The E-Discographer #2 December, 2000
Late last year [1978 -ed.] the JEMF received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for the compilation of a comprehensive discography of ethnic American recordings made prior to 1942. in this article, Richard Spottswood, the originator of the idea and Principal Investigator on the project, summarizes the motivation and goals of the study and reports on his progress to date.
Longtime readers of this journal are aware that its scope has begun to expand in recent years to include articles concerning traditional music from American cultures other than those which produced Southern country music. If Uncle Dave Macon, Bob Wills and Bill Monroe have succeeded in perpetuating and renewing older forms of music, so have less familiar names, like the Hermanos Chavarria (Chavarria Brothers - Texas- Mexican), Frank Dukla (Polish), the Sexteto Habanera (Cuban), Frank Quinn (Irish), Paul Humeniuk (Ukrainian), and Marika Papagika (Greek). Like Southern country entertainers, they made their initial impact through personal appearances, printed music and radio. The parallel extends further in that they also made their bid for eternity through the medium of phonograph records which were initially distributed primarily to the audiences from which these artists emerged. By the 1950s there was a new and growing audience for Macon et. al. Their records began to be collected and their lives and careers re- searched. Comparable interest in the so-called "ethnic" areas didn't begin until the 1970s. Dozens of collectors are active in the field to- day, and the time for further studies is at hand! To this end, the Center for American Folklife at the Library of Congress held a Conference on Ethnic Recordings in January 1977 from which several papers are to be published by the Center soon. The Library's Archive of Folk Song has recently issued a 15-record set titled Folk music in America, which I had the great pleasure of compiling. The series makes liberal use of ethnic performances, recorded both commercially and in the field, to illustrate a variety of topics. I am currently engaged in the preparation of a discographical work, tentatively titled Ethnic Music on Records, 1895-1942, funded through a grant made to the John Edwards Memorial Foundation by the National Endowment for the Arts. As the title implies, the work will be comprehensive in scope, tracing all recordings made inside the United States by foreign-language artists. Like so-called race and hillbilly records, these were made primarily for distribution within the areas from which the music originated. To a smaller degree, they circulated to other members of the same language group in other parts of the country. Rarely were they put on the market for general distribution, either here or in a mother country. Production of ethnic records was extensive; according to Pekka Gronow, during the 1910s and 1920s it actually rivalled domestic production in quantity. Primarily because of access to information, the discography will include only performances recorded in this country. This will exclude many items made overseas and re-pressed for U.S. distribution. Some series, like the 19000 Odeon- Okeh Scandinavian-Swedish series of the 1920s, used few American masters. Others, like Columbia's 27000-F Ukrainian series, which ran from 1924 to 1942 used U.S. masters almost exclusively. Reasons for this disparity are too numerous to explore in detail here, but the pattern generally reflects the amount of recording activity taking place in the home country. The book will cover recordings in every known language and dialect category from Albanian to West Indian, including Irish. Even though the latter two were primarily English-language performances, they were assigned special numbered series and treated by the companies as foreign-language products. Hawaiian music will not be included, since that music was treated as an extension of American pop almost from the first. Only Brunswick's late-1920s 55000 series was devoted exclusively to "Hawaiian" music, and it consisted mainly of recordings by the American-born bandleader Johnny Noble. Recordings by record company house bands will also be excluded. These were issued under a variety of noms-du-disque and intended for circulation as non-specified international items. During the teens this practice was especially prevalent, as Charles A. Prince's Orchestra (Columbia) and the Victor Military Band turned out hundreds of polkas, schottisches and waltzes for numerous nationalities.
By the 1920s the practice had abated somewhat, as certain ensembles under the direction of leaders like Abe Schwartz (Jewish), Pawlo Humeniuk (Ukrainian), and Frank Przybylski (Polish) were frequently called on to make records specifically intended for markets other than their own. The discography will be based primarily on information from existing record company files, and will reflect their completeness, or lack of it, in a number of areas. I have begun my research in the CBS Archive, working primarily from cards made during a 1964 inventory which in- dicate the existence (or lack of it) of thousands of metal parts in various matrix series specifically reserved for ethnic production. These cards rarely contain information beyond a matrix number, take, size (10", 12") and an occasional date, apparently indicating the date a master was submitted for electroplating. The only files giving data for ethnic matrix series are in books of label copy notices, prepared at the time couplings were assigned. All other file material in the form of recording notebooks or master cards for these series is no longer in existence. Therefore, I have been forced to create my own index to the various matrix series, using pages which leave space for each matrix and filling in the spaces as information is acquired, both from CBS and other sources. (Two samples are shown, one from the acoustic period, another from the electric, or "Viva-Tonal" period after 1925.) During the acoustic era, Hispanic items appeared on a series which ran from C-1 to C-4238; all others were on an E series, numbered from E-1 to E-9112. Twelve-inch releases were included in these series too in the C 1000 and E 5000 blocks. All were replaced early in 1924 with the introduction of flag labels by a more complex series which assigned separate number blocks to each nationality. A Spanish-language series, which included Mexican, South American, Phillipine, Caribbean and West Indian music, began at 2000-X and continued past 6000-X well into the 1950s. Other series used as -F suffix, ,e.g., 1000-F (Serbo-Croation), 5000-F (German), 14000-F (Italian), and 20000-F (Russian). Most of these series lasted into the early 1950s.For this era, fortunately, a wealth of information exists in the Columbia files, including master cards, label copy sheets and recording ledgers. Combining the three frequently provides exact recording dates, instrumentation (though rarely names of instrumentalists), composer credits and information about multiple releases. A large amount of material has been gathered from the Columbia files; the 4x6 index cards I have accumulated contain approximately 35,000 entries so far. Remaining gaps must be filled in by examination of individual records and noting all relevant information on them, including artist and title credits, names of singers or featured instrumentalists, master numbers and takes, release numbers and composer credits. To this end, I am preparing for round-robin circulation copies of my logs, so that individual collectors can provide data where there are gaps.
At this writing (July 1979) 1 have just completed work at Columbia and have settled in at the RCA building, 12 blocks further down the Avenue of the Americas: I like that name: it commemorates the imposing United Nations building a few blocks to the east, and it also reminds me of the multiplicity of Americas and, more importantly, of the many varieties of Americans. I hope that this project will do justice to a significant legacy they have bequeathed to all of us.