Fred Van Eps’ Earliest Recordings now at the UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive.

[F. Chris Ware]

I do believe this is of interest here! Thanks to my friend Rick Benjamin of the Paragon Ragtime Orchestra, for alerting!

Very best to all, as always,

C. 

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0R37CXSYyvu6Bp4bjk...

[Jody Stecher]

Chris, this is very relevant to the ongoing discussion of whether early cylinder recordings of banjo sound good or not.  The link is to a Facebook page. When I go directly to the UCSB collection I find only 7 Van Eps recordings and some are not digitized and some are as late as the 1920s. Is there somewhere other than Facebook where the collection can be directly accessed without going through Facebook?  

[F. Chris Ware]

Hi Jody,

The UCSB Cylinder Archive seems to only use Facebook (which I hate and do not have an account with, not that it matters) to make public announcements and general blog-ish postings. Their own homepage is, however, readily accessible here, and is an astonishing repository of years and years of digitization effort:

https://cylinders.library.ucsb.edu

All my very best!

C. 

[Jody Stecher]

That's the site were I found only 7 Van Eps recordings and not all early and not all digitized, just listed as being in the collection in a drawer or shelf somewhere.  So I was still wondering where these Earliest Recordings can actually be accessed.    I clicked on the Santa Barbara URL again and this time I found 38 Van Eps recordings. Some of them are from the first decade of the 20th century but these don't seem to be the very earliest.  There is no indication that these were recently added to the collection. So I am confused.

[F. Chris Ware]

Hi Jody,

The Facebook notice was simply an announcement by UCSB that Van Eps' personal collection of his very earliest cylinders had just been donated to the archive; they'll be digitized and publicly posted in the upcoming weeks and months. 

Very best!
C.

[Jody Stecher]

Ah!  That explains why I couldn't find them.  I'll start looking again in July.  Thanks for alerting us all.

F. Chris Ware said:

Hi Jody,

The Facebook notice was simply an announcement by UCSB that Van Eps' personal collection of his very earliest cylinders had just been donated to the archive; they'll be digitized and publicly posted in the upcoming weeks and months. 

Very best!
C.

[thereallyniceman]

Thank you so much for the "heads up",Chris. This is a real delight to look forward to!