A Day in the Studio
While the Gennett Records Division collection has much to say regarding the influential performers who graced the studio, the items provide a glimpse into a lesser-known aspect of music history: the daily operations of an early recording studio.
In addition to giving a wealth of information regarding who played what and when, recording cards offer a glimpse into the daily life and workflow of Gennett’s recording engineers. The engineer running a session--identified at the top of the card--often made several remarks that ranged from technical matters, such as gain levels, to mundane concerns, such as a take interrupted by a passing train. These notes aided engineers in their pursuit of an optimal recording environment; however, it can be difficult for an outsider to know precisely what these oft-ambiguous remarks mean. For this particular card, it seems that “Dia 35” refers to the specific diaphragm used, “Wax at 110” may refer to the temperature of the wax disc (kept warm for the sake of malleability), and “Horn 7 and 6” refers to the studio’s acoustic horns used to capture the performance. The weather is indicated because it would have affected the temperamental studio equipment.
The Gennett ledger contains financial and administrative information related to recording sessions, including recording dates, locations, copyright information, and royalties. Together with the recording cards, the ledger entries provide a rich account of the daily activities of Gennett’s Recording Division. For example, the “Made For” column indicates the recipient of commercial recordings (this particular page has many recordings made in Chicago for distribution at Sears), while recordings marked as “Private,” or sometimes “Vanity,” were commonly produced for individuals. This page also hints at the wide variety of musical styles--often recorded in a single day--that Gennett offered: sacred, hillbilly (an early label for country music), and popular.
After a successful recording take, the resulting wax disc would be transported to Starr’s nearby factory for a process called electroplating. This is a procedure in which the wax disc is given a thin coat of silver and then dipped in a bath of tin or nickel to become plated. This “master” plate, the mirror image of the wax disc, goes through the same electroplating process in order to create a non-reversed metal copy, the “mother.” Mothers are kept in storage while the masters are used as “stampers” to produce 78-rpm shellac records (remember: the masters are inversions of the original wax disc--with metal protrusions, not grooves--perfect for stamping).
Gennett’s sound discs are lateral-cut, meaning that the stylus moves from side to side on the wax disc in response to sound captured by the horn. To learn more about Gennett and lateral-cut discs, click here.
Pedro Gonzalez-Fernandez