[78-L] Fred Gaisberg BBC Radio Biography

[bruce78rpm at comcast.net]

Fantastic stuff. Also worth noting that Gaisberg, prior to his European involvement with the recording industry, worked for Emile Berliner, and even played the piano during those earliest of recording sessions for different laborotories. He even went out on the Streets recruiting some of the earliest of talent heard on recordings of the mid to late 1890's. To earn 10 bucks a week in those early days, he to find the artists, load up each of the twenty recording units with cylinders, set the recording horns and play the piano accompaniments. Some of the early artists that he played accompaniment for were Dan W. Quinn, Johnny Myers, George Gaskin, Len Spencer, and Billy Golden. It was Golden according to Gaisberg who invited him one day to accompany him to see a funny German Man who had been experimenting with a flat disc talking machine record and wanted to make some trials. Gaisberg claims he was there to witness the making of the first Gramophone record when Berliner "Placed a muzzle over Golden's mouth and connected this up by a rubber hose to a diaphragm, Gaisberg was at the piano, the sounding board of which was also boxed up and connected to the diaphragm by a hose resembling an elephant's trunk. Berliner said "are you ready?" and upon both Golden and Gaisberg answering yes, he began to crank like a barrel-organ and said "Go". the song finished Berliner stopped cranking, took from the machine a bright zinc disc and plunged it into an acid bath for a few minutes. Than, taking it out of the acid, he washed and cleaned the disc. Placing it on a reproducing machine, also orperated by havnd like a coffe-grinder, he played back the resulting record from the etched groove. Just how accurate Gaisberg's rememberances were of those early days, I will leave up to the experts. 
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Clark" <bill78 at btinternet.com> 
To: 78-L at klickitat.78online.com 
Sent: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 4:17:15 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern 
Subject: [78-L] Fred Gaisberg BBC Radio Biography 


Still 4 more days left to listen to the UK BBC radio programme "The First A&R Man". 

An excellent programme with intelligent presentation and some great archive clips. 
This is the BBC's own introduction: 
Paul Gambaccini delves into EMI's Hayes archive to uncover the remarkable story of Fred Gaisberg, the music collector, technician and entrepreneur who brought recording to Britain over 100 years ago. 

Fred became the first man to record Caruso and the first to record the court music of the Chinese and Japanese Emperors. In a series of adventures in the early years of the 1900s, transporting his bulky apparatus - including an acid bath - across continents, he amassed hundreds of discs of indigenous music. Nearer home, he recorded the last ever castrato and made precious recordings of the great music hall and operatic stars. 

Well worth a listen. 

Link here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00krhhl 

Bill Clark 


_______________________________________________ 
78-L mailing list 
78-L at klickitat.78online.com 
http://klickitat.78online.com/mailman/listinfo/78-l