Strictly on the Record: the art of jazz and the recording industry

Abstract

The invention of recorded sound has revolutionized all forms of music and the way music is used. A little more than century ago, people bought sheet music and made their own music. Today, recorded music is digital, portable and serves as the soundtrack to every aspect of a person’s life. Jazz was fortunate enough to evolve into existence during roughly the same period as Emile Berliner’s and Thomas Edison’s first attempts at capturing actual sound. The art of jazz and the craft of recording have had a long and sometimes rocky relationship. If a Tree Falls in the Forest … But documenting sound is essential to jazz. Without it, jazz history would exist only as scraps of evidence and hearsay. The first chapter of jazz development in New Orleans went unrecorded. Decades later, scholars scrambled to capture oral histories by witnesses to reconstruct the sound, style and content of Buddy Bolden’s music. The accounts by fellow musicians do little to bring this music to life; it is unrecorded and therefore lost forever.