Edison's Magic Box - Early Edison Recordings

#Edison#FirstRecordings
This is a collection of early Edison recordings, all but one are from the 19th century.

Edison's Magic Box
Early Historic Phonograph Recordings

1. Mary Had a Little Lamb-1878 (0:12)
2. Phonograph Salutation (Edited) William Gladstone-1888 (1:20)
3. Big Ben Strikes 11 (Edited) -1890 (2:46)
4. Pattison Waltz-Effie Stewart 1889 (4:46)
5. Fifth Regiment March-1889 (7:40)
6. Trumpeter Landfrey-1890 (10:10)
7. The Right of the People to Rule (Edited) -Theodore Roosevelt-1912 (11:01)
8. Sweet Marie-Ada Jones-1893 (12:31)
9. Minstrel Potpourri-Edison Minstrels-1899 (14:03)

This has been a long time coming on this channel. The effort to restore some of the Earliest recordings in history has been something we wanted to do because so many have real historic value. We get to hear the actual voices of William Gladstone, Prime Minister of England during the late Victorian Era, as well as Teddy Roosevelt, one of the most important Presidents in American History, whose words seem just as relevant today as they were over 110 years ago.

All material is courtesy of the U.S. National Park Service and is in the Public domain.

We also offer some real history, a recording of Big Ben from 1890 always gives people goose bumps. One of our favorites is "Trumpeter Landfrey" who plays an actual trumpet from the Battle of Waterloo where Napoleon was defeated.

There are musical firsts as well, which includes both the first commercial recording of a female voice, but also the first "Pop" record ever made by a woman; long before Taylor Swift, there was Ada Jones.

Our final selection is a Vaudeville recording. This medium was popular in America and produced many of the artists who worked in early sound and motion pictures. The humor in them is corny and boorish as it gets, and the racial attitudes of the period were repugnant; performers wore blackface on the stage regularly, and this practice lasted well into 1930s, even in motion pictures. We all cringe at the final scene in "The Jazz Singer", but it is impossible to ignore its historic value, any more than we can "Birth of a Nation", which is mostly unwatchable in spite of its significance.

Although there are photos of these performers in blackface, you will not see them here.

Recordings made before 1904 had a problem with latency; the ability for the original sound of a recording to remain over time. Prior to the balanced studio standard this issue dogged the entire industry. Our effort here is to address, as much as possible, what these recordings originally sounded like, which in many cases, is impossible. Most of the recordings from this period come to us in very deteriorated condition. The masters have not survived, and the copies that remain were worn out by the 1920s.

Only a few could be restored back to the original specs.

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