[78-L] Edison's interference in the Edison catalogue

[Stephen Davies]

        I'm enjoying the autobiography of Sam Coslow: "Cocktails for two" 
(1977).  While still a teenager but with some initial songwriting success, 
Coslow (1902 - 1982) answers an anonymous ad for a popular 
composer/arranger.  The reply comes from the Edison company in New Jersey. 
 Coslow has a meeting with "the great man".

(excerpted from pp 29-35)
<<<
Chapter Three
MY BOSS – THE GREATEST MAN ALIVE

        Edison took his time explaining it all to me. Gradually, the 
mystery was cleared up, and I understood why he had advertised for a 
"composer-arranger." Of all the things he had ever invented, the 
phonograph was still his favorite, he explained. In fact, the reason he 
invented it in the first place was because he had had a passion for music 
ever since he was a child. Even while working as a telegraph operator 
during the Civil War - still a boy in his early teens - he could sing the 
words of all the Civil War songs. In fact, he affirmed, the great popular 
songs were all written before 1900 - far superior to the present-day 
"trash."
        He then went on to explain that he owned a recording company "over 
there in New York," run by "a bunch of incompetents who don't know what 
they are doing." I gathered he was referring to Edison Records, still very 
much in business many years after the firm had come out with the first 
cylinder records, now replaced by disks.
        What Edison wanted, it turned out, was someone who could take his 
favourite tunes of the nineteenth century and modernize them by arranging 
them as fox-trots or one-steps or whatever people were dancing to at the 
time. His top favourites - and he hummed them to me in the same squeaky 
voice - were "When You and I Were Young, Maggie," "Listen to the Mocking 
Bird," and an old folk tune called "Heimwah." He also wanted the words 
changed, using twentieth-century phraseology. If I could handle the job, 
he would have the dressed-up, renovated songs sent over to his New York 
recording plant with orders to record them on the Edison label at once. 
The old man was very opinionated and stubborn. He would show them what 
kind of songs they needed for big record sales, not the tripe they were 
releasing month after month!
....
        Edison offered me only twenty dollars a week, but reminded me that 
this would be plus royalties on record sales, which would provide the 
potential for a much higher income. I didn't believe for a moment that a 
record of "When You and I Were Young, Maggie" would sell worth a damn, but 
I didn't let him know what I thought. I sensed that greater opportunities 
might lie ahead - like having the inside track at a major recording 
company.
.....
        I had to work at the same antique upright piano, the only one in 
the plant. So for the next few months I had the rare privilege of working 
in the little room adjoining the office of the great inventor. Very often 
the door between us was left open, as he seemed to enjoy my tinkering on 
the piano to his lifelong pet melodies. I could see him at work - 
inventing, pondering, making notes, or just staring off into space. Once 
in a while he would come in to see what progress I was making, humming 
along as I played. He loved those old melodies dearly.
        I finished my new versions of "Maggie" and "Heimwah," dressed up 
as catchy foxtrots and complete with updated lyrics. They were sent to the 
New York recording manager by special messenger, with orders to get them 
out as dance records. The lyrics were not to be recorded (the great 
innovation of vocal choruses on dance records had not yet been thought 
of), but Edison thought lyrics should be available if and when the records 
created a demand for sheet music.
        Back in New York at the recording company, they hated my guts, 
naturally. To them, I was some kind of an upstart who had talked the boss 
into waxing a bunch of corny crap. But they recorded the stuff 
nevertheless, using a large house orchestra.
        Once New York had satisfied the old man's whim, nothing more was 
ever done about the recordings. A few samples were pressed, and that was 
the end of it - no promotion, no advertising, not even a release date.
....
>>>
.... continued

          I welcome comments, but please don't reply by including the 
whole lengthy post.

Stephen D
Calgary


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contain confidential, personal, and or privileged information. Please 
contact the sender
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and do not copy,
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error, or subsequent
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