LA Times story on wax cylinders

[medjuck]

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/music/story/2020-11-12/wax-cylinder-dentist

 

Great story with almost no jazz references but can't help but think there's some relevance. (And no, they don't mention Buddy Bolden.) 

Edited November 15, 2020 by medjuck

[mjzee]

Great article; thanks for posting it.

[jcam_44]

I agree. Great stuff. As a classically trained audio engineer (I want to sound fancy since I rarely use my skills)  I love stuff like this. I picked up a couple Edison wax cylinders in South Dakota on vacation a couple years ago. Used for display purposes only. 

[medjuck]

One thing not mentioned here and which I only recently learned:  Wax cylinders couldn't be stamped for reproductions.  The earliest ones could only recorded with a separate machine for each cylinder so they did about 5 at a time.  If one was popular, the artist would just keep redoing it.  I presume they soon found a way around this. Anyone know? 

[mjzee]

For those who missed it in the article, there's a link to the UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive, where you can listen to many cylinders they've digitized (click on "discover"): 

http://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu

[gmonahan]

Very cool. I enjoyed listening to a couple of "rags" on the UCSB site!

 

 

gregmo