Description

Variety entertainment dominated the popular recording industrys acoustic era pre 1925 from its beginnings in the 1890s when records were made on wax cylinders right up to the beginning of the jazz age in the mid1920s From slapstick vaudeville routines and ethnic dialect skits to romantic ballads and dramatic recitations sound recordings brought variety entertainment into the homes of millions of Americans The following are three recordings from the era The Arkansas Traveler performed by Steve Porter and Ernest Hare recorded in 1922 A classic rube sketch The Arkansas Traveler was probably the bestselling example of the popular genre descriptive scene a humorous dramatic sketch that often included sound effects and music Steve Porter was a versatile vaudeville comedian who wrote and performed many comedy routines on early sound recordings Here is teams with singer and comedian Billy Jones Desperate Desmond written and performed by Fred Duprez recorded in 1915 Duprez was a vaudeville comedian famous for his comic monologues An Edison record catalog circa 1927 had this to say about the Desperate Desmond bit Duprez invented all this himself and has given it before many audiences It is really very cleverly worked out some of the incidental music fits the characters with a burlesque fashion and some of it apparently to Duprezs intense disgust is wildly inappropriate To quote a popular advertisement If you cant laugh at this see a doctor Laughing Record Henrys Music Lesson performed by Sally Stembler and Edward Meeker recorded 1923 This comic sketch was so popular nearly every early record company sold a recording of it This is the Edison Companys version Known as the laughing girl Sally Stembler was recalled in Jim Walshs seminal column Favorite Pioneer Recording Artist in Hobbies Magazine September 1973 Miss Stembler was a vaudeville comedienne who for a generation or more entertained audiences with laughing specialties