Before Phil and Don Everly, before Simon and Garfunkel, long before Hall and Oates . . . the most popular recording duo over the first quarter of the 20th century was the team of Arthur Collins and Byron G. Harlan. Dubbed “America’s Favorite Entertainers” as they crisscrossed America in the late 1910s and early 1920s promoting Edison’s superior talking...
They came from the South to make their way in New York City. They worked as hotel porters and singing waiters. And the Unique Quartette, the first African American quartet ever to make records—beginning in 1890—have been a flickering historical mystery until now. Two of their wax cylinders appeared on our GRAMMY-winning Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth...
Wanting to run away from home since age eleven, Abraham Finkelstein was always after something. He masked his Jewish background by adopting the stage name Arthur Fields and launched a long and prolific career as a songwriter, vaudevillian, recording artist, radio personality, and music publisher. Featuring 26 tracks and a 32-page booklet with notes by...
With their potent mixture of slapstick and fractured German dialect comedy, the pioneering vaudeville duo of Joe Weber and Lew Fields can rightly be called the granddaddy of all American comedy teams. They conquered Broadway with a series of hit burlesque comedies that pointed the way towards “Forbidden Broadway” and Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” and laid...
This May, you can hear what only a handful of people have ever heard: the oldest recordings of banjo songs in existence, played by an African American veteran of the minstrel stage, Charles A. Asbury. 4 Banjo Songs, 1891-1897 presents four of the rarest wax cylinders in a beautiful vinyl package. It is a seven-inch 45-rpm disc in a gatefold sleeve, with...
It took a violin virtuoso leading the band at an upscale New York hotel to turn the world of dance records upside down. Eschewing the cold, impersonal arrangements of military bands, Joseph C. Smith brought a warmth and intimacy to the soundtrack of the 1910s dance craze--always with taste and discipline. He reinvigorated the waltz, helped standardize the...
Anthology: The King of Comic Singers, 1894-1917 features 30 selections, taken from rare cylinders and discs, that highlight Dan W. Quinn's quarter-century in the studio, featuring the up-to-date comic numbers he was best known for, along with sentimental ballads and ragtime songs he helped establish as standards. The 52-page booklet inside the digipak...
Years before writing "It Had to Be You," Isham Jones honed his craft at Mann's Rainbo Gardens in Chicago—composing, arranging, and perfecting songs that he and his band performed nightly before the dinner-and-dance patrons. Jones' style, capturing elements of the social dance craze of the 1910s and anticipating the jazz revolution of the 1920s, offers a...
A humorist who spent 22 years waxing his Uncle Josh stories, Cal Stewart was the first performer whose stage appearances were celebrated by reference to his records rather than the other way around. In his famous role as "rube" Uncle Josh Weathersby, he entertained millions of listeners with tales of his antics both in New York City and at home in Punkin...
Bohemian-born Bohumir Kryl made sounds with the cornet that audiences had never heard before and that no one had dared to try to record until he came along. He had the outsized ego to make sure he would not soon be forgotten, making his interpretations of the classic repertoire into standards along the way. World-Famous Wizard of the Cornet features 28...
The Complete Wolverines: 1924-1928 reissues for the first time all of the sides made by The Wolverine Orchestra: the groundbreaking records with Bix, the two often-missing Jimmy McPartland sides, and the electrically-recorded sides by the Original Wolverines, featuring McPartland and two other Wolverine alumni. The set features 27 selections and includes...
The Sound of Vaudeville, Vol. 2 covers the career of Eddie Morton from 1911 through 1917. He was one of the variety stage's most important song pluggers of the era: if Eddie featured it, it would be a hit. All-time classics include "The Oceana Roll" and "Play That Barbershop Chord." Don't miss Morton's own compositions, "Noodle Soup Rag" and "I've Got...
"Pennant-Winning Battery of Songland" compiles the first recordings made by Jazz Age superstars Gus Van and Joe Schenck. The collection features 28 selections recorded between 1916 and 1918 and includes a 28-page color booklet with biographical notes by vaudevillian and author Trav S.D. that trace their rise from boyhood friends performing in Brooklyn to...
The High Priestess of Jollity & The Southern Singer brings together the complete recorded output of two early stars of the vaudeville stage: Clarice Vance and May Irwin. Though prominent on stage—and sheet music covers—both had very short recording careers, with Irwin's output totalling 6 sides and Vance's 15. This set presents these 21 recordings for...
Volume 4, which concludes the Complete Recorded Works of Guido Deiro, presents the final years of Deiro's recording career. The set brings him into the electrical era of recording and features several super-rare recordings in the ethnic series of records as well as lots of personal photographs courtesy of Deiro's son. The set includes a 28 page full-color...
The third volume in our Complete Recorded Works of Guido Deiro picks up where Volume 2 left off, continuing his foray into popular material. The set features an increasing number of his own compositions (9 in total), including his signature song, "Kismet." The set includes a 24 page full-color booklet with notes and scholarship by accordion expert Henry...
Stung by critics who perceived spirituals as painful reminders of slavery, uplifted by the praise of royalty and world-renowned artists, John Wesley Work II toiled for three decades at Fisk University with single-minded determination to promulgate the good news of jubilee songcraft. Here for the first time his story is told in vivid detail by celebrated...
With 24 tracks, Broadway's Favorite Clowns features the selections not included in our first collection of the Six Brown Brothers' work. Brown Brothers expert Bruce Vermazen again provides the notes and research, and the set is packaged with a 24 page full-color booklet with rare photos and illustrations.