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RESOUND a QUARTERLY of the Archives of Traditional Music Volume V, Number 4 October 1986

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RESOUND a QUARTERLY of the Archives of Traditional Music Volume V, Number 4 October 1986 RESOUND A QUARTERLY OF THE Archives of Traditional Music Volume V, Number 4 October 1986 modern equipment, improved climate control and fire From the Director protection-but your support is as important now as it was four years ago. Money is not only a medium of exchange, it is a Friends of the Archives symbol of support that can be demonstrated to administrators and granting agencies when they ask For four years I have been soliciting funds for the whether we have any public support for our bizarre Friends of the Archives of Traditional Music. A few have mission of collecting and preserving music and oral data given large amounts, and many have donated what are to from around the world. When you contribute, we can them very significant amounts, and are to us important point to your contributions and your numbers and say, tokens of their support. "See, people out there care about these materials, and What have we used these funds for? The largest about us. You should too." In a satisfying number of expense is the publication of this quarterly, which is cases they are convinced. Please help. A special form has entirely self-supporting. When that has been guaranteed, been included for your donation. If there is none in your we use the rest for things we have no other funds for. For issue, write directly to the editor. example: We defrayed some expenses of an audio technician who visited the Archives at no charge to help us plan our new laboratories; we defrayed the travel costs of a trip to Michigan to pick up a collection of four thousand jazz records donated to the Archives; we purchased a small collection of commercial recordings from Nepal; we paid The Gennett Record Company the registration fees of our librarian at a professional conference at which she was presenting a paper; we Sally Childs-Helton bought concert tickets for a person who has donated Indiana Historical Society Library hundreds of hours of volunteer time to Archives projects. Most recently we rented a trailer to pick up a jukebox for the Hoagy Carmichael suite, and made some special purchases to finish the decoration of the room, which Many of the old jazz recordings held by the Archives of will be used for receptions, concerts, and meetings. Traditional Music were recorded right here in Indiana. N one of these expenses could be covered by our This may come as a surprise to some jazz buffs, University budget. The monetary amounts in each case ethnomusicologists, and those interested in the history of were relatively small, but they allowed us to realize recorded sound. Many of the great early jazz artists projects of tremendous importance. recorded at the Gennett Record Company studio in There is an old adage about a battle being lost because Richmond, and even though jazz discs made up much of of a missing horseshoe nail. As an administrator I have the company's catalog, it also recorded "old time," ethnic, found it sometimes harder to raise small amounts of classical, blues, and spoken word discs. Gennett recorded money (the equivalent of horseshoe nails) from the under its own labels, and its master discs were released University than to raise large ones; I might have lost a under more than seventy labels in the United States and collection, or not received needed advice without the help overseas. and support the Friends of the Archives of Traditional This important recording company began in 1872 when Music have provided. a number of prominent Richmond businessmen, headed October is the month we solicit your donations. If you by James M. Starr, organized a company to manufacture donated last year, we are counting on your continued pianos. The Starr Piano Company, as it came to be support. If you did not make a donation last year, I hope known, was the first piano company west of the you will do so this year. In many ways the Archives has Allegheny Mountains. The company grew steadily and been transformed over the past few years-new facilities, was incorporated in 1893 under the direction of Benjamin Starr, John Lumsden, and Lumsden's son-in-law, Henry increased to an annual production of fifteen thousand Gennett. Gennett served as president of the company, pianos, thrity-five thousand spring-driven phonographs, and over the years his three sons were officers: Harry as and three million records. vice-president and general manager, Fred as secretary, The Gennett Record Company is acknowledged as a and Clarence as treasurer. pioneer and leader in supplying records to chain stores By 1912, the company was said to be the largest and mail order houses. Sears and Roebuck carried the manufacturer of pianos in the world. With all factory Silvertone, Supertone, Conqueror and Challenge labels, facilities in Richmond, outlet stores were located in and Gennett supplied the Montgomery Ward chain as Birmingham, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, well. Gennett masters were released under more than Detroit, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Los Angeles, seventy labels, including Bell, Black Patti, Champion, Nashville, New York, Portland, and San Francisco. The Decca, Gold Seal, Herwin, QRS, and Varsity. In 1916, factory's floor space covered more than twelve acres and Harry Gennett's business trip to England resulted in its six hundred employees built an average of forty pianos Gennett masters appearing on many English labels, per day. All parts and cases were manufactured in-house including Winner, Guardsman, Coliseum, and Vocalion; for grand, upright and player pianos, and the instruments Australian labels used Gennett masters as well. Gennett received numerous awards for tone quality, case design, masters also were leased or sold to Paramount, Vocalion, and construction. and OKeh. In 1915, Starr entered the recording field with obsolete The company entered the jazz market largely due to recording equipment and old master discs from a the efforts of Fred Wiggins, the manager of a Starr music bankrupt firm in Boston. From 1915 to 1918, records were store in Chicago. He scouted for artists to record for issued under the Starr label, but the company found that Gennett, "discovering" musicians like Gene Autry and some independent dealers refused to carry the records the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. In 1923, jazz pioneers, because the name Starr was already strongly associated including the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, King Oliver with pianos and phonographs. The label name was and his Creole Band, and Jelly Roll Morton came to changed to Gennett in 1918 at the suggestion of Fred Richmond to record, and helped to establish Gennett as a Gennett. major jazz label. Younger, and at that time less The following year was the most profitable in the established, jazz artists who made acoustical recordings history of the Starr Piano Company and its subsidiary, at the Richmond studio included Bix Beiderbecke, Tommy the Gennett Record Company. The Gennett catalog was Dorsey, and Hoagy Carmichael. Louis Armstrong and the expanded in both classical and popular music discs, and Red Onion Jazz Babies, recorded in the New York Studio, Fred Gennett signed recording contracts with concert along with other popular dance bands of the day and "3.rtists, -speakers and-pGpular figures. These-earL ______numerous blues musician£. acoustically recorded discs contained items as diverse as speeches by William Jennings Bryan and members of the Ku Klux Klan; symphonic, band and sacred music; and physical culture exercises. By 1921, the company had recording studios in Richmond and New York City, and pressings were done at the Richmond plant and by H.5. Berliner in Montreal. During the early 1920s the entire line of Starr products Resound A Quarterly of the Archives of Traditional Music Marilyn B. Graf, Editor Resound is issued in January, April, July, and October. Comments, letters, and items of interest are welcome and may be addressed to the editor. Archives of Traditional Music Morrison Hall Indiana University Bloomington, IN 47405 (812) 335-8632 Anthony Seeger, Director Dorothy S. Lee, Associate Director Mary E. Russell, Librarian Karen A. Hohne, Secretary A Hopi Indian recorded for Gennett by J. W. Fewkes at ISSN 0749-2472 the Grand Canyon in 1926. Indiana Historical Society Gennett was possibly the first commercial record company to release ethnic music discs. In 1926, Fred Gennett arranged with resort chain owner Fred Harvey to make records of the Hopi Indians for the tourist trade. Gennett arranged for Dr. J. Walter Fewkes to record the Hopi discs at the EI Tovar Hotel at the Grand Canyon, where elders of the tribe were invited to come record their traditional songs. Fewkes, Chief of the Bureau of Ethnology of the Smithsonian, was the first ethnologist to make recordings in the field when he made cylinder recordings of the music of the Passamaquody Indians in 1889. Even though the Hopi discs were not commercially successful, the recordings did preserve valuable and rare music; they were the last known acoustic recordings made by the company. After the company switched to electrical recording techniques, Gennett maintained its The Gennett "Maloof" label. interest in ethnic recordings, as shown by its Maloof Indiana Historical Society (Middle-Eastern) and Rayo Electrico (Hispanic) labels, as well as discs in Hebrew. In 1926, all the major phonograph producers, including Starr, introduced a new line with improved speakers and electric motors; improvements in sound recording soon followed. Microphones, invented by Emile Berliner, replaced the old acoustic horns. Gennett's first electrically processed record was released early in 1926, and a few months later the Electrobeam label was introduced. Most jazz Electrobeams were recorded at the Richmond studio, as was Gennett's "Race Series," which drew black musicians from the Chicago area.
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