Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890-1919
by Tim Brooks, Dick Spottswood

List Price: $65.00
Our Price: $64.90
You Save: $0.10 (0%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $49.97 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions

Book Summary Information

Book Reviews of Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890-1919

Book Review: Updating History
Summary: 5 Stars

Summary of Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890-1919

Applying more than thirty years of scholarship, Tim Brooks identifies key black artists who recorded commercially in a wide range of genres and provides in-depth biographies of some forty of these audio pioneers. Brooks assesses the careers and impacts, as well as analyzing the recordings, of figures including George W. Johnson, Bert Williams, George Walker, Noble Sissle, Eubie Blake, the Fisk Jubilee Singers, W. C. Handy, James Reese Europe, Wilbur Sweatman, Harry T. Burleigh, Roland Hayes, Booker T. Washington, and boxing champion Jack Johnson, as well as a host of lesser-known voices.

Because they were viewed as "novelty" or "folk" artists, nearly all of these African Americans were allowed to record commercially in their own distinctive styles, and in practically every genre: popular music, ragtime, jazz, cabaret, classical, spoken word, politics, poetry, and more. The sounds they preserved reflect the actual emerging black culture of that tumultuous and creative period. The stories gathered here give a previously unavailable insight into the early history of the recording industry, as well as the racially complex landscape of post-Civil War society at large.

Lost Sounds also includes Brooks's selected discography of CD reissues, and an appendix from Richard K. Spottswood describing early recordings by black artists in the Caribbean and South America.

Business Books

• Entertainment > Music
• History & Criticism
• Musical Genres > Popular
• General
• Recording & Sound
• General
• Pop Culture > Music > General