On the Offense

TURNS OUT YOUR GREAT-GRANDPARENTS were just as filthy-mouthed as you. Filthier, even. Written bawdry has a long tradition, of course, but with the onset of the age of recorded sound, we were able to hear, as often as we wished, the kinds of story (and language) that previously were the province of men’s smokers.

Writing of Thomas Edison’s earliest experiments of audio recording, Patrick Feaster and David Giovannoni note, “Reliable earwitness accounts tell of Edison and his men repeatedly shouting ‘mad dog’ into the machine and then gleefully running it backwards to hear from the tinfoil one resounding ‘God damn’ after another.” The temptation go blue has always been compelling.

Some recording artists went much farther than mere blasphemy, as proven by “Actionable Offenses,” a single-CD collection on the Archeophone label subtitled, “Indecent Phonograph Recordings from the 1890s.” Indecent they are. Gleefully so.

Archeophone’s mission is to rescue acoustic-era recordings from obscurity, and the label has copped a GRAMMY award and many nominations along the way. Until 1925, audio recordings were created using a large horn as a microphone. Audio waves set a diaphragm at the horn’s narrow end into motion, and that drove a stylus to cut a cylinder or platter. Frequency response was limited and further obscured by repeated playback.

Richard Martin, who founded the label in 1998 with his wife, Meagan Hennessey, specializes in audio restoration. Working with optimal transfers from cylinder and disc, he coaxes the best possible sound out of those fading grooves. The results can be revelatory.

Don’t expect pristine sound or even consistent audibility from the 44 tracks on this CD. Even Feaster and Giovannoni, who were among the foursome transcribing the tracks, couldn’t decipher everything. But they got most of it, and it’s in the accompanying booklet.

Their program notes do precisely what’s needed with material like this, which is to historically contextualize it without apology. We learn about the principal recording artists, when they can be identified, and in particular the plight of Russell Hunting, jailed in 1896 for his scurrilous audio activity.

Which leads to a sidebar about Anthony Comstock, self-appointed moral arbiter at the turn of the last century, who got himself a Post Office position so that he could prosecute those who sent what he considered indecent material through the mail. And prosecute he did, burning everything from outright porn to birth-control info and ruining hundreds of lives until he was brought down by Margaret Sanger.

Phonograph players were just beginning to become household items in the 1890s, so the most common way of hearing these recordings – any recordings – was in public or private exhibition halls. So the material presented in this set could be seen as the precursor of the 8mm stag film a few decades later.

Two collections were the sources of the cylinders heard here. A box containing nine of them (see accompanying photo) mutely sat for years at the Edison National Historic Site, unplayed because nobody dared subject them to what could well cause their destruction. It wasn’t until 2006 that a technologically proficient curator there digitized them, and information about the performers was gleaned from contemporaneous newspaper stories. The remaining cylinders came from Bruce R. Young, who obtained them as part of a much larger collection he purchased. The smutty stuff turned out to be home recordings, a rarity for the day, largely recitation of dirty poems and riddles.

What can you expect from this collection? Because I know that you’re no prude, let’s look at a sample of one of Hunting’s narratives, titled “The Whores' Union,” in which the following resolution is adopted: “Whereas, it having become known to the frail angels of New York that the recent arrival of whores from France has materially injured our legitimate profession by their low prices, it was resolved at the last regular meeting of this union that we do not allow ourselves to be out-fucked by anything that wears hair.

“Therefore, be it resolved that the following scale of prices be agreed upon, as follows: Common old-fashioned fuck: one dollar. Rear fashion: one fifty. Back-scuttle fashion: one seventy-five.” And so on, until we reach: “All night, with use of towel and rosewater: five dollars. All night, cunt well cleansed: five dollars. All night, country cunt with maidenhead (our own importation): twenty-five dollars.”

In other words, as far as the masculine sensibility is concerned, very little has changed.

Actionable Offences:
Indecent Phonograph Recordings from the 1890s
Archeophone Records
www.archeophone.com