The Gramophone Review Of Records Machines Inventions

"A guide to the press of the United Kingdom and to the principal publications of Europe, Australia, the Far East, Gulf States, and the U.S.A.

First published in 1998, the aim of this catalogue is to help students, researchers and librarians determine the UK locations of over 2,000 music periodical titles held in public, academic and national libraries. Over 220 libraries in the UK have been surveyed, from St. Austell to Aberdeen, Aberystwyth to Brighton. Each catalogue entry provides detailed information on library holdings, and full bibliographic details of periodical titles, including ISSNs. The main catalogue is preceded by an address list, and by a preface outlining the history of music periodicals in Britain, together with statistical tables.

Many associate early western music with the likes of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, but America’s first western music craze predates these “singing cowboys” by decades. Written by Tin Pan Alley songsters in the era before radio, the first popular cowboy and Indian songs circulated as piano sheet music and as cylinder and disc recordings played on wind-up talking machines. The colorful fantasies of western life depicted in these songs capitalized on popular fascination with the West stoked by Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows, Owen Wister’s novel The Virginian, and Edwin S. Porter’s film The Great Train Robbery. The talking machine music industry, centered in New York City, used state-of-the-art recording and printing technology to produce and advertise songs about the American West. Talking Machine West brings together for the first time the variety of cowboy, cowgirl, and Indian music recorded and sold for mass consumption between 1902 and 1918. In the book’s introductory chapters, Michael A. Amundson explains how this music reflected the nostalgic passing of the Indian and the frontier while incorporating modern ragtime music and the racial attitudes of Jim Crow America. Hardly Old West ditties, the songs gave voice to changing ideas about Indians and assimilation, cowboys, the frontier, the rise of the New Woman, and ethnic and racial equality. In the book’s second part, a chronological catalogue of fifty-four western recordings provides the full lyrics and history of each song and reproduces in full color the cover art of extant period sheet music. Each entry also describes the song’s composer(s), lyricist(s), and sheet music illustrator and directs readers to online digitized recordings of each song. Gorgeously illustrated throughout, this book is as entertaining as it is informative, offering the first comprehensive account of popular western recorded music in its earliest form.

Popular music was a powerful and persistent influence in the daily life of millions in interwar Britain, yet these crucial years in the development of the popular music industry have rarely been the subject of detailed investigation. For the first time, here is a comprehensive survey of the British popular music industry and its audience. The book examines the changes to popular music and the industry and their impact on British society and culture from 1918 to 1939. It looks at the businesses involved in the supply of popular music, how the industry organised itself, and who controlled it. It attempts to establish the size of the audience for popular music and to determine who this audience was. Finally, it considers popular music itself - how the music changed, which music was the most popular, and how certain genres were made available to the public.