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ARSCLIST  February 2013

ARSCLIST February 2013

Subject:

Re: The Walt Whitman - Edison Controversy

From:

David Lewis <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 13:09:46 -0500

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (304 lines)

I have never thought it real. It sounds a bit too clear for an exhibition
era cylinder. And the racket
to my ears sounds a bit more like dictabelt static than it does a white or
brownwax. The person
who made it knew that "America" was a new poem in 1890, and it's just about
the only Walt
Whitman poem that can be read in two minutes. Look at his "Deathbed
Edition" -- everything
else is longer, in most cases much, much longer. The real Whitman might
have elected to use
a short passage from something he was really noted for.

However, the missing cylinder of Benjamin Harrison that some have claimed
is a phony I feel is
the real deal.

Uncle Dave Lewis
Lebanon, OH

On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 12:44 PM, Randy A. Riddle <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> Scholars have been working on the basis of this cassette tape.  Does
> the original recording of the NBC program survive?  If it were from
> 1951, it would probably be a lacquer.
>
> Then, if it does exist, the question to explore how the NBC staff
> created the transfer.  Was it played on a vintage machine with a mic
> in front of the horn?  Did they have some makeshift cylinder player,
> maybe made from a dictaphone, with an electrical pickup?  Any other
> recordings featured on the broadcast survive in their original form?
> Where did they come from?
>
> Anyone bothered to see if NBC took any publicity photos for the
> program?  If they exist, they might show technicians making the
> transfer.  NBC seemed to take photos of just about anything for
> publicity and their technical publications.
>
> Recreation of historical clips were not unusual at the time (see Ed
> Murrow's "I Can Hear It Now" series or "The March of Time"), so I'd be
> skeptical.
>
> rand
>
> On Mon, Feb 11, 2013 at 12:28 PM, Jamie Howarth <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
> > I bets it's real.
> >
> >
> > Please pardon the misspellings and occassional insane word substitution
> I'm on an iPhone
> >
> > On Feb 11, 2013, at 10:36 AM, Steve Ramm <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> This is just one of the articles in the newest issue of the Edison
> Papers
> >> Project Newsletter. I'm not sure it settles the controversy but it's
> worth
> >> reading. (The full newsletter is located at: _
> http://tinyurl.com/a2tdl3d_
> >> (http://tinyurl.com/a2tdl3d)
> >>
> >> Steve Ramm
> >>
> >>
> >> Edison and Poetry: Did Edison Record Walt  Whitman?
> >>
> >> In the early 1980s, the scholar Larry Don Griffin was conducting
> research
> >> for  a paper on the quality of Walt Whitman's voice when he came across
> a
> >> cassette  tape in the Midlands (Tex.) College Library that purported to
> include
> >> a  recording of the poet reciting the first four lines of his poem
> >> "America":
> >> America
> >> Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
> >> All, all alike endear'd, capable,  rich,
> >> Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
> >> A grand, sane,  towering, seated Mother,
> >> Chair'd in the adamant of Time.
> >> Walt Whitman (1888)
> >> _Listen  to the recording, courtesy of The Whitman Archive _
> >> (http://www.whitmanarchive.org/multimedia/index.html)
> >> The cassette, which also included recordings of James Whitcomb Riley,
> Edna
> >> St. Vincent Millay, and William Carlos Williams, was commercially
> produced
> >> in  1974 and made generally available to libraries across the country.
> It
> >> had not  elicited any real scholarly interest, however, until Griffin
> >> mentioned the  Whitman snippet in an article in the Winter 1992 edition
> of the Walt
> >> Whitman  Quarterly Review. Griffin's revelation soon excited a lively
> debate
> >> on  whether the recording was authentic.
> >> The question of authenticity immediately led to the question of
> provenance,
> >> which eventually led to Thomas Alva Edison. The first clue in the chain
> >> emerged  from the cassette itself. The narrator who introduces the
> Whitman
> >> recording also  introduces himself—Leon Pearson, the brother of the
> columnist
> >> Drew Pearson. He  notes further that technicians at NBC had transferred
> the
> >> Whitman recording to  tape from a wax cylinder.
> >> The Library of Congress, which is a repository of the NBC archives, was
> >> able  to identify the program— "Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow"—originally
> >> broadcast in  1951. The wax cylinder in question, in the meantime, was
> purported to
> >> have come  from the collection of a retired elevator operator and
> collector
> >> of such  recordings, Roscoe Haley of New York, who died in 1982.
> >> Essentially, the chain  of provenance ends there. The original wax
> cylinder, which
> >> Pearson had said was  badly damaged, has not been found. It could
> simply have
> >> disintegrated, as some  wax cylinders do if they are not cared for
> properly.
> >> Nor could researchers trace  the cylinder to Haley's collection. The
> only
> >> evidence that this is where NBC got  it is the broadcast itself, though
> it
> >> seems unlikely that Pearson would have  fabricated such a detail.
> >> It is at this point in the story, in 1992, that Edison comes into the
> >> picture. Archivists at the Thomas Edison National Historic Park at West
> Orange
> >> turned up two documents relating to a potential recording of Walt
> Whitman.
> >> Both  are dated 14 Feb. 1889. _The first is from Edison's private
> secretary
> >> Alfred O. Tate to the  Boston-based journalist and Whitman admirer
> Sylvester
> >> Baxter_
> >> (http://edison.rutgers.edu/NamesSearch/SingleDoc.php3?DocId=LB028222)
> . Tate writes  that Edison himself had received Baxter's letter of 8
> >> February "in regard to  obtaining a phonographic record of the poet
> Whitman." He
> >> then notes further that  Edison "is very much obliged for your
> suggestion,
> >> and will endeavor to carry it  out."
> >> _Later the same day, Tate prepared a letter for Edison to Jesse H.
> >> Lippincott, the head of the North American Phonograph Co._
> >> (http://edison.rutgers.edu/NamesSearch/SingleDoc.php3?DocId=LB028223)
>  Lippincott had  recently
> >> purchased the Edison Phonograph Co. and represented Edison's phonograph
> >> interests. Tate attached Baxter's original letter and asked, on
> Edison's behalf,
> >> if Lippincott wished "to act upon this gentlemen's suggestion, and
> obtain a
> >> phonogram from the poet Whitman?"
> >> Edison representatives during this period are known to have made a
> number
> >> of  phonograms of prominent figures, including P. T. Barnum (1890),
> British
> >> Prime  Minister William Gladstone (1888), Otto von Bismarck (1889), and
> Field
> >> Marshall  Helmuth von Moltke (1889), as well as poets Robert Browning
> >> (1889) and Alfred,  Lord Tennyson (1890). They were chiefly used for
> the purpose
> >> of demonstrating  the phonograph. A recording of Whitman likely would
> have
> >> been used for the same  purpose.
> >> Lippincott's response, unfortunately, has not been found, and to date
> the
> >> tantalizing paper trail ends with Edison's letter. With no ironclad
> proof as
> >> to  the recording's authenticity, scholars are left to draw their own
> >> conclusions,  marshaling such arguments as they can. Those who doubt the
> >> recording is really  Whitman, beginning with historian Allen
> Koenigsberg, have
> >> argued that since the  wax cylinder can't be found, there is no proof
> that it is
> >> an Edison cylinder at  all, so that even if Edison had followed up on
> his
> >> desire to record Whitman, the  recording in hand—whatever it may
> be—might not
> >> have been made for Edison. Then,  too, since no follow-up to the Edison
> >> correspondence has come to light, there is  nothing to show that Edison
> made
> >> any recording of Whitman.
> >> Koenigsberg encapsulated his findings in an article "Walt Whitman (1819–
> >> 1892)  Speaks?" which appeared in the Winter 1992 edition of Antique
> Phonograph
> >> Monthly. He notes that in the extensive contemporaneous documentation of
> >> Whitman's life from 1889-1892, no one has found any mention of a
> recording.
> >> This  documentation includes not only Whitman's own correspondence but
> >> extensive  letters and memoirs by Whitman's friends and frequent
> newspaper
> >> reports, as well  as the nearly daily account of Whitman's activities
> in Camden,
> >> N.J., and  Philadelphia that his friend Horace Traubel kept.
> >> Koeningsberg and other critics have also pointed to the high quality of
> the
> >> recording as evidence that it is a fake. Analysts for both the Library
> of
> >> Congress and the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives consulted on the case
> and
> >> agreed that the clarity of the recording was beyond what could be
> achieved
> >> in  1889 or 1890. Experts at the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives also
> >> noted that  there was much more bass response than one could expect
> from a
> >> century-old  recording. Of course, the recording was not taken directly
> from the
> >> wax  cylinder, but rather from the tape of a 1951 radio program that had
> >> presumably  been rerecorded on cassette in 1974. Nonetheless, the sound
> >> analysis along with  the documentation difficulties led Koeningsberg to
> conclude
> >> that "the supposed  Whitman recording is a fascinating fake."
> >> Those who believe the recording is authentic, beginning with Ed Folsom,
> the
> >> editor of the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, have developed counter
> >> arguments. In his article "The Whitman Recording," which appeared in
> the Spring
> >> 1992 edition of the WWQR, Folsom reveals that the clarity of the
>  recording
> >> might actually connect it to Edison. He quotes his own expert, Dave
> >> Beauvais of Magic Media Services, Amherst, Mass., who says that in
> making his
> >> cylinders, Edison used a vertical cut technique that made "near-perfect
> >> equalization" inherent in his process. Beauvais writes that the
> analysts at the
> >> Library of Congress are "certainly not the first ones to disbelieve
> their ears
> >> when stumbling upon vertical-cut artifacts."
> >> William Grimes, who covered the 1992 controversy for the New York
>  Times,
> >> notes that the voice heard on the recording has a marked New York
>  accent in
> >> certain words and is consistent with Traubel's description of  Whitman's
> >> "strong and resonant" tenor. Beauvais meanwhile concludes that the
>  accent is
> >> "a soft mix of Tidewater Atlantic and an Adirondack dilution of the
> >> contemporary New York accent." One does note a certain southern lilt
> mixed with  a
> >> more Northern accent, a hybrid that perhaps derives from Whitman's New
> York
> >> upbringing and from the many years he spent in Washington, D.C., in the
> >> 1860s  and 1870s, then still in many ways a Southern city. As Beauvais
> notes,
> >> "it  strains credulity" to think that someone would create such an
> accent in
> >> order to  perpetrate a fraud.
> >> Further evidence in favor of the recording's authenticity comes from the
> >> poem  itself. "America" is not one of Whitman's better-known works, and
> its
> >> obscurity,  says Grimes, militates against the idea that it would be a
> "likely
> >> choice for  anyone concocting a fake." The poem would have been a much
> more
> >> likely choice  for Whitman himself to have made, though. "America" first
> >> appeared in the 11  Feb. 1888 edition of the New York Herald and was
> then
> >> reprinted in an annex to  the 1888 edition of Leaves of Grass. For
> Whitman,
> >> then, the poem would  have been new and therefore fresh in his
> consciousness in
> >> 1889 or 1890, the very  time when Edison was contemplating making a
> >> phonogram.
> >> Although no correspondence has as yet come to light beyond the two
> letters
> >> of  February 1889, there is another interesting connection between
> Edison
> >> and  Whitman in this same period. In May 1889, Edison filed a famous
> lawsuit
> >> against  both his erstwhile best friend Ezra Gilliland and his own
> personal
> >> attorney John  C. Tomlinson for having entered into a secret side deal
> with
> >> Lippincott in order  to profit from the sale of Edison's phonograph
> rights.
> >> Edison felt betrayed and  swindled after it became apparent to him that
> >> Gilliland and Tomlinson, who had  acted as his agents in selling the
> Edison
> >> Phonograph Co., had acted to benefit  themselves.
> >> Edison hired the prominent New York attorney and free-thinker Robert G.
> >> Ingersoll to help with his lawsuit. Ingersoll also happened to be a good
> >> friend  and warm admirer of the poet Walt Whitman. It was Ingersoll who
> gave the
> >> keynote  address at Whitman's seventieth birthday celebration in
> >> Philadelphia on 31 May  1890 and later gave the poet's funeral oration
> in 1892. By the
> >> time he gave the  birthday address, Ingersoll would have been
> >> well-acquainted with Edison's  phonograph, having served as the
> inventor's attorney in the
> >> phonograph lawsuit  the previous year. It is not inconceivable that
> >> Ingersoll arranged for Whitman  to record a few lines on the occasion
> of his
> >> birthday.
> >> It would not have been difficult for Ingersoll to make such an
> recording.
> >> Edison had spent a good deal of effort in 1887 and 1888 making his
> >> phonograph  more "user-friendly." As Paul Israel has noted in his book
> Edison: A Life
> >> of  Invention, the new phonograph was "designed for use by a single
> person
> >> working in the quiet of an office." It was also highly portable, so that
> >> Ingersoll himself or anyone else might have brought along a phonograph
> and
> >> recorded Whitman at his birthday celebration or at any time after 1888.
>

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