|
 Put
on your listening tubes and listen closely! This spoken-word
curiosity from the mid-1890s is hard to hear clearly,
but it's a one-of-a-kind rarity worth attempting. .
. .
Beckenbaugh, the "Leather-Lunged Auctioneer"
from Baltimore, was a professional auctioneer who recorded
for both Columbia and Berliner in the 1890s. This descriptive
recording, from a Columbia cylinder, depicts the auction
of goods from a so-called "dime museum."
"Museums" of late 19th-century America were
not like the art and history museums we think of now.
Instead, they were affordable, clean middle-class amusements
designed to give edification and to cause wonder for
their guests. "Lecturers" guided patrons through
"historical" and "scientific" exhibits
until finally reaching a central auditorium where the
main show was held. In the name of science, bearded
ladies, dog-faced boys, and other latter-day freakshow
attractions were paraded across the stage. Afterward,
magicians and variety acts performed. Since they didn't
allow liquor, smoking, prostitutes, or off-color performers,
these museums carried an air of respectability, even
while they lacked the substance of the genuine cultural
arts.
Columbia catalogue
advertisement from Nov. 1896 for Beckenbaugh's
auction cylinders (thanks to Tim Gracyk). |
In less reputable districts, "dime museums"
of the 1870s and 1880s did not pretend to educate; instead,
they showcased lurid spectacles of sexual deformities
and tawdry entertainments. Thus, Beckenbaugh's sale
of the dime museum by "order of the sheriff"
suggests the authorities in New York were attempting
to clean up the city. Presumably, the purveyors were
put out of business and their holdings liquidated at
public auction. But because Beckenbaugh is selling wax
figures and animals, the "dime museum" looks
more like the dollar museums of the middle class. We
can compare the auctioned goods to the inventory made
by an English visitor in 1870: "A 'museum' in the
American sense of the word means a place of amusement,
wherein there shall be a theatre, some wax figures,
a giant and dwarf or two, a jumble of pictures, and
a few live snakes" (Nasaw 15). By the mid-1890s,
as vaudeville was in full swing, the museums, reputable
or not, may have been conflated in the public mind as
houses of tasteless leisure.
Len Spencer was one artist influenced by Beckenbaugh's
auction records—so much so, in fact, that he adopted
Beckenbaugh's nickname of "Leather-Lunged Auctioneer,"
using it on recordings such as "Auction Sale of
Household Goods" (Victor 857). Spencer recorded
a number of descriptive auction records, one of which,
"Sheriff's Sale of a Stranded Circus," is
featured on Before
Radio.
For more information on vaudeville, museums, and early-century
entertainment, take a look at David Nasaw's Going
Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements (New
York: BasicBooks, 1993). |
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