[78-L] The 5 most influential 78s ever

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From: "Steven C. Barr" <stevenc at interlinks.net>

> Also, remember that in 1917 the band's popularity in NYC, Chicago and N.O. 
> would have
> influenced ONLY the music fans in those three cities...! 99.9% of the US 
> "public" would
> have never heard the band or its style had not the record been 
> available...?!

That's true. Although I can verify that in huge swathes of the country jazz was known almost entirely through hilariously inaccurate and sensationalist newspaper articles, although there presumably were aficionadoes who got their hands on the records. But jazz seems to have been one of those things that (some) people were just plain ready for, even if they didn't know what it was. I'm thinking of little local "scenes" like those that produced people like, for instance, Hoagy Carmichael in Indiana or Bing in Spokane. I remember reading about Carmichael's tutelage under Reg DuValle, early regional jazz pianist (did he ever record?) but I don't remember if he specifically knew the ODJB records.

I'd love to know more about early record sales, particularly outside of New York. I know that in the VERY early days, the Bert Williams days, records were something found mostly in the Big Apple, not in the rest of the country so much -- in jazz, as in baseball (i.e., in Ken Burns's worldview), New York gets perhaps more than its share of the limelight. I'd love to know who the first people to listen to jazz records in, say, Seattle were, and when, and what. I have a suspicion it's connected to the vaudeville attendees, looking for something a little wilder to listen to at home. 

But I also have a suspicion that the vast majority of home gramophone listeners had very middlebrow tastes, with just four or five 78s of popular instrumental tunes, maybe a Caruso if they were somewhat refined (or Italian) enough to like opera. That's based on my own family history and that of the estate sales I've been to in the Northwest. Jazz records were pretty thin on the ground in the western half of the US in the 78 days! Even Paul Whiteman would have been far too outre for the good Norwegians and Scots of my grandfather's day.

Please pardon my rambling!

-- 
Steve