If truly obscure, truly early recordings are your pleasure you should subscribe to the Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) semi-annual journal. Though their exploration of sound reproduction is not caged by era or genre there are many exciting features about sound in the jazz era and before.
Recently they have taken to releasing an annual CD as well as two issues a year printed as soft cover books of over 200 pages. The first CD celebrated the new Federal recognition of a uniform public domain for sound recordings at 100 years. Overnight all recordings before 1923 entered the public domain. Prior to the Music Modernization Act, which the ARSC helped to pass, the lingering threat of unintentional infringement on even very obscure recordings from the 1880s had frightened them off from the practice of releasing sound recordings, something that would otherwise be very obvious for the organization to do.
I wrote about their special issue celebrating this milestone, and more on public domain history, in our May 2022 issue. Today I want to focus on their latest issue, dated Fall 2023. The second to contain a disc. Their second release is, as they joke, focused on “firsts,” be it the artist’s first recording, first recording of the title, or in some other way. For example, they include the first recording of what is now the Ukranian National Anthem (1910).
Instead of re
