Left to right: Meagan Hennessey, Richard Martin, Tim Brooks, and David Giovannoni, the team that produced Lost Sounds. Lost Sounds was awarded the 2006 Grammy for Best Historical Album on February 11, 2007 in Los Angeles. (John Shearer/WireImage.com)
Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1891-1922 has won the 2006 Grammy Award for Best Historical Album. The award was given to Meagan Hennessey and Richard Martin, the album’s producers, and to Tim Brooks and David Giovannoni, who in addition to doing most of the source transfer work for the CD, contributed notes, illustrations, and countless hours of advice.
We would like to thank all the individuals who helped make this CD possible.
Thanks to the following, who contributed records, transfers, or images to the production of Lost Sounds: Tim Brooks, David Giovannoni, David Hoffman and Kristen Angstadt, Michael Khanchalian, Jack Raymond, Dick Spottswood, Darrell Lehman, Clarence Johnson, Allen Debus, Paul Charosh, Rainer Lotz, the late Bill Bryant, Glenn Sage, Ward Marston, Seth Winner, Jack Towers, Doris Pope Jackson and Lee Jackson Van Allen of the Shearer Cottage, Suzanne Flandreau of the Center for Black Music Research at Columbia College Chicago, and Curator Joseph Johnson and The Georgia Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Macon, GA.
Thanks also to Judy McCulloh, Michael Roux, and Paula Newcomb at the University of Illinois Press; Doug Benson; Kathy Sheram; and Allen Koenigsberg. Appreciation to Kirby Pringle, Margo Jefferson, Jody Rosen, Dave Lewis, and Steve Ramm for helping spread the word.
Special thanks to Tim Brooks for his tireless enthusiasm on this project and patience in transferring and re-transferring records, scanning illustrations, writing and rewriting notes, and tutoring us about this fascinating body of material. We stand on his shoulders in offering this compilation. Hearty thanks to David Giovannoni for assistance and generosity far beyond the call. His sequencing concept and introductory notes have made this CD better than it might have been. Finally, a word of thanks to Michael Khanchalian, “The Cylinder Doctor,” who manually assembled the broken shards of the oldest recording on the CD (George W. Johnson’s “The Whistling Coon” from 1891) and painstakingly digitized it in bits and pieces for us to assemble into a seamless track of musical history.
And thank you to all our customers, who give us the biggest reason to forge ahead!