Talking Machine West: A History and Catalogue of Tin Pan Alley’s Western Recordings, 1902–1918. American Popular Music Series. By Michael A. Amundson

Abstract

Music historians generally agree that the first recording of a western or “cowboy” song was “Jesse James” by concert singer Bentley Ball in 1919, while Carl Sprague, who waxed “When the Work’s All Done this Fall” in 1925, was the first authentic cowboy to record. In this new book, Michael A. Amundson explores the phonograph industry’s earlier recordings of western-themed material. This material sprang from the pens of professional songwriters based in New York and the performances were by vaudeville performers such as Billy Murray, Ada Jones, and Len Spencer, none of whom had experience in the West beyond singing in regional theaters. Talking Machine West is divided into three sections. The first discusses the author’s engagement with popular music history, exploring early recording equipment and processes with a focus on cylinder recordings. Next, Amundson provides an overview of the early recording industry, the idea of the West in popular culture, and places western themed recordings within that context. Important factors in emergence of popular images of the West are Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, western tourism, and influence of Theodore Roosevelt and Frederick Jackson Turner. Equally important in the writing of popular music was the rise of blackface minstrel and ethnic imagery. These factors merge into an examination of the songs and recordings themselves. Amundson is particularly adept at outlining the types of songs represented in the catalogue “including cowboy poetry, western skits, cowboy songs, love songs, Indian songs, Wild West show songs, cowgirl songs, and both cowboy and Indian ragtime dance songs” (p. 45). Racial and ethnic attitudes, common on the early twentieth-century American stage, find discussion and show that Western compositions were not immune to those trends.