During World War II, the U.S. military and American record companies collaborated to produce a series of records for the “V-Disc” program, a morale-boosting effort designed to provide troops overseas with access to exclusive new music. Many of the top performers of the day, including Frank Sinatra and Duke Ellington, contributed recordings to the project. The V-Discs were produced exclusively for use by military personnel and the artists who volunteered their recordings insisted they not become commercially available, so when the program came to an end in 1949 the Army destroyed most of the original pressing plates and many of the existing discs, making V-Discs a rather collectible commodity today.
The 261 V-Discs in the Eugene Earle Collection represent a wide variety of popular music, including big band jazz, country and blues. Many of the songs were recorded with the military audience in mind, as you can hear in the clip below of Carson Robison performing “Nursery Rhymes of 1944″, from Army V-Disc 145 (SFC # TR/12-19). He really lets Hitler have it, in the classic schoolyard manner.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Before the widespread availability of recordings and record players, music publishers relied on visual representations to inform and entice consumers to buy sheet music of popular songs. The illustrator had to convey both the subject matter and the mood of a song, essentially capturing the sound of music in a single painting or drawing.
From October 12 to January 4, the Southern Folklife Collection will be hosting the exhibit Seeing Sound: Sheet Music Illustration From 1890 To 1940, featuring sheet music illustrations from the Eugene Earle Collection. The exhibit will be held on the 4th floor of the Wilson Library and is free and open to the public (9:00 AM – 5:00 PM Mon.-Fri., 9:00 AM – 1:00 PM on Sat.).
It seems that the recording industry’s habit of exaggerating the sound quality of their wares is as old as the recording industry itself. The claims made in this lovely ca. 1928 Edison Records catalog, found in the Eugene Earle Collection, make one wonder how further advances in audio technology could possibly have been made:
To the person who requires music in the most perfect obtainable form, Edison Records have a unique appeal… A special process of recording, developed by Thomas A. Edison, father of the phonograph, is so successful in catching every shade and inflection of the voice or instrument that it preserves ALL the characteristics of the original performance; then, when the record is played, it Re-Creates the music note-for-note and word-for-word with such uncanny fidelity to the original as to baffle skilled musicians and critics; they are unable to distinguish the Artist’s own performance from the Edison Re-Creation of it… Distinguished artists have sung or played in direct comparison to their Edison recordings, and have shown by actual test that “there is no difference”.
