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Notes 57.4 (2001) 891-892



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Book Review

Popular American Recording Pioneers, 1895-1925


Popular American Recording Pioneers, 1895-1925. By Tim Gracyk with Frank Hoffmann. New York: Haworth Press, 2000. [vii, 444 p. ISBN 1-56024-993-5 (cloth); 0-78901-220-0 (pbk.). $69.95 (cloth); $39.95 (pbk.).]

Popular American Recording Pioneers is a biographical encyclopedia of the most popular performers on record from the turn of the twentieth century to the end of the acoustic era in the mid-twenties. Tim Gracyk and Frank Hoffmann's book fills an important gap in reference collections that have long had good books on opera singers and jazz and blues artists, but not on early recorded popular music. The volume has sixty-five entries ranging in length from two to over ten pages. It is not comprehensive --thousands of performers were recorded in this period--but it does cover the names that turn up most frequently on 78-rpm recordings, including artists such as Henry Burr, Collins and Harlan, Billy Golden, Ada Jones, Billy Murray, Frank C. Stanley, and Cal Stewart; also covered are some of the popular instrumental groups such as the Peerless Quartet and the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Dozens of other artists and groups could have been included--the vocal quartets of the era could fill an encyclopedia in themselves--but this book is a thorough and well-documented tool covering many of the familiar and important names of the day.

Gracyk and Hoffmann's source material includes trade catalogs and magazines, newspaper clippings, and articles in hobbyist magazines. In particular, Gracyk cites Jim Walsh's long-running column in Hobbies magazine as having provided much of the foundation for the book. Walsh probably did more than anyone else to keep the popular music of this era from being completely forgotten, and the authors' reliance on his work underscores the importance of his articles. In the interest of thoroughness, Gracyk and Hoffmann have attempted to verify the factual information in Walsh's articles with outside sources. They have not included footnotes, but there is a bibliography listing sources consulted for many of the entries.

The authors provide basic biographical information on the artists and give a history of their recording careers, including the labels they recorded for, their major hits, pseudonyms used for different companies, and an overview of the significance of their work. The entries are readable and enjoyable as minibiographies, but they are also useful for locating factual information, particularly when it relates to the chronology of their recording careers. Artists of the era often recorded under pseudonyms for multiple labels, and the book helps in sorting out the confusion. The history of these artists is also the history of early recorded sound in the United States, so there is by necessity a great deal of information on the recording industry. Gracyk and Hoffmann successfully avoid providing too much discographic esoterica that can be found elsewhere and instead strive for readability [End Page 891] and providing historical context that discographies lack.

In a brief comparison to other reference sources, Popular American Recording Pioneers stands out for breaking fresh ground. The New Grove Dictionary of American Music (London: Macmillan, 1986) covers only seven of the artists or groups discussed by Gracyk and Hoffmann: Jim Europe, the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, Vess Ossman, Nat Shilkret, John Philip Sousa, Paul Whiteman, and Bert Williams; amazingly, it does not include artists who were hugely popular in their time but are less known today (Billy Murray, for example). The other source commonly used as a biographical reference for performers of this era is Roger Kinkle's Complete Encyclopedia of Popular Music and Jazz, 1900-1950 (4 vols. [New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1974]). Kinkle's book, primarily a discography with brief biographical sketches, focuses more on the music of the thirties and forties; artists of the acoustic era are less represented, and groups not at all. Kinkle's biographies often provide little more than brief facts and a short summary of an artist's importance.

UCSB's copy has already been well...

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