Popular American Recording Pioneers, 1895-1925.(Review)

By Tim Gracyk with Frank Hoffmann. New York: Haworth Press, 2000. [vii, 444 p. ISBN 1-56024-993-5 (cloth); 0-78901-220-0 (pbk.). $69.95 (cloth); $39.95 (pbk.).]

Popular American Recording Pioneers is a biographical encyclopedia of the most popular performers on record from the turn of the twentieth century to the end of the acoustic era in the mid-twenties. Tim Gracyk and Frank Hoffmann's book fills an important gap in reference collections that have long had good books on opera singers anti jazz and blues artists, but not on early recorded popular music. The volume has sixty-five entries ranging in length from two to over ten pages. It is not comprehensive-thousands of performers were recorded in this period-but it does cover the names that turn up most frequently on 78-rpm recordings, including artists such as Henry Burr, Collins and Harlan, Billy Golden, Ada Jones, Billy Murray, Frank C. Stanley, and Cal Stewart; also covered are some of the popular instrumental groups such as the Peerless Quartet and the Original Dixieland Jazz Band. Dozens of other artists and groups could have been included-the vocal quartets of the era could fill an encyclopedia in themselves -but this book is a thorough and well-documented tool covering many of the familiar and important names of the day.

Gracyk and Hoffmann's source material includes trade catalogs and magazines, newspaper clippings, and articles in hobbyist magazines. In particular, Gracyk cites Jim Walsh's long-running column in Hobbies magazine as having provided much of the foundation for the book. Walsh probably did more than anyone else to keep the popular music of this era from being completely forgotten, and the authors' reliance on his work underscores the importance of his articles. In the interest of thoroughness, Gracyk and Hoffmann have attempted to verify the factual information in Walsh's articles with outside sources. They have not included footnotes, but there is a bibliography listing sources consulted for many of the entries.

The authors provide basic biographical information on the artists and give a history of their ...