Thomas Edison NHP News Release
National Park Service
U.S. Department of the Interior
Thomas Edison National Historical Park
211 Main Street
West Orange, NJ 07052
973 736-0550 phone
973 736-6567 fax
Contact: Jerry Fabris
Phone: 973 736-0550 x 48
HISTORIAN TIM BROOKS PRESENTATION AND BOOK SIGNING
On The First African-American Recording Artists
WEST ORANGE, NJ - On Sunday, April 18, 2010, at 2:00 pm, Thomas Edison
National Historical Park welcomes award-winning historian Tim Brooks who
will give a 50-minute illustrated presentation on the very earliest
African-American recording artists. The program will be held at the
Laboratory Complex on Main Street. Admission to the park is $7, children
under 16 are free. There is no additional fee for the program. Seating is
limited and reservations are required. Reservations can be made by calling
973-736-0550 ext.89.
Among the audio pioneers who committed their voices and music to cylinders
and discs in the years prior to and during World War I were Broadway star
Bert Williams, "St. Louis Blues" composer W.C. Handy, jazz pioneers James
Reese Europe and Wilbur Sweatman, the Fisk Jubilee Singers, Noble Sissle
and Eubie Blake, concert artists Roland Hayes and Harry T. Burleigh, Paul
Laurence Dunbar interpreter Edward Sterling Wright, boxing champ Jack
Johnson and many others. Rarely heard recordings dating from the 1890s to
1919 are heard, providing a tapestry of evolving black culture during one
of the most racially tumultuous periods in American history. Despite
towering racial barriers and rampant discrimination, these pioneers from
many fields of black music and art made themselves heard and profoundly
changed the course of American culture in the years to come.
Tim Brooks is a former television executive and a researcher of early
recording artists and phonograph history. After the program, Brooks will
sign copies of both his ground-breaking book "Lost Sounds: Blacks and the
Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890-1919," and the companion audio
compact disc “Lost Sounds,” which won the 2007 Grammy award for “Best
Historical Release.”
The Laboratory Complex is open Wednesday through Sunday from 9:00am to
5:00pm. Glenmont, Edison’s home, is open Friday through Sunday from
11:30am to 5:00pm. Tickets for Glenmont must first be obtained at the
Laboratory Complex visitor center before going to Glenmont. For more
information or directions please call 973-736-0550 ext. 11 or visit our
website at www.nps.gov/edis.
-NPS-
Link to download flyer: http://www.box.net/shared/ks3hymjvf9
Link to download press release: http://www.box.net/shared/om892s1qtk
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