Actionable Offenses: Indecent Phonograph Recordings from the 1890s
Actionable Offenses: Indecent Phonograph Recordings from the 1890s is a compilation of jokes and stories recorded to wax cylinders during the 1890s. At the time the recordings were made, they were considered indecent, and nearly all similar recordings from this era have been destroyed, often by law. The compilation was assembled by Patrick Feaster and David Giovannoni, and released on Archeophone Records, an archival reissue label, in 2007. It received two Grammy Award nominations. Historical background By the 1890s, phonograph machines became common in public places, and were found in American cities at county fairs, public halls, saloons, and department stores. In many places, such as bars and taverns, patrons could place money into a coin slot and choose a recording to listen to, like a jukebox. Some establishments began placing cylinders of a sexually explicit nature into their machines during this decade, and local authorities often took steps to remove the cylinders from use and charge those responsible under indecency statutes. In New York City, Anthony Comstock and his Society for the Suppression of Vice spent several years investigating cases of indecent material in phonograph booths throughout the city. In 1899, Comstock succeeded in pushing through a statute specifically criminalizing the distribution and airing, public or private, of recorded material which used profanity or sexually explicit language; as a result, most of those in the business of making such records ceased to do so after 1900. In addition to commercial recordings, the advent of home recording also allowed for the creation of obscene or sexually explicit recordings. Such machines were available by the 1890s, and the ability to use the machine to record such material was actually used as a selling point by some purveyors of home recording machines. Assembly of the compilation The recordings on the album comprise two collections of cylinders: the Walter Miller Collection and the Bruce R. Young Collection. The Walter Miller Collection was compiled by the manager of Thomas Edison's commercial apparatus until 1937, and his collection of commercial recordings was preserved by the Edison National Historic Site from the 1950s. The latter collection was purchased by a collector in 1997, and consisted of what are probably home recordings. Both of the collections are presented in their entirety on the compilation; tracks 1–14 are the Miller Collection and tracks 15–43 are the Young collection. The Miller Collection was digitized in November 2006. Performers Cal Stewart Cal Stewart (c. 1856 – 1919) began his career in vaudeville after injuring his hand and foot working on a railroad. by 1895 he was performing in New York City at the Union Square Theatre, and in 1897 he made his first phonograph recordings. Stewart was best known for his monologues depicting stereotypical "rubes" and "Yankees". Working extensively as a performer and recorder up to the time of his death in 1919, he became a nationally celebrated humorist. The curators of the collection identified Stewart as the most likely performer of the first two tracks of the disc. Russell