A couple of weeks ago Archeophone Records, a tiny but inventive label that specializes in CD reissues of sound recordings made in the early years of the twentieth century, sent me a copy of its latest release, Debate ’08: Taft and Bryan Campaign on the Edison Phonograph. It’s a collection of the twenty-two cylinder recordings that were made by William Jennings Bryan and William Howard Taft for Thomas Edison’s National Phonograph Company as part of their presidential campaigns. (You can hear snippets from the recordings by visiting Archeophone’s Web site.) I knew at once that a “Sightings” column for The Wall Street Journal had been dropped into my lap, and in tomorrow’s paper you can read the results.
The story of these cylinders is extraordinarily interesting, and is well told in the seventy-nine-page booklet that accompanies Debate ’08. But it’s even more interesting to listen to the recordings than it is to read about them. How did two nineteenth-century politicians respond to the challenge of a brand-new medium that required them to read their speeches into a horn instead of bellowing them out in front of a large audience without benefit of amplification? To find out, pick up a copy of Saturday’s Journal and see what I have to say.
UPDATE: Read the whole thing here. You can also listen to excerpts from four recorded speeches in which Bryan and Taft discuss American imperialism and the banking crisis of 1907-08. Talk about timely!
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
