1895 Berliner 7" Record #158Z George Gaskin Sweet Marie

$

357

1895 Berliner 7" Record #158Z George Gaskin "Sweet Marie"

1895 E. Berliner's Gramophone one-sided 7 Inch Black Shellac Record #158Z "Sweet Marie" sung by Tenor George Gaskin

Introduction:
Up for auction this week are 9 very early pre-1900 7 inch one-sided black shellac records from the (American) "E. Berliner's Gramophone" company.
German-born Emile Berliner [1851-1929] did not invent sound reproduction, but the gramophone, a lateral sound reproducing disc machine, as opposed to Edison's vertical cylinder machines. Berliner's disc grooves helped guide and support the needle, allowing for louder sound reproduction; this was the basis for modern records.
"E. Berliner's Gramophone" in Washington, D. C. was the first company to produce disc records. After starting with 5" toy records Berliner, in November 1894 offered the first disc records on the Berliner Gramophone label. Until 1901 Berliner records had no labels; instead the necessary information was etched or impressed into the master. Most pre-1901 records bear the exact date of recording and were almost all one-sided. Ref.1 has the most complete list of a few hundred labels. Six of the labels (170Z ,190X, 404W, 613Y, 731Z, 1731) offered here are not found in this compilation.
Hit songs were the ones selling the most sheet music or those coming out of Broadway. Artists like Dan W. Quinn, George Gaskin, J. W. Myers, George Johnson, Russell Hunting and Billy Golden were the big "stars" of these earliest days of recording. Many were born before the Civil War. Some of the songs belong to the genre of "Coon Music" with offensive content, caricaturing African American lives, some were performed by African Americans themselves, some have become cult classics like The Laughing Song & The New Bully. Most of the biographies and discographies of these artists can be found on wikipedia and/or answers.com.

Additional documentation:
1. http://settlet.fateback.com/Berliner.htm
2. http://www.irishmusicarchive.com/exhibits/HoH/Gaskin_George.html

Condition and playability:
Conventional record grading does not make much sense for these precious earliest records, just as little as it does for early wax cylinders. Shellac is prone to develop little dimples, which do not affect playability. Bubbles from production sometimes are located near the surface, and burst under needle pressure and generate a single or double tick. Deep scratches can cause returning tracks, which was the case for records 158Z and 3309. They can be relatively easily repaired, but generally lead to one or more lost turns. All nine records play without repetitions.
In trying to make the faint etchings as visible as possible, I had to take pictures with refined lighting settings, which also show any other surface imperfections, like shallow scratches, dust, and dimples with an exaggerated pitilessness. Fortunately they do not influence audibility in a similar noticeable way, especially when a proper needle is used for replay. Do not use antique gramophones for replay and do not use steel needles. Shellac is quite soft, and requires a diamond or sapphire needle with not less than 3 mil conical tip, and a light-weight cartridge and tonearm.

Here are the titles:

Summary:
You bid on one Berliner record, the one highlighted in the above table. The tune "Sweet Marie" had words by Cy Warman, the music was by Raymond Moore. George Gaskin's biography can be found at ref.2 above.
This very early record does not yet have the Berliner impressed stamp, but in very faint etching (impossible to photograph) I decypher a hand-written: "E. Berliner's Gramophone, Patd. Febr 19, 1895", where later the stamp would go, above the spindle hole. The record has 1 repaired track and skips one turn at that position. Otherwise no audible defects other than normal white noise, typical for early 78rpm records.

Gallery: (watch descriptive legends under pictures - and go to my scripted Supersize Gallery)

Description

Note:
EBay's restricted policy to use Javascript eliminated the useful and harmless image attribute style="width: ekspression (document.body.clientWidth/2)" [disguised], which allows resizing pictures to any client screen and in case of a browser resize. The feature is still available in my Supersize Gallery. I tried a preliminary workaround. It works in Netscape7+ and in IE6+, the latter however requiring manual refresh after resize. Any comments very welcome.

Please visit  my other auctions this week

Stay tuned also for more 7" Berliner, this time from the "Improved Berliner Gram-O-Phone" in Montreal, on brown shellac

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