Recordings of arias from long-forgotten Yiddish operas, street-corner ballads, cantorial hymns, and odd traditional folk songs—these lost prizes of Jewish Old World history landed sideways into a 1903 Lambert Company catalog under the description, "Attractive Hebrew Selections." The records are like an ethnographer’s dream, but listen closely and you will...
Before the 20th century, the “sacred” songs of Protestant camp meetings and revivals were as catchy, memorable and personal as the pop songs of that or any other time. Bringing you more recordings from the 1890s than any other historical album to date, Waxing the Gospel is a landmark collection of 102 tracks on three CDs in a 408-page beautifully...
Our upcoming release features a whopping 28 selections from 1909, the year Theodore Roosevelt handed the presidential reins to William Howard Taft. 1909: "Talk of Your Scand'lous Times" includes a 24-page full-color booklet with notes and illustrations that bring the year to life.
Edouard-Léon Scott de Martinville (1817–1879) invented sound recording twenty years before Thomas Edison re-invented it. But his phonautograph is only one of his many accomplishments. Here, at the bicentennial of his birth, his story is published in depth. This extensively illustrated 48-page softcover book presents new research on Scott and his role as...
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...
America was hot to trot in 1913, when a craze for social dancing swept across the nation. Vernon and Irene Castle were the faces of that cultural revolu-tion— and the soundtrack was composed by James Reese Europe and played by his bands. An esteemed musician, bandleader, and labor organizer on behalf of his fellow African Americans, Europe described his...
In 1920 Ferdinand Ingold, a poor but visionary Swiss settler in the small Wisconsin town of Monroe, audaciously launched a record label, Helvetia—invoking his homeland’s ancient name and celebrating its musical heritage. Praised in the immigrant press yet beset by fiscal challenges, Helvetia issued a scant 36 sides. Scattered, scarce, and nearly...
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...
Archeophone is proud to announce its special arrangement with Off The Record, LLC to distribute its new King Oliver set--the finest reissue of the legendary 1923 jazz band sides ever. Taken from pristine original sources, expertly speed-corrected, only lightly processed, and preserved in true flat frequency response: you will hear nuances you never knew...
Fifty-four tracks by 43 artists, and 60 pages of in-depth commentary and analysis: Lost Sounds is a monumental achievement that stretches back to the faint beginnings of commercial recordings and travels to the brink of the Jazz Age to trace the contributions of black artists on American records. Sometimes noisy and raucous, sometimes quiet and austere,...
Pioneer recording artist Russell Hunting went to jail for what's on this CD. 19 cylinder selections (43 tracks) from c.1892-1900 of the rarest of the rare: explicit indecent spoken-word recordings that brought down the wrath of anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock. Actionable Offenses is a critical edition that places these recordings in their original...
Gathered for the first time, here are Sophie Tucker's earliest recordings, from Edison wax cylinders and impossibly rare discs, chronicling the rough and ready rise of this lasting icon of the double entendre. A master of self-marketing, Tucker learned long before she became known as The Last of the Red Hot Mamas that the key to her success lie in...
27 songs from 1897-1925, 28-page booklet with historical notes, artist bios, and unusual graphics chronicling the rise of "hot" playing in American music over four decades. Rare tracks by banjo virtuosos Cullen and Collins, vocalist Silas Leachman, Jim Europe's Orchestra, and his proteges in the Versatile Four. The ultra-rare "Sunset Medley" by Haenschen...
29 songs from 1898-1923, 28-page booklet with historical notes, artist bios, and rare graphics. Includes two extremely rare Berliner discs. Banjos by Ossman and Van Eps, raggy marches by Pryor and Sousa, vocals by Collins, American Quartet, and 'Gene Greene, and much more. These are the ragtime records people heard during the genre's formative years.
30 tracks from 1893-1902, transferred from exceedingly scarce Berliner discs and brown wax cylinders, with top artists such as Dan W. Quinn ("The Band Played On"), George J. Gaskin ("Drill, Ye Terriers, Drill"), John Yorke AtLee ("The Mocking Bird"), George W. Johnson ("The Whistling Coon"), Arthur Collins ("I'd Leave My Happy Home for You"), and Sousa's...
30 songs from 1903-1940 that provide a career retrospective of the most popular recording artist of the acoustic era. Includes the rare brown wax cylinder of "The Way to Kiss a Girl" from one of Billy's first recording sessions for Columbia, and "It's the Same Old Shillelagh," peformed with Harry's Tavern Band in his comeback of 1940. Features...
The second volume of The Complete Bert Williams. 26 songs from 1910-1918, recorded in New York, including two monologues that were held for release until after Bert's death: "How? Fried" and "You Can't Do Nothing Till Martin Gets Here." 24-page booklet with rare graphics, and notes co-written by Allen G. Debus. Also features the entire article "The Comic...
30 tracks from 1892-1900, transferred from exceedingly scarce brown wax cylinders and Berliner discs. More hits by the biggest artists of the American 1890s, such as Gilmore's Band, Cal Stewart, Dan Quinn, George Gaskin, Arthur Collins, and John Yorke AtLee. Standout tracks include the hitherto unattested cylinder of "Silver Threads Among the Gold" by J....
Centennial will be released on August 30, 2024; order before August 1 for the steepest discount. The 1923 recordings by King Oliver’s working Chicago band are the stuff of legend. Nothing like them had ever been heard on record before, and nothing in jazz would be the same afterward. Here, for the first time, all 37 sides are presented—in release order—on...
GRAMMY-nominated for Best Album Notes, The Missing Link presents the story and sounds of Gus Haenschen, who was a student of Scott Joplin and who, in 1916, recorded six personal records that are the stuff of legend. All but a couple were thought lost to history, but now, together with researcher Colin Hancock, Archeophone is proud to present all six of...
As a founding member of the all-Black Clef Club, Washington DC-born-and-raised Ford T. Dabney helped revolutionize 1910s society dance music with his chief collaborator, James Reese Europe. In 1916, his syncopated orchestra began a multi-year residency with Flo Ziegfeld’s Midnight Frolic, an after-hours show staged in New York’s New Amsterdam Theatre...
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Archeophone Records is a Grammy-winning label reissuing the acoustic era of recording (the 1890s through 1925). We rescue, preserve, and contextualize the world's oldest records. All releases feature top-notch audio restorations and our scholarship sets the standard for historical reissues.