For this study Minton examined several hundred 78 r.p.m. phonograph discs, originally segregated as ‘hillbilly’ and ‘race’ records, released between the mid-1920s and World War II, mostly referencing LP and CD reissues of the latter. Minton asks how early-twentieth-century southerners in the USA experienced these records and suggests that they regarded them as folksong performances and familiar social occasions, thus extending a pre-phonograph tradition. This observation depends on the ‘listening instructions’ that many of these records actually contain: notably direct appeals to the audience or more subtle cues, ‘Suggesting a coherent aesthetic for experiencing [these] records’ (p. 35). That the goal of the book is to hear, ‘All of these recorded events as they once sounded’ (p. 32) is certainly a bold statement: the author concludes that he at least understood how different it was to listen to these records when they were first released.
Minton determines four different strategies of framing these records, which he does not regard as mutually exclusive: (i) stylised depictions of live music-making; (ii) folksong performances in their own right; (iii) self-contained musical events that retain a relation to live performances; (iv) logical contradictions between live and studio settings. The wealth of records Minton examines comprises recorded dramas, re-enactments of public balls, rural dances, inner-city house parties, fiddle contests and church services. He guides us through dance halls, bar rooms, juke joints, nightclubs, liquor stores, taverns, cafés and barrelhouses during this journey in time. He concludes that the purpose of these settings is, ‘To recast familiar traditions within an unfamiliar medium’ (p. 56), and to establish personal links through customary events.
Minton also points out cases where records achieve a new level of conceptual autonomy. Already by the 1920s references to the studio setting itself appear in these recordings, and one wonderful example Minton mentions is a church service record that begins with, ‘A special prayer on the man that's a-catching the record’ (p. 95). For Minton, however, live performance remains the ultimate point of reference, and although he talks about ‘recording artists’ rather than musicians in this context, he still thinks of recording as merely ‘catching’ a musical event and does not acknowledge that this process probably altered the performance in the first place. Even if there was no extensive studio production at the time, performers had to adapt to the new medium. Minton, on the contrary, constantly argues that the medium itself has been adapted to conventional musical practice.
Minton wants to make the point that records became an integral part of the folksong experience. Yet despite his reasoning that ‘pure’ folk uncontaminated by print or broadcast has always been an idealised form, he seems to idealise that very ‘live’ folk experience himself. The peculiarity of this book is that it actually reproduces a folk ideology of the authentic, due to underlying concepts of ‘performance’ and ‘music’ that remain unaltered by and exist independently of the recording process. This is most apparent in Minton's attitude towards ‘canned performances’ and his definition of music as, ‘An extremely personal expression’ (p. 16). For him it was not until after World War II that a transformation of southern US music took place.
Regarding these pre-war recordings, Minton retains an idea of folk music as an essence that may be caught and reproduced. And while he focuses on the musician as author and on the musician's relation to the audience, he neglects the commercial context without which these records would not have been produced. Of course, commercial interests never fitted neatly into this picture of authentic folksongs. However, as much as the record industry itself seeks to remain invisible in this process, it certainly always pursued its own interests, which were not necessarily at odds with the interests of musicians or consumers. Minton argues that in these imaginary settings performers and listeners are not separated by an impersonal medium but remain knowable people with a common background, which is what makes these records so personal or personable. Such a sense of community is also indispensable for creating a market. As Minton mentions, these are strategies of framing records – therefore they are used for different purposes and they also remain very useful marketing strategies until the present day.
While Minton may not be able to restore the actual listening experience of the time, the conception of these records is remarkable. Although concepts like recording realism are well known within popular music studies, the study shows that these existed already in the pre-Sgt. Pepper era. And even though Minton does not relate his findings to popular music scholarship, he presents a lot of material that warrants attention within the field.
Though Minton encloses vivid descriptions of the examined recordings, the reader would wish for selected listening examples (either on CD or through an online resource) as well as a bibliography, especially as the study relies heavily on primary sources. Minton employs a myriad of quotes from these sources to flesh out the characters of recording stories, which makes the book an entertaining read for the most part, although there is a tendency in a few instances for excessive use of such prime material. What Minton refers to when examining the live-to-recorded ratio of these records is not the musical performance itself but the listening instructions mentioned above. While he points out that these may be used to evoke a sense of tradition in the first place, consciously or unconsciously he also employs such discursive strategies in his own writing. What he makes of these records, the contexts in which he places them and those which he chooses to ignore, reproduces a sense of traditional music making within a folk community. Thus to a certain degree the book becomes a folklorist's folktale, albeit a very useful one.
