Gershwin Plays Rhapsody in Blue (1924)

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George Gershwin
Rhapsody in Blue

George Gershwin, pianist
Paul Whiteman
Paul Whiteman Orchestra

Recorded on June 10, 1924
in New York City

Gershwin recorded the "Rhapsody in Blue" twice, and the earlier recording is by far the best. This is the original group from that historic moment in Aeolian Hall. Although from the era of acoustic recordings, it was made at it's zenith and the sound is quite rich in detail.

JUST FOR FUN

This recording, if listened to closely, is one of the most informative acoustic recordings to survive. By 1924 studio mixing as we know it was already highly developed. The iconic image of a musician playing into a bullhorn misleads about the technology after 1904; it wasn't just one bullhorn, it was an increasingly sophisticated network of proprietary acoustically shaped precision tubes, valves, and apertures controlled, by the 1920s, by what we would now define as semi-automation. Instead of faders, they used mechanical valves to control air pressure.

It begs the coolest "What if" question in early audio; what if the microphone had arrived ten years later? The HUGE advantage acoustic recording had was the absence of electrical current and all the baggage it brought with it. The sound was the most direct form of recording ever developed. By 1935, the method of translating acoustic energy into optical information without processing would have been (based upon history), possible. This could have easily addressed one of greatest weaknesses of acoustic sound: sensitivity. The diaphragm of any acoustic system was every bit as sensitive as that of a microphone: in fact most early microphones were using the same diaphragms as acoustics.

What does that mean? Possibly that acoustic recording might have been at the same level of accuracy as audio in the 1990s by as early as 1939. But that is all in an alternate reality of sorts, because any engineer in 1925 would make the decisions that they did. The possibilities of electrical were simply too great to resist. Nevertheless, the concept of non-electrical, high fidelity sound is an intriguing one.

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