Black Recording Artists, 1877-1926 - Annotated (Paperback)

About the Book

This annotated discography covers the first 50 years of audio recordings by black artists in chronological order, music made in the "acoustic era" of recording technology. The book has cross-referenced bibliographical information on recording sessions, including audio sources for extant material, and appendices on field recordings; Caribbean, Mexican and South American recordings; piano rolls performed by black artists; and a filmography detailing the visual record of black performing artists from the period. Indexes contain all featured artists, titles recorded and labels.

Book Synopsis

This annotated discography covers the first 50 years of audio recordings by black artists in chronological order, music made in the "acoustic era" of recording technology. The book has cross-referenced bibliographical information on recording sessions, including audio sources for extant material, and appendices on field recordings; Caribbean, Mexican and South American recordings; piano rolls performed by black artists; and a filmography detailing the visual record of black performing artists from the period. Indexes contain all featured artists, titles recorded and labels.

Review Quotes

"fascinating information. It is also a resource that will enable researchers to trace the development of black recorded music through its formative stages offering historians and music scholars a trove of data to analyze...Gibbs has performed an impressive feat of dedicated scholarship"-Against the Grain; "invaluable...a great deal of work went into this definitive work...highly recommended"-Los Angeles Jazz Scene - Jazz Around Town; "fascinating"-Document Records Newsletter.

About the Author

The late Craig Martin Gibbs was a lecturer at Kyoto University in Japan.