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

[Erwin Kluwer]

Allow me to elaborate rate a bit more on my choices:

With influential I actually mean influence in the widest sense: on
contemporary artists, later generations, recording industry, even
influence on reissues today

First Caruso G&T (Germania arias)

First modern tenor. Every tenor after him has modeled himself more on
less on Carusos style. before that the Italian tenor was a provincial
style and not popular outside of Italy. Only after Caruso most of the
big name singers could be persuaded to record. Of course the Caruso
influence is trough all his records, but this one started it all...


ODJB (yes!)  Livery Stable Blues

Some people seems to agree on this one


Blind Lemon Jefferson Got the Blues/Long Lonesome Blues

First guitar hero!  Only after this record (wich was big southern hit)
rural male guitar playing  blues artists were invited to make records.
Starting the long Charley Patton/Robert Johnson later Muddy Waters
Line...

That generation againinspired white boys (Elvis,among others) to pick
up the guitar an started the white guitar hero line, still continuing
to this day.

The guitar style on this record became a model of its kind an for
decades it echoed trough the solos of almost every "single"string
guitar player( like BB King, T bone Walker, etc  )I truly think this
record started it all (not saying it wouldn't have happened without
this record of course...But to me this particular record is a focal
point in that development)

Run out of time now

Later a bit more aboyt my choices for KOKO and Elvis on SUN

Erwin



On 10/31/08, fnarf at comcast.net <fnarf at comcast.net> wrote:
> 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
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