Use a discography to:
For help with discographies, ask Amanda the music librarian amdubose@syr.edu
The Edison Phonograph Monthly covered promotional materials for various Edison labels from 1903-1916.
After searching the online reference sources, look up your artist(s) in these books in Bird Library for additional information. These books also provide contextual overviews of different early recorded music genres and put recordings into cultural context.
Tin Pan Alley: an Encyclopedia of the Golden Age of American Song by
For nearly a century, New York's famous "Tin Pan Alley" was the center of popular music publishing in this country. It was where songwriting became a profession, and songs were made-to-order for the biggest stars. Selling popular music to a mass audience from coast-to-coast involved the greatest entertainment media of the day, from minstrelsy to Broadway, to vaudeville, dance palaces, radio, and motion pictures. Successful songwriting became an art, with a host of men and women becoming famous by writing famous songs.
Reinventing Dixie: Tin Pan Alley's songs and the creation of the mythic South by
Tin Pan Alley, once New York City's songwriting and recording mecca, issued more than a thousand songs about the American South in the first half of the twentieth century. In Reinventing Dixie, John Bush Jones explores the broad impact of these songs in creating and disseminating the imaginary view of the South as a land of southern belles, gallant gentlemen, and racial harmony.In profiles of Tin Pan Alley's lyricists and composers, Jones explains how a group of undereducated and untraveled writers-the vast majority of whom were urban northerners or European immigrants- constructed the specific and detailed images of the South used in their song lyrics. In the process of evaluating the origins of Tin Pan Alley's songbook, Jones analyzes these songwriters' attitudes about North-South reconciliation, ideals of honor and hospitality, and the recurring theme of the yearning for home. Though a few of the songs employed parody or satire to undercut the vision of a peaceful, romantic South, the majority ignored the realities of racism and poverty in the region.By the end of Tin Pan Alley's era of cultural prominence in the mid-twentieth century, Jones contends that the work of its writers had cemented the "moonlight and magnolias" myth in the minds of millions of Americans. Reinventing Dixie sheds light on the role of songwriters in forming an idyllic vision of the South that continues to influence the American imagination.