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...
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...