[78-L] Bessie Mecklem - saxophonist

[Patrick Feaster]

On 3-Jan-09, at 10:05 AM, Andrew Homzy wrote:
> I'm teaching a course on the saxophone and would like to find some
> recordings by Bessie Mecklem who recorded for Edison in 1892.
>
> Apparently, these are the first sax recordings ever.

Not so!  Edison's laboratory was only one source of musical phonograms in
the late 1880s and early 1890s.  The *Albany Times *for July 24, 1889
reports a phonograph exhibition by Edward Howard Low including a cylinder of
"Le Fevre...with his famous saxophone."  Despite the peculiar spelling,
I assume the performer was none other than E. A. Lefebre, maybe recorded at
the same Coney Island concert where Low had recently captured the sounds of
Gilmore's Band as a whole.  A ca. 1895 catalog of the United States
Phonograph Company also lists saxophone cylinders by Lefebre (spelled
correctly in that case), and it seems likely that some of those survive
somewhere.

 - Patrick