Thursday, March 11, 2021

The return of Reuben and Cynthia

 




DOWNLOAD: Reuben and Cynthia, more


So, for years, when EQing 78s, I've been using the same noise-sample type in the Denoiser section of my MAGIX program.  I never questioned why this setting is the default--I'll have to study the ol' Help screen.  (It's never too late to consult the instructions.)  Anyway, my program's Denoiser window is oddly set up, to an extent--the noise-sample type appears in two places: on top of the "Create Noise Sample" portion, and below the spectrum view.  Again, I never questioned the default noise-type setting-- "DeRumlber weak (Vinyl)"--and I always figured a little derumble filtering is good for a file.  Anyway, I finally changed the preset for this, and I saved the preset, hoping that this would make it the default preset, but... no.  So, to the Help screen I need to go.

Meanwhile, my new choice for the noise-sample type seems to be working a lot better, as far as noise reduction on noisier 78s.  So I'm happy.

And so I have some improved 78 EQs, including the racist-but-perfectly-accepted-for-its-time Alagazam (To the Music of the Band), which is a clever and catchy number, with the great Peerless Quartet in top form, no matter how embarrassing the, shall we say, flavor of the number.

Reuben and Cynthia, from the 1892 hit musical A Trip to Chinatown (Charles H. Hoyt-Percy Gaunt), is first on our playlist, and the number--kind of a proto-country banter song--seems to have become identified with "hillbillies" and hillbilly/country music.  The melody has a folk sound to it--or, at least, the sound of something mid-19th century rather than late 19th-century--and of course it might have a folk source, but so far I've found nothing to support this.  The same musical gave us After the Ball and The Bowery.  Last time, I mentioned the amazing piano work (which is still amazing), and the approximately four seconds of Corinne Morgan  singing in the background as the record starts, just before the announcer comes in. Both apparently missed their starting cues.  The male voice is Frank C. Stanley, who recorded a ton of solo and quartet sides (he was a member of the Peerless Quartet).  He died in 1910.

I'll repeat my account of The Royal Purple--Come Fill Your Glasses up: The 1914 Williams Mandolin Club 78 was a freebie included with an eBay order.  I was astonished by what I heard, because it is very much like the African-American string bands I'd heard on acoustical recordings from the same period, except, in this case, the Mandolin Club (along with being middle-class Caucasian) was evidently recorded as is.  It wasn't pared down, as we might expect, to four or five players, with the percussion close to the horn (that's why you have to really listen for the drumming on this side).  And, since I have no idea how a large string club/orchestra should sound with the acoustical process, I had to make my best guesses--about nine of them--before deciding my file was as good as I was going to get it.  And, in today's post, you hear a whole new restoration which is closer to the very dull fidelity of the raw file, which you can hear at the Library of Congress' National Jukebox.  You can hear what I had to work with, though of course I used my own copy (the LOC recordings are not downloadable).  The second part of this record, the one that picks up in tempo and charges ahead in near-ragtime fashion, is an 1896 text named "Come Fill Your Glasses Up", which was matched to a strain from Sousa's Corcoran Cadets march of 1890.  High school and college mandolin and banjo clubs, which were often augmented with drums, reeds, and brass (there seems to have been an anything-goes ethic), were a big thing from the 1880s to the early 1920s.  They represent nothing less than middle-class (or at least upper middle-class and upper-class) white kids imitating an African-American model, which sort of flies in the face of the "Whites never heard anything black" cliché so essential to the false narratives that go with jazz and rock, in particular. These clubs didn't up and vanish, but they seemed to become less common after that initial boom.  And the Jazz Age of the 1920s seems to have completely changed the character of these outfits (though I'm generalizing from what little data I have). "Massed" string bands--clubs--existed all over the country--New England, the Midwest, Colorado, etc., and there were men's and women's groups.  Here's the not-tiny 1917 Oxford University (of Ohio) mandolin club.  Good grief.  And you'll notice a banjo and some other non-mandolin instruments... 


Our third 78 is the 1915 Peerless Quartet number mentioned above, and this rip is a significant improvement over the previous one, as is (to a greater extent) Reuben and Cynthia.

Then we have quieter rips of Mellie Dunham's country outfit, from 1926--two contra dances (closely related to square dances) by this New England fiddler and his men.  New England country is a neat thing, given that we don't generally associate New England with hillbilly music.  Then, UK-born Charles D'Almaine, from 1905, with a Medley of Old Time Reels, and it's always cool to find the phrase "old time" being used in 1905.  D'Almaine was a very accomplished musician--as in, the type typically not regarded as "authentic"--and he was not even from here (my "here," that is).  So how can he be regarded as anything close to the real deal?  Well, he came from a spot close to the source of many, if not most, of the old time reels in question, so I'd say he passes the authenticity test--which, in real life, is set up so that it can never be passed.  Authenticity, as the concept is employed in real life, falls into the "necessarily true" category in logic--something is so because it is so.  More specifically, it's defined so narrowly as to ensure that only a few, favored individuals will fit the highly imprecise bill. 

Enjoy!  And I'm proud of the restraint I showed with the Williams College Mandolin Club.  You can only "add" so much audio detail to an acoustical recording before you've ruined the dynamic balance and increased the distortion.  But now we know why large groups of stringed instruments were so rarely recorded in full.

And I just figured out how to embed the Nation Jukebox file:


Lee


13 comments:

Buster said...

Great commentary - as I mentioned to you previously, I knew none of this. Fascinating.

A man for whom Christ died said...

Lee,
I got the new transfers and will check 'em (both old and new) out first chance I get, but your LOC link got me to investigating. Guess what, those files are downloadable! If you look below the audio player region, there is an option to download, at least, from what my blind eyes saw LOL! Searched for something, got some MP3s and going back for more ASAP, so, 'til later, love and prayin' for ya!

Romans 11:33-36 KJB

Josh
Podcast: http://www.jeremiah616.sermon.net
Callcast: (563) 999-3967
Blog: http://www.brojoshowens.wordpress.com
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/preacher-friends

Lee Hartsfeld said...

Buster--

Thanks! I think it was this Williams Club 78 that got me to buy Karen Linn's banjo history, "That Half-Barbaric Twang." The banjo craze, among whites, started with upper-class women, she writes! The college clubs played a variety of light music, along with some "characteristic" pieces--i.e., stereotypically black material. On this disc, I hear a harmonic texture very close to that of the African-American string bands of the time, so I think it went beyond simply playing characteristically black material, since here the musicians have a Sousa melody sounding one of the era's "coon" songs. It seems that the banjo/banjo club/string band tradition went from the Minstrel stage to upper- and middle-class whites. Searching through another history of late 19th-century black music, which quotes from black newspaper articles of the time, it looks like brass and string bands had roughly equal popularity come about 1890.

Josh--

I see the download links, but they seem to be for the pics only! Darn. I Googled "Does the National Jukebox allow downloads?" and got a no answer. However, I just now used the "embed" feature from the Share function. That's kind of a semi-download! Hope you enjoy the sounds.

Lee Hartsfeld said...

Buster,

I meant to type that the black influence went beyond the occasional "darky" number and I left "like" out of "sounding like."

The LOC file retains the brief chatter at the end, which I forgot to mention in my post. A male voice is saying something, but I can't make out the words.

A man for whom Christ died said...

Lee,
Don't believe I'm giving away any national secrets here LOL, but below the word download, (at least in the MP3s I've seen), there is a combo box that says something like, MP3, 43 MB (longer files for me than songs LOL) and then a button that says, go. Hit enter on the go button, then the MP3 link (or a list of options, such as MP3 and WAV) will come up. I select save audio as and it worky for me. Hope this helps, love and prayin' for ya!

Romans 11:33-36 KJB

Josh
Podcast: http://www.jeremiah616.sermon.net
Callcast: (563) 999-3967
Blog: http://www.brojoshowens.wordpress.com
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/preacher-friends

Lee Hartsfeld said...

Josh,

On my browser, at least, beside the download button, there are four JPEG options to choose from. The go button simply takes me to different-sized images. No audio options. Are you getting this on "The Royal Purple"?

Ernie said...

Lee,

Thanks for the tunes, and the commentary, of course.

When you say you always use the same noise sample, that set off a warning flag in my head. I don't know your workflow, but I always grab a noise sample from the record I'm working on, assuming I can get a quiet enough area at the beginning or end of a recording. Each record is going to have different noise, depending on the pressing, material it's pressed on, and it's quality of life over the years. I find that if I grab a sample from the beginning of the record, it's usually noisier than the end, so it tends to flatten things out more than a sample from the end, but I usually use those anyway. Maybe I'm misreading what you do, because your restorations sound great, but I just thought I'd ask...

Lee Hartsfeld said...

Hi, Ernie.

Sometimes I sample from the beginning, sometimes from the end. And I meant that there's a default preset in the Denoiser window--it picks the noise-sample type, which is kind of weird, but... For instance, the noise-sample type can be a 50 or 60 Hz hum, or strong tape hiss, or buzzing, etc. I never paid much attention to this preset until I discovered that changing the sample type from low vinyl rumble to strong tape hiss gives better noise reduction. I don't know why MAGIX set things up this way--I'd prefer that there be no extra "preset," that I could simply sample the noise and not have to designate a sample type, but that's how the software is set up. I always sample each 78 individually, whether from the starting-groove hiss or the closing noise. I have a number of 78s on which the surface noise increases throughout the side. Thanks for the nice words!

Ernie said...

Oh, I gotcha. Sorta makes sense, but not an option I have in Audacity. I suppose vinyl noise is different from tape hiss is different from shellac schloss.

And I think it's pretty rare for a record to be noisier on the inner grooves than the outer, but I guess it can happen. Linear velocity is higher on the outer grooves, which makes the fidelity a little greater, but also means that there's gonna be more groove for stuff to be in making noise. :) I wonder if there's a way to sample the noise at the beginning and the end, then make a filter that gradually moves from one level to the other as the side goes. Hmmm, that's an idea... I know I've had to work my way through an LP side before, taking noise samples from before each track to get the best sample to use for each track. I'm usually not doing that good of a job though. :)

Buster said...

I used the ClickRepair products DeNoise and DeNoise LF for many years. DeNoise is a broad-band noise reduction program that works from taking a noise sample (similar to these other products). DeNoise LF is a configurable rumble filter. These are good products. I now use iZotope RX for clicks and broadband noise reduction, but continue to emply DeNoise LF for rumble.

A man for whom Christ died said...

HMMM Lee, don't seem to see it on TRP, dunno. Could it be that, this blind guy's got one up on y'all sighted folk? LOL! Here is a link where I do see it though.

https://www.loc.gov/item/afc1982009_afs21680/

Lee Hartsfeld said...

Yes, I see it! This is the first file I've seen with this option.

Well, we know you weren't hallucinating! (-:


Lee

A man for whom Christ died said...

LOL! Now, that's funny, glad I could help, love and praying for y'all!

Romans 11:33-36 KJB

Josh
Podcast: http://www.jeremiah616.sermon.net
Callcast: (563) 999-3967
Blog: http://www.brojoshowens.wordpress.com
Google Group: http://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/preacher-friends