to keep the network broadcasters powerful and profitable at the expense of the independents.”

He also notes that, during the Depression, classical music fans were much better heeled than pop music fans and were prepared to pay top whack prices for good recordings, so classical music became one of the mainstays of those few companies left in business (except, I think, Decca, which was committed to low prices, undercutting the other two major companies). Victor introduced 33.3 rpm 10” and 12” LPs for classical music in 1931 and kept them going for a couple of years until times got too bad for the new medium to be sustained.

Well, as I read on, I saw that Morton does a much better job of covering the development of tape recording in pre-war Germany, and the ripping of the technology by the Allies’ firms at war’s end. He’s also somewhat more interesting in dealing with the development of different kinds of tape businesses from the fifties on. And he makes a very good point about piracy – all those transcription discs that were used for albums of airshots by big bands show how prevalent piracy (which it apparently is) was in the early LP era. So I’m inclined to give Morton a pass.

OK, the answer to the instrumentals > vocals transition seems to have been electrical recording. I read it in Millward but didn’t note down the page numbers, relying on a decent index, which neither book has. So it took me bloody weeks to find the stuff again because it’s REALLY boring re-reading something you’ve only just read! So a few pages is about all I could stand at one sitting.

The story seems to run something like this. Following the Civil War, the most popular music was that of large marching bands; the most successful was that of Sousa. This lasted into the 1890s, when opera (!?) became hugely popular. But opera singers were not well recorded acoustically. Millward mentions the ‘squeaky’ voices of Nellie Melba and Adelina Patti. Tenor voices fared rather better because the tenor range fit the frequency range acoustic equipment could capture rather better than sopranos and basses, and some, like Caruso, fit very well into acoustic recordings. Starting in 1902, his recordings were very popular and eventually resulted, in 1907, in the first million seller record - of ‘On with the motley’. Obviously, there were plenty of well heeled classical music buffs who could afford Victor’s Red Seal records at $2 a go (or at least, well heeled people who thought it appropriate to acquire those expensive discs as status symbols – not an unforgivable practice – my wife and I went to Glyndebourne in 1972 or ‘73, when they had vacant seats for ‘Ariadne auf Naxos’ and offered tickets at two quid a go – music not worth my while, but watching the audience was nice, and that was what they were there for).

Despite the success of opera singers with the right voices, and anyway when opera became less popular, voices weren’t as well recorded as instrumentals. The singers who did well were those who had vaudeville experience – like Sir Harry Lauder and Al Jolson – which gave them a strong declamatory style. Of course, the vaudeville stage was acoustic, though I don’t doubt that there were singers about who were able to project more intimately. But there’s an interesting reference in Millward to a little book of instructions, ‘The phonograph and how to use it’, issued by The National Phonograph Company (Edison’s firm) in 1900, which was intended for the use of performers, which tells singers to ‘avoid singing with too much expression’. That‘s a line that just spoke to me, directly and to the precise point.

Electrical recording changed all this quite radically, but not exactly overnight, because there were still problems with early electrical recordings. A number of small incremental improvements occurred, following the first electrical recordings, which were adopted with differing degrees of haste by the companies and their studio facilities. This is probably sufficient to explain why the various bands I looked into and mentioned in my earlier letter didn’t all change over – just like that (as Tommy Cooper used to say). But by about 1927, the new technology was good enough to usher in the era of the crooner.

And things have never been the same since.

Of course, people have always LIKED singers and vocal music, because they could sing along with them; could learn the songs and sing them out in the fields or on the way to the factories, or in the bath (if they owned one), so I don’t want to emphasise this point too much. And it’s true that a LOT of very good songs were written in the late twenties and early thirties, which certainly helped the vocalists. But it does seem that, in the acoustic era, vocal records were handicapped as against instrumentals by the inadequacies of the technology, and that this handicap disappeared or grew much less with electrical recording. Also, of course, some people are so extremely good at what they do that they can succeed under pretty nearly any circumstances – Al Jolson is an obvious case in point as one who was not made even slightly redundant by electrical recording. But on the other hand it’s hard to believe that, in the acoustic era, Billie Holiday, Bing Crosby and Perry Como could have been successful.

Subsequently, since their technological advantage had disappeared, instrumentals have had to become successful on their own merits. As time passed, movies, TV and music videos, together with the technological and marketing power of the market leaders in the record business (owed by the same movie & TV firms), have increasingly made image, not musical talent, the main factor in achieving big sales, and this has served musicians rather poorly. You NEED something to declare other than talent to succeed on a grand scale nowadays.

So, unless someone tells me I’m making large mistakes in this I’m going to be satisfied with this explanation.

[jeffcrom]

Calling Jeff.

I think I'll pass on commenting, other than to say that I enjoyed that book quite a bit.

[Simon8]

Long time since I read it, but I recall it as one of the best of the Greenes

I just started, but there's from the get-go that understated scene and character-setting mastery that really impressed me in The End of the Affair (the only other Greene novel I read).

[jlhoots]

David Fulmer: The Iron Angel

[BillF]

Long time since I read it, but I recall it as one of the best of the Greenes

I just started, but there's from the get-go that understated scene and character-setting mastery that really impressed me in The End of the Affair (the only other Greene novel I read).

Yes, I like End of the Affair too. I've read almost all of his stuff, but the other ones I go back to are Gun for Sale, Confidential Agent and Ministry of Fear and from a later period, The Quiet American.

[paul secor]

Long time since I read it, but I recall it as one of the best of the Greenes

I just started, but there's from the get-go that understated scene and character-setting mastery that really impressed me in The End of the Affair (the only other Greene novel I read).

Yes, I like End of the Affair too. I've read almost all of his stuff, but the other ones I go back to are Gun for Sale, Confidential Agent and Ministry of Fear and from a later period, The Quiet American.

I liked the book, but it's not a favorite.

My Goodreads review: "Duty, duty, duty. It will do you in."

[A Lark Ascending]

The 10 best independent bookshops in the world – readers recommend

The only one I've been to is Shakespeare and Company in Paris. Never even knew about the one in Bath...though there is another excellent independent there as an alternative to Waterstones (http://www.toppingbooks.co.uk/)

Love the idea of the bookshop 'somewhere on the London canals'.

Where I just can't be bothered with record CD/shops these days I still love a long browse in a book shop.

Edited June 19, 2015 by A Lark Ascending

[A Lark Ascending]

Polished this off in a week. Very good analysis of the way the 'scandal' was manipulated by the press. The writer is a toff himself and assumes that any opposition to extreme inequitable wealth must be based on envy...but otherwise, very impressive.

Excellent Vietnam based novel by someone who was there. Stumbled on his Profumo era recent novel a few weeks back. If you like Cold War era thrillers, worth a go.

Still on the Blake book but that is proving tough going. Somewhat formulaic with every publication getting a brief description, explanation of the engraving and list of the price of sale at various points and number of copies surviving. Not that analytical on Blake's view of the world....that may come later.

[johnblitweiler]

The 10 best independent bookshops in the world – readers recommend

The only one I've been to is Shakespeare and Company in Paris. Never even knew about the one in Bath...though there is another excellent independent there as an alternative to Waterstones (http://www.toppingbooks.co.uk/)

Love the idea of the bookshop 'somewhere on the London canals'.

Where I just can't be bothered with record CD/shops these days I still love a long browse in a book shop.

I love a good long browse too but browse less these days because of the temptation to actually buy books and read them at home. Re the Guardian article, I've been to 3 of those stores: Strand (I'll go back when I'm in NY next month), Shakespeare & Co. (a purportedly American literary bookstore that [shock!] didn't have WC Williams' Collected Poems) (it has been said that there's a superior English-language bookstore elsewhere in Paris), and City Lights, a disappointment, a tourist trap. As compensation, not far away, there's a very good second-hand bookstore in mid-Berkeley, don't recall the name.

New Yorkers - are any bookstores that specialize in poetry trucked away somewhere in some of the boroughs? How about second-hand bookstores that have a lot of good old noir / hard-boiled / golden-age sf paperbacks?

[ejp626]

The 10 best independent bookshops in the world – readers recommend

The only one I've been to is Shakespeare and Company in Paris. Never even knew about the one in Bath...though there is another excellent independent there as an alternative to Waterstones (http://www.toppingbooks.co.uk/)

Love the idea of the bookshop 'somewhere on the London canals'.

Where I just can't be bothered with record CD/shops these days I still love a long browse in a book shop.

I love a good long browse too but browse less these days because of the temptation to actually buy books and read them at home. Re the Guardian article, I've been to 3 of those stores: Strand (I'll go back when I'm in NY next month), Shakespeare & Co. (a purportedly American literary bookstore that [shock!] didn't have WC Williams' Collected Poems) (it has been said that there's a superior English-language bookstore elsewhere in Paris), and City Lights, a disappointment, a tourist trap. As compensation, not far away, there's a very good second-hand bookstore in mid-Berkeley, don't recall the name.

New Yorkers - are any bookstores that specialize in poetry trucked away somewhere in some of the boroughs? How about second-hand bookstores that have a lot of good old noir / hard-boiled / golden-age sf paperbacks?

I wonder if the Berkeley book store was Moe's or Pegasus. To be honest, I usually only go into Half Price Books, which is right near the campus, but I can browse for a long time when in the mood.

It looks like Mercer St. Books is still there in Greenwich Village (206 Mercer), but I haven't been in there in ages, so I don't know if it still holds up. It used to be my 2nd favorite bookstore in New York after the Strand.

[paul secor]

The 10 best independent bookshops in the world – readers recommend

The only one I've been to is Shakespeare and Company in Paris. Never even knew about the one in Bath...though there is another excellent independent there as an alternative to Waterstones (http://www.toppingbooks.co.uk/)

Love the idea of the bookshop 'somewhere on the London canals'.

Where I just can't be bothered with record CD/shops these days I still love a long browse in a book shop.

I love a good long browse too but browse less these days because of the temptation to actually buy books and read them at home. Re the Guardian article, I've been to 3 of those stores: Strand (I'll go back when I'm in NY next month), Shakespeare & Co. (a purportedly American literary bookstore that [shock!] didn't have WC Williams' Collected Poems) (it has been said that there's a superior English-language bookstore elsewhere in Paris), and City Lights, a disappointment, a tourist trap. As compensation, not far away, there's a very good second-hand bookstore in mid-Berkeley, don't recall the name.

New Yorkers - are any bookstores that specialize in poetry trucked away somewhere in some of the boroughs? How about second-hand bookstores that have a lot of good old noir / hard-boiled / golden-age sf paperbacks?

I wonder if the Berkeley book store was Moe's or Pegasus. To be honest, I usually only go into Half Price Books, which is right near the campus, but I can browse for a long time when in the mood.

It looks like Mercer St. Books is still there in Greenwich Village (206 Mercer), but I haven't been in there in ages, so I don't know if it still holds up. It used to be my 2nd favorite bookstore in New York after the Strand.

I've never been to Mercer St. Books, but their Facebook page is fairly current, so it seems they're still in business. Looks like a very good and interesting (in the best sense of that word) bookstore.

[jeffcrom]

I visited Mercer St. Books last week. I would have been happy spending a few hours there, but I had a tired wife with me, so I kept the visit short. I walked out with the two-volume Berger/Berger/Patrick biography and discography of Benny Carter and the 1948 edition of Charles Delauney's Hot Discography.

Patti Smith had apparently recently sold them some books - they had a table of books "from Patti's Smith's library."

[A Lark Ascending]

(it has been said that there's a superior English-language bookstore elsewhere in Paris)

The last time I saw Paris there was a WH Smith that was a million times better than your average WH Smith in the UK (W.H. Smith is the main stationary/newspaper/book shop you find in nearly every British town).

It seems to still be there, not far from the Louvre.

http://www.whsmith.fr/

I suspect there are other independents.

One of the best places I've been to for English language books outside English speaking countries is Sweden. Every book shop had a large English section. Didn't have to worry about using up my holiday reads.

Edited June 21, 2015 by A Lark Ascending

[alankin]

Alan Furst - Blood of Victory

 

[paul secor]

Colin Dexter: The Riddle of the Third Mile

[jlhoots]

Szwed's Billie Holiday book

[alankin]

Donald E. Westlake writing as Richard Stark – The Blackbird

[Head Man]

Just finished this. An interesting story but I found the writing style rather uninvolving...something lost in translation, maybe?

 

[ejp626]

I have wrapped up The Restless Supermarket.  It is quite an interesting achievement.  I would definitely recommend it for fans of word play.  It doesn't quite rise to the level of Nabokov or Joyce, but not too far off.  However, it is somewhat difficult to stomach the main character (a retired proof-reader of all things) who is a very conservative stick-in-the-mud, who is fairly racist as well.

Curiously, the novel I've just started is Gabrielle Roy's The Cashier, which stars a man in his late middle ages, who largely disapproves of society and modernity in particular.

It's like they are both contenders in the get-off-my-lawn derby.  Nonetheless, it is a useful corrective, as I have been a bit crankier than usual of late (moving will do that to you!) and this is a reminder that it is not a characteristic that is particularly appealing to others.

[Royal Oak]

I went to the Lowry Museum last Sunday. As well as the Lowry art, there was a collection of photographs of the Salford slums of the early 20th century, complete with quotes from a Robert Roberts. So inspired was I, I ordered a copy of this. Really enjoying it so far. 

Edited June 26, 2015 by rdavenport

[ejp626]

I went to the Lowry Museum last Sunday. As well as the Lowry art, there was a collection of photographs of the Salford slums of the early 20th century, complete with quotes from a Robert Roberts. So inspired was I, I ordered a copy of this. Really enjoying it so far. 

 

I've been there!  I made a trip to Manchester more or less solely so that I could then make a side trip to Salford to see that museum.

[A Lark Ascending]

I went to the Lowry Museum last Sunday. As well as the Lowry art, there was a collection of photographs of the Salford slums of the early 20th century, complete with quotes from a Robert Roberts. So inspired was I, I ordered a copy of this. Really enjoying it so far. 

The 'Classic' Slum! They don't make slums like they used to. Though, I imagine IDS has plans. 

Vaguely recall seeing it in the days when I spent time in university bookshops.  

[Leeway]

 

MAURICE GUEST - (1908) - Henry Handel Richardson (nom de plume of Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson.

Set in the last years of the 19th century in the music city of Leipzig, Germany, the novel tells the story of "nice guy" Maurice Guest, a music student, who falls into erotic obsession over femme fatale, Louise. Aside from the grim downward spiral of Maurice and Louise, the novel offers many interesting glimpses of the music life of the students who flock to the town. Perhaps not the masterpiece some have deemed it, it is still a very accomplished novel in the great realist tradition. If one enjoys Arnold Bennett, one would probably like this novel. Interestingly, Richardson and Iris Murdoch were related. 

Edited June 27, 2015 by Leeway

[BillF]

Extraordinarily precious and urbane. Influenced according to a review by Ronald Firbank, whom I think I recall reading about 40 years ago, but never again! But I did get to the end, though at 120 pages that wasn't a great achievement.

 

Edited June 29, 2015 by BillF

[A Lark Ascending]

The second Waters I've read. Enjoyed 'The Little Stranger' very much and this is very engaging. Reminds me in style of someone like Daphne du Maurier (though far more sexually explicit) - that same feeling of discomfort with and anxiety for the main characters. 

Gives a vivid picture of London just after World War I with the war haunting everything, new thoughts and ideas stirring but not daring to burst forth beyond the curtains.