For the Record

[upbeat music] – Taylor Bailey: Sergio.

Sergio.

Sergio!

– Sergio Gonzlez: Oh, hey, Taylor.

Sorry, I didn’t hear you.

– What are you doing?

– Oh, I’m listening to my brand-new record.

It’s fantastic.

– As in like a vinyl record?

Sergio, are you living in the Stone Age?

We have computers, phones, the internet.

– Oh, Taylor, records are fantastic.

These things go back over 100 years.

Plus, it’s a great way to connect with musical history.

– Sounds like your music taste is a part of history.

– Excuse me, what was that?

– Never mind.

– You seem a little suspicious.

How about we go to a music library?

– A music library?

– Oh, Taylor, these things are amazing.

A music library has music that goes back to the founding of the state.

Are you up for it?

– I guess, but I get to pick the music in the car.

– Ooh, does your ride have a record player?

[upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] [television static] Hey, Tom!

– Tom Caw: Hi, Sergio!

– How you doing?

– Great, good to see you.

– Good to see you too.

This is my friend Taylor.

– Hi.

– Hello, Taylor.

– Nice to meet you.

– Nice to meet you.

– So where are we right now?

– Well, you are in the Mills Music Library here at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

So we are here to help people with all of their questions about music, music history, musicians, all around the world, all types of music.

– So I think we’re in the right place, Taylor, to ask Tom about records.

What can you tell us about records?

– Oh, records, whew.

We have records.

We have thousands of records here at Mills Music Library.

– Nice; so how old are the records here?

– Oh, we have recordings going back to the mid, late 19th century, up ’til right now in the 21st century.

– Wow.

– Yeah.

– How about records from Wisconsin?

– One of the ones that we have that we’re most proud of is a collection of records released by Paramount Records, and that was one of the recording labels under the Wisconsin Chair Company, based, of course, in Port Washington, Wisconsin on Lake Michigan.

– Paramount Records came from a chair company?

How does a chair company have anything to do with music?

– That’s a great question, Taylor.

So the Wisconsin Chair Company obviously made chairs and other furniture.

Around 1915, they started manufacturing phonograph cabinets, so record players, essentially, for other companies, and they realized, “Hey, we should just make them for ourselves and sell them.”

And then they realized, “Why don’t we make the records as well?”

So that’s how that happened.

– All right, before we get too deep into the records, let’s consider the context around this time, the stuff that was happening.

Recorded music and things like record players really took off in the years after World War I.

Why?

Well, this was a period of good economic times for the U.S. More goods and money was available.

The war was over.

People could refocus on arts and culture and industry.

And if you’ve ever heard of the Roaring Twenties, this was it.

There was also more factories being built.

This meant jobs, but it also meant that it was easier to mass produce records and record players.

There was also a national dance craze around this time, and you definitely want some music if you’re gonna show off your moves.

– Here are some of our Paramount records that we have in our collection.

This first one that I’m going to show you is from Ma Rainey.

– And I know her; I’ve heard of her before.

– Really?

Yeah, no.

She was a star.

She was the first big recording star for Paramount Records, really.

And she got so famous that they released this record, Dream Blues, with a photo of her printed on the label.

And this was just an example of how she was such a star that they could market the record with her picture right on it.

– Taylor: Oh, wow.

– Yeah.

Another woman who recorded and released records for Paramount is Ida Cox.

And this one is also interesting because it’s not the usual black record.

– Sergio: Oh, wow!

– Taylor: That’s cool.

– Right?

– Taylor: So how did they get it to turn a different color?

– Just different materials, different dyes they would put into the material that they made the record from.

A couple of these are 100 years old.

– Wow.

– Yeah, from the early 1920s.

– Today, it’s pretty common to call records vinyl, as in vinyl records.

This is because they’re generally made of polyvinyl chloride, which is a type of plastic.

But back in the earliest days of records, they used something else, shellac.

What’s shellac?

It’s a type of resin that comes from a bug.

– Wait, did you just say bugs?

– Uh, yeah.

Certain bugs squirt out this liquid called resin on trees.

It dries out, and it gets scraped off by people, and transformed into shellac, which kinda has a plasticky feel.

– So those early records were made out of dried-up insect juice?

– In a sense, yeah.

Does that bug you?

– Was that an insect joke?

– Yeah, is that a buzzkill?

I can bee more careful.

– Okay, I’m leaving.

– You mean leafing.

– Okay, so.

I’m gonna put this record on the phonograph turntable.

This is an Edison 1919 model of the Diamond Disc phonograph cabinet.

And it’s an incredible piece of technology because it requires no electricity.

It’s hand-cranked, and you crank it up to get the turntable spinning, and there’s a control to get it going.

Do you want to go ahead and crank it up there?

– Yeah, I would love to.

– Okay, Taylor.

Hand crank it.

Give it a good four or five turns.

Okay, that oughta do it; let’s see.

We’ll turn this on.

– Taylor: Wow.

– We can bring this over.

– Sergio: Here goes.

– Now, here we go.

You ready?

– Yeah.

– Let’s do it.

[“On Wisconsin”] I think I’ve heard that song before.

– Tom: Yeah?

You might have.

– So this was a really successful company, it sounds like.

What happened to Paramount?

– Well, like a lot of businesses that relied on people with their money that they would spend for entertainment, they started to see it drop off, and especially once the Great Depression hit in the United States.

– Remember the economic good times mentioned earlier and those Roaring Twenties?

Well, the Great Depression put a big stop to all of that.

The term Great Depression refers to the major economic downturn that started in 1929 and lasted about a decade.

There was super high unemployment, a rise in poverty levels, and people generally had less money to spend.

And this wasn’t just in the U.S. From 1929 to 1939, countries all over the world were impacted.

In the U.S., people had less money for things like records.

Instead, they turned to another new technology, the radio.

With fewer people buying records, many record companies shut down, including Paramount.

– So what’d you think of the record player?

– I thought it was really amazing, and I thought it was so cool how all of those records managed to stay intact for almost a whole century.

– Did you get some good arm workout with the cranking on the record player?

– I loved cranking the record player.

I never thought that I would have to do something like that.

I thought you just automatically play it.

– The phonograph made listening to recorded sounds possible, but for most of history, people didn’t have any recorded sound.

The only way to hear music or sound was to listen to it live.

Things like wax cylinders and records changed all of that.

And since then, there have been lots of inventions to record sound.

Try doing some research on the history of recorded sound yourself.

How did young people listen to music 20 or 30 or 50 years ago?

Or make your own recording.

Use your phone or computer to record some music, or a story, or a special message.

You’ll be making a piece of audio history for the future.

– I’m leaving.

[upbeat music] – Do you mean leafing?

– Cool.

[laughs]