Comments on: 1919 Music

Question: 1919 Music

Miko — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:00:17 -0800

Seeking recordings of American popular music from 1919 and therabouts.

For a museum exhibit, I need to find some recordings on CD of songs that were popular in the late nineteen-teens. OUr needs are kind of specific: the music needs to be available on a CD (or burnable to CD), but sound believably 1919-ish. It will look as though it's playing on a phonograph - so modern interpretations of older songs won't work. A recording with some historical performance practice, or a CD version of a recording from history, would work well.

Extra points: The home was lived in by a family of immigrants from the Ukraine. Their daughter, like a lot of American kids, learned to play contemporary songs on the piano and they also owned a lot of records, though we don't have any of them today. So we are going to emphasize American pop music, but if you know of any other kinds of songs that might have been heard in a Ukrainian Jewish household around 1919, that would be great, too.

By: doctorschlock

doctorschlock — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:01:42 -0800

Check out the Library of Congress' page. It's chock-full of info.

By: Miko

Miko — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:03:55 -0800

FYI, this provides detail about the family depicted in the exhibit.

By: Miko

Miko — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:05:59 -0800

doctorschlock, I've done some searching but I've encountered two problems with a wide-cast net: first, though there are a lot of recordings available, I don't necessarily know what was really popular or what is representative of pop music of the time, and second, I'm hoping to find something in a convenient, playable format so there will be ambient music in the exhibit. I'm hoping someone with knowledge of period music might help narrow the field for me.

By: elkerette

elkerette — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:08:51 -0800

Enrico Caruso's recording of George M. Cohan's WWI propaganda song was extremely popular in the late teens.

You can download the complete 1918 recording of the song here. It's the third version listed.

I'm not sure of the exact history, but an immigrant family might have jumped on the patriotic bandwagon in order to fit in with their neighbours.

By: oneirodynia

oneirodynia — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:14:39 -0800

This site might have something for you- they sell CD's of Victrola recordings. Scroll down for "popular 1913-1918". There is a track list and samples.

By: mumkin

mumkin — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:17:50 -0800

Archive.org has its open source 78 RM collection. It also hosts the cylinder archive. I was going to suggest the Secret Museum of Mankind CD series as a potential source of period Ukrainian music, but it looks like their earliest content is 1925. File for future reference.

By: jokeefe

jokeefe — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:32:30 -0800

There's some good suggestions already, but I can also point you in the direction of Old Time Radio-- I made a post about its new archives a couple of years back here.

By: jokeefe

jokeefe — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:32:45 -0800

new = news

By: jokeefe

jokeefe — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:34:30 -0800

Ah, Miko, this is probably the most relevant link connected to that post: http://www.radiolovers.com/pages/music.html

By: Wolfdog

Wolfdog — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:41:30 -0800

Here's a disc of piano rag from that time that sounds like it'd fit your requirements. There should be more legacy recordings in the Folkways catalog (I know because I own a bunch of 'em, including transfers of Bartók's wax recordings from around that time) but the online catalog at that site doesn't seem complete.

By: psychobum

psychobum — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 11:04:56 -0800

Check out the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project. The works are presumed to be in the public domain and they have a large catalouge of music to browse including a section of jewish wit and humor.

By: Greg Nog

Greg Nog — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 11:05:06 -0800

American Popular Music, 1901-1919.

By: PlusDistance

PlusDistance — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 12:04:39 -0800

Thomas Edison's Attic is a podcast that might have what you're looking for:

...featuring: Tin Pan Alley pop songs, ragtime, vaudeville comedy sketches, flapper dance bands, old-time country tunes, historic classical music, laboratory experiments and other artifacts - all dating from 1888 through 1929.

Obviously, some of it will fall outside of the dates you're looking for. But the host gives the artist, the year and other info about each song. There are also playlists for each episode.

By: sculpin

sculpin — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 12:16:24 -0800

http://nfo.net/ogg.htm concentrates on the early twenties but has a few songs from 1919 and before.

By: softlord

softlord — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 19:07:38 -0800

Nipper's Greatest Hits: The 20s.
Pop Music The Early Years 1890-1950

Obdisclaim: i work for the labels yada yada yada

By: brujita

brujita — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 20:09:23 -0800

Archeophone