Except for two tables of guitars – several of them Fenders – that I wasn’t likely to buy but that piqued a memory. A week ago, I had heard on the radio that a guitarist named Skip Pitts had died.

A table of guitars at auction - a reminder of the brilliance of Charles "Skip" Pitts.

I had never heard of Pitts before, but the announcer indicated that he was someone I should’ve known. Soon after, the announcer mentioned his music and played excerpts. That’s when I realized that I knew Pitts – not through his name but his amazing music. His were the sounds that “made” Isaac Hayes’ “Theme from Shaft.” His was the ear-catching bom-da-bom-da-bom-da-bom intro to the Isley Brothers “It’s Your Thing,” one of my favorite 1960s tunes.

Charles “Skip” Pitts had died and I was just discovering his name. Among many of us he would be considered a sideman, but in the right music circles, he appeared to be a giant.

He died on May 1 of lung cancer at the age of 65 in Memphis, TN. He had played with some of the best of Stax Records’ soul singers - most of the time with Isaac Hayes, with whom he collaborated for nearly 40 years. Pitts was known for his wah wah sound, according to several articles, that he executed superbly on the Shaft theme.

Charles "Skip" Pitts, who created the familiar guitar sound in "Theme from Shaft."

A native of Washington, DC, Pitts learned at the knee of his neighbor Bo Diddley, and worked with names whose soul music I knew and loved: Gene Chandler’s “Rainbow 65 (at age 15),” Wilson Pickett, Al Green, Sam & Dave and Rufus Thomas.

Pitts and his group the Midnight Movers backed the Isley Brothers after they left Motown in the late 1960s to form their own label. His familiar guitar sound in “It’s Your Thing” took root and got him the long association with Hayes.

He joined Hayes band in 1970 and was still working with the singer when Hayes died in 2008. The Shaft theme,  which became his trademark sound, was created by accident.

“I had a Maestro Boomerang wah that I was using on the road,” he said in an interview with Guitar Player. “The ‘Shaft’ part was created because Isaac needed something driving for the beginning of the movie, when Richard Roundtree is coming out of the subway and walking through Times Square. … Isaac was searching on the piano for something to put with it.

“I was checking my pedals. I tested my overdrive, my reverb, the Maestro box, and then I started in with the wah. Isaac stopped everything and said, ‘Skip, what is that you are playing?’ I said, ‘I am just tuning up.’ He said, ‘Keep playing that G octave.’ … It was getting repetitious to me. So when he went to the next part I tried to do the rhythm with him. He says, ‘No. Stay with what you are playing. I don’t give a damn what I play.’ He told me how to play it and put it in perspective, but it was my creation.”

Pitts was a session musician at Memphis’ Stax Records for years. He also contributed to the soundtracks of several movies, including “Hustle & Flow” starring Terrence Howard in 2005 and the strange “Black Snake Moan” starring Samuel L. Jackson in 2007.

Glad (and sad) to meet you, Mr. Pitts.

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I usually admired the artistry of the instruments but never took the time to bid on one. But I always checked them out during the previews. This time, as I approached the box, I stooped, flipped down the fasteners and opened the lid. Inside was a vintage alto saxophone whose shine had been dulled but whose beauty was as awesome as the day it was made. I was taken by it because it showed some age. It obviously had been played, and I hoped, loved.

Up close, the Buescher saxophone showed its age - its lacquer and luster gone.

The last time I’d had that reaction to a saxophone was at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, DC, last year. I first saw the alto sax propped up on a stand; it belonged to a musician with the 1960s group The Monitors. I heard him play, and later listened as Ernie Fields Jr. blew his heart out in a performance with Fred Wesley and the New J.B.’s on another stage.

The saxophone at auction had the same mystique. I’ve loved saxophones since forever; they make a sound that is so deep, so powerful, so piercing and sometimes so sad that they can move me to either cry or rejoice. It’s like listening to someone speaking intimately to just me. And no one could make it speak and me listen like Johnny Hodges, John Coltrane and Charlie “Bird” Parker.

I’ve always wanted to learn to play, but never took the time to do so. I feel the same way about the piano – in the right hands. I’ve taken piano lessons but still can’t quite seem to master it well enough to please myself. I accompanied a student sax player on the piano (we performed ”Willow Weep for Me”) some years ago when I was on a fellowship in the Knight-Wallace Fellows program at the University of Michigan. She had taken sax lessons and me piano lessons, and we played at the end-of-the-year program.

The Buescher saxophone snugly in its case.

The sax at auction was ensconsed inside a case lined in deep bluish velvet, as if it were asleep, waiting to be awakened and held again. On two sides were small boxes that held the black mouthpiece and its attachment. I just had to handle the sax, so I took it ever so gently out of its case. It had pearl-inlay keys, and most of its original lacquer was long gone.

I turned the sax over, searching for a name of the maker. Inscribed on one side was Buescher of Elhart, Ind, a name that I realized was also on the outside of the case. The patent date was 1914, which I knew was not necessarily the date of manufacture.

I had stumbled on the maker of one of the country’s finest saxophones, from what I learned later. Gus Buescher founded his company around 1894/1895 after working for a company that made band instruments. While there, he had made improvements to the saxophone (which had been invented 50 years earlier by Adolphe Sax in Belgium).

Buescher left that company and started making band instruments on his own. He made the True Tone at the turn of the 20th century after reorganizing his company under a new name. Buescher became better known for its saxophones, according to Wikipedia. Here’s a video on the site saxophone.org of instruments being made at the plant in 1924.

The Buescher name was inscribed in gold leaf on the exterior of the case.

According to bueschersaxophones.com, the bell makes the Buescher’s alto sax different from other instruments. It  is positioned lower and the rim is wider (none of which I noticed). This, the site said, offered an even deeper and marked sound.

The sax at auction was plain compared to some I saw on the web with engravings on the bell, with some in rebuilt form selling for up to $2,100 on one site. Here’s a price guide of Buescher saxophones.

I wasn’t around when the sax sold, but I’m sure the lucky bidder went home happy.

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It’s not often that I come across anything at auction pertaining to the woman who was the bad girl of Paris in the early part of the 20th century. Not a Paul Colin poster or an autographed photo of her banana-skirt outfit or even a recording by this famous singer, dancer and performer. Until now. The album was titled “Encores Americaines,” and contained songs in both English and French.

The album was released by Columbia Records in 1951 at a time when Baker was finally receiving some acceptance as a black female artist in her native country. She had left the United States in the 1920s amid grinding racism, settled in Paris and then became a French citizen in 1937. She was loved by the people of Paris, playing its venues like the star they had made her, and making several movies. “I felt liberated in Paris,” she said.

She chose France as her new country a year after a disastrous return to the United States in the “Zeigfield Follies” on Broadway. The 1936 play was a flop, she did not get kind reviews, and she was devastated, according to an account on the Josephine Baker website. She wanted her native country to love her back, but it would be more than a decade later (1951) before she would feel partly welcomed – and even longer (1973) before she would feel comfortably welcomed.

The back cover with liner notes from Josephine Baker's "Encores Americaines."

According to the album’s liner notes, she returned to the United States in a revue after World War II – one site noted that she was here in 1948 – but the show ended in Boston. By the third time, 1951, the country apparently was a tad more ready for her.

She performed at the Strand Theater on Broadway in a show that led to a national tour. Life magazine reported that she was “singing love songs in five languages and making the Strand movie theater seem intimate as a boudoir.” The Life article included a number of Alfred Eisenstaedt photos of Baker, with captions noting her expensive and elaborate costumes.

The record album at auction included such songs as “Brazil,” “Besame Mucho,” “Afraid to Dream,” and “I’m Feeling Like a Million.” It did not include her signature song “J’ai Deux Amours” (“Two Loves Have I”), whose lyrics, according to the 2010 book “The Guest List,” referred to Paris and Africa (not America). She first recorded it for Columbia in 1930, in the thick of her heyday years in Paris, where she was even honored with dolls in her image (including a Lenci doll in 1926).

While Baker was in the United States in 1951, the NAACP honored her by designating May 20, 1951 as Josephine Baker Day for her civil rights work. She rode in a 25-car motorcade through Harlem that, according to the Amsterdam News newspaper, drew 100,000 people.

A list of songs from the album "Encores Americaines" by Josephine Baker.

Baker’s 1973 performance at Carnegie Hall must have been the crowning achievement for her. According to the Josephine Baker website, she was still not sure if she would be fully accepted and acknowledged. She got her answer: The audience gave her a standing ovation before she even began to sing.

The rider notes on the back of the 1951 album outlined Baker’s appeal to Parisians, her humble origins in America and her return visits to perform in this country. It also offered this confounding query:

“Just why Josephine Baker should have been the darling of Parisians for twenty years without exciting her native land is one of those questions that forever worry theatrical historians.”

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I took the doll from among the rest to examine it. It was about 9 ½” tall, dressed in a shirt made of African-inspired colors, and its feet were bottle caps covered in the same green fabric as its pants. It arms and legs were wire wrapped in straw, and they were bendable.

The Talbot Brothers of Bermuda doll figure I found at auction.

Also on a string around its neck was a faded paper label with “Made in Bermuda” stamped on one side and “The Talbot Brothers” handwritten in ink on the other. Click on photo above for a full view.

I then realized that the doll was apparently a musician figure, and the spoon-like necklace was a guitar. I had made two trips to Bermuda, but had never heard of the Talbot Brothers. So naturally, I was intrigued and I went Googling.

By the time I visited the island, the brothers’ heyday had long past. But when they were big, they apparently were beloved. They were called the Talbot Brothers of Bermuda, and there were five brothers and one cousin: Archie (the lead singer), Austin, Bryan, Ross and Roy, and cousin Cromwell Mandres.

A Talbot Brothers' album cover.

The brothers grew up in a family of 10 children in Tucker Town with a father who worked in a stone quarry and a mother who played organ in their church. They formed the band around 1941 (or 1942, depending on what you read). They played in nightclubs and in the homes of wealthy people on the island (interestingly, some time before, the government had removed their family and others from Tucker Town to create a spot for wealthy people and in turn, boost tourism).

They became so renowned at home that tourists coming to the island sought out their shows. These folks also wanted to see Roy play that strange-looking instrument he had fashioned from a large crate and a fishing line. He called it the Doghouse, and from photos, it looked like one.

“I used line because a regular gut bass string wouldn’t work,”‘ Roy said in an interview around 2002 with Carribbean Travel & Life magazine. ”With one string, the bass was very easy to tune, and amplifying it wasn’t absolutely necessary, at least not in the early days.”

Roy, at far right, with the Doghouse.

Their instruments consisted mainly of guitars, so maybe that’s why the straw doll had a guitar around its neck.

They became popular in the United States in the late 1950s with their song “Bermuda Buggy Ride,” a sweet mellow tune that reminded me of the style of singing from 1940s movies. The group signed first with a small label that produced 10″ and 12″-inch vinyl records of their recordings, and later with ABC Paramount Records, where they released two albums. They also appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, among others.

The brothers wrote some of their own music and recorded tunes written by others, and performed along the East Coast of the United States and in London. They also incorporated humor into their their performances, encouraging the audience to participate. Some of their songs included “13 Kids,” “De Mongrel” and “Yellow Bird.”

This tag and mini guitar were on strings around the neck of the Talbot Brothers doll.

They also tackled serious subjects, as in these lyrics from “Atomic Nightmare (1957)”: “You’re going to run, run, run back where you come from. I just heard from a little bird they’re going to drop the atomic bomb.”

Among their influences, Roy told the magazine, were other calypso singers. ”For calypso, we used to listen to the Duke of Iron. And of course there was (Harry) Belafonte. I would hang from the ceiling to hear him. He had a real natural talent and always knew where to put the emphasis when he sang.”

The brothers stopped recording around 1962 but apparently continued performing until the early 1980s. Roy was the last to die, at age 94 in 2009 in Bermuda.

Pleased to meet you, Talbot Brothers. I wish my straw doll, though, had a replica of Roy’s Doghouse.

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I had never heard of the show, so I kept reading. The phrase “social significance show” popped out from the long narrative in the auction catalog, and I knew I was about to learn something amazing. Ellington had written the show in the 1940s as an antidote to the negative and stereotypical images of blacks at that time.

Two claims forms filed by Duke Ellington's band members for rehearsals for "Jump for Joy."

The auction house was selling the 1939 photo – which was not signed – and two 1941 claims against Jump for Joy Inc. The forms had the signatures of Ellington (certifying that the men should be paid by the company that was financing the show) and some other very famous names, including saxophonist Johnny Hodges. Click on the photo for a larger view.

I’m always coming across innocuous documents, photos or paraphernalia that often unlock doors into African American and American history. This was one such grouping, so I had to learn more.

Ellington and others conceived of the show serendipitously. He and his band were jamming – the joint was jumping, as someone described it – at the home of one of the collaborators, and he happened to mention that it was “jumping for joy.” And at that, this all-black musical revue was born.

The show ran at the Mayan Theater in Los Angeles from July 10, 1941 to Sept. 29, 1941, and got some good reviews. Ellington thought he’d take it to Broadway, but it was too far ahead of its time, trying to buck a trend that was too ingrained in the culture.

A poster for "Jump for Joy."

From the beginning, Ellington knew what he wanted the show to be. He didn’t think that the Gershwins’ “Porgy and Bess (1935)” was authentic enough. He didn’t believe the music played well with the performances and failed to capture the essence of black life in Catfish Row. He set out to create a musical revue that captured the real lives of African Americans.

Described as “hip,” the show sought to cast black people as human – to “take Uncle Tom out of the theater, eliminate the stereotyped image that had been exploited by Hollywood and Broadway, and say things that would make the audience think,” Ellington wrote in his 1973 autobiography “Music is My Mistress.”

The show was songs, dances and sketches in two acts and 31 scenes, with the title song (its first line: “Fare thee well, land of cotton”) starting off the second act. Ellington and his band were in the pit, and the revue was accompanied by a choir, tap and other dancers and performers.

A 1939 photo of Duke Ellington, his band and some other folks who were not identified.

It had “no crying, no moaning, but entertaining, and with social demands as a potent spice,” Ellington wrote. And it had no blackface either.

Some songs and skits poked fun at the sentimentality of living in the South: “Passport to Georgia” showed blacks leaving the “Dixie necktie” behind for a place where the “cravat’s a correct tie” and “the sign reads, ‘Out to Lunch,’ not ‘Out to Lynch.’”

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a drive-in now” showed the cabin transformed into a restaurant: “Jemimah don’t work no more for RKO, she’s slinging hash for Uncle Tom and coinin’ dough, just turn on your headlights, and she’ll take a bow, cause Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a drive-in now.”

Both songs apparently were removed from the show (one site said that Passport was later returned) over death threats.

A closeup of the claim of Duke Ellington band members for $81 for rehearsals for "Jump for Joy."

The revue featured some names I recognized. A teenage Dorothy Dandridge and longtime Ellington singer Ivie Anderson, who sang the two Southern-themed songs (as well as “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good”). Billy Strayhorn helped arrange the music. A Langston Hughes’ skit “Mad Scene From Woolworth’s” – it must have been a hoot – found its way into it. A 2002 biography of Hughes said it was cut after the writer asked for royalties.

Blues singer Joe Turner was such a hit that his fans arrived at the same time every night to see him perform for 15 minutes and then leave. “Dorothy Dandridge was lovely to look at and Wonderful Smith and Willie Lewis and Udell Johnson were very funny to listen to,” jazz writer Barry Ulanov noted in a 1946 biography of Ellington.

Wrote Ellington, “The Negroes always left proudly with their chests sticking out.”

This was not Ellington’s first musical revue. In 1924, he wrote “Chocolate Kiddies,” featuring Josephine Baker. Despite its short run, “Jump for Joy” spawned his “Black Brown and Beige,” a history of African Americans.

A closeup of the claim of Duke Ellington band members for $93 for rehearsals for "Jump for Joy."

The documents at auction showed that Ellington’s band members rehearsed the entire week – July 5-9 – before the show opened in 1941. They bore the signature of several band members and his authorization that they get paid. One claim was for $93 owed to six band members, and the other for $81 owed to eight. The rehearsal rate appeared to be $1 per hour, $2 per hour for nighttime and overtime, and a flat $5 for Sundays.

The two claim forms sold for $850.

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“Minstrel Songs. Old and New.”

Minstrelsy did not have a pretty image in my head, its history an ugly reminder of how my ancestors were portrayed and treated during the time when minstrel shows were oh-so-prevalent. I put aside my distaste for the genre and decided to examine the book. Interestingly, the illustrations on the cover were benign; in fact, the black people in the drawings were shown as human. They were not the images usually associated with minstrel shows.

The front cover illustrations of "Minstrel Songs. New and Old" appears more natural than stereotypical.

In the center of the book’s cover was an African American man and woman in a small boat, him serenading her with a guitar and song, and her listening lovingly. Another was an African American woman wearing an apron and kerchief carrying cotton in a basket, and others were scenes of people picking cotton and the front view of a wooden cabin.

Emboldened, I opened the book and read through the list of song titles. I was curious to see if this book published in 1882 carried the songs of an African American songwriter whose name I knew: James A. Bland. And it did, listing two of his most famous minstrel songs.

The book, published by Oliver Ditson Company of Boston, contained 102 of what it called “minstrel and plantation songs (and) Foster melodies.” I knew that Foster referred to Stephen C. Foster, one of the most prolific minstrel songwriters of the 19th century.

While the images on the front seemed innocuous, the titles were mixed:

Some of the titles were tame: “Rosa Lee,” “Nelly was a lady,” “Listen to the mockingbird.”

And some weren’t: “Oh, dat watermelon,” “Sing darkies sing,” “I’se going back to Dixie.”

And some mocked white people: “Folks that put on airs.”

And one sounded promising: “Massa’s in the cold ground.”

And some I recognized: “Carry me back to Old Virginia (or Virginny),” “Oh, dem golden slippers,” both written by Bland.

And two were déjà-vu: “Jingle Bells” (first written as “One horse open sleigh” by James Pierpoint in 1857 and listed as the second title of “Jingle Bells”); “Camptown Races” (also listed in the book as “Gwine to run all night”), along with “Old Folks at Home” (also listed as “‘Way Down the Swanee River”). The latter songs were written by Foster.

"Oh! dem golden slippers," music and lyrics from the book.

The song titles were a mix of stereotypical dialect that blacks supposedly spoke and the “good English” that others supposedly spoke. The titles and lyrics, though, were indicative of minstrelsy, which was a popular entertainment from around the 1840s and 1850s to 1870s. It had gotten started in the late 1820s after a white actor named Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice put black cork on his face and began mimicking a black man he’d met singing a song called “Jim Crow.” Rice turned it into a dance-and-song routine that made him famous.

Minstrel shows portrayed blacks in the worst light with their dances, songs, tomfoolery and gestures. White men in blackface played the typical black character as a lazy slave or a foolish dandy, and those images stretched years beyond the lifetime of the shows. There were also minstrel shows by black entertainers that started in the 1830s or 1840s, and gained popularity after the Civil War.

When “Minstrel Songs” was published, the shows were waning. Vaudeville was starting to take hold and popular music was changing. Among African Americans, the shows were expanded to include religious and other types of music, and the Fisk Jubilee Singers – formed at Fisk University around 1871 – were ushering in legitimate music.

During the 1850s, Foster wrote some of his most significant songs, which, according to several sites, sought to engender compassion for black people. “I have done,” Foster wrote in 1852, “a great deal to build up a taste for the (minstrel) songs among refined people by making the words suitable to their taste, instead of the trashy and really offensive words which belong to some songs of that order.”

Of Foster’s songs “Old Uncle Ned” and “My Old Kentucky Home,” black abolitionist Frederick Douglass said during a speech at a ladies anti-slavery society in 1855:

“Old Kentucky Home” and “Uncle Ned” can make the heart sad as well as merry, and can call forth a tear as well as a smile. They awaken the sympathies for the slave, in which antislavery principles take root and flourish.”

“Ned” is written in dialect, and although the sympathies may be there, you have to get past the language to feel it. Some references to blacks in “Kentucky” are a little disconcerting.

Bland was both a composer and an entertainer. He performed with several black minstrel groups, playing guitar, singing, dancing and composing. His break came in the 1880s when he traveled to London with one group and performed before Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales. One site noted that although he was criticized for his minstrel songs, they were not “nasty or degrading.”

“Virginny” was named the state song of Virginia in 1940 and song emeritus in 1997, and “Slippers” is the official song of the Philadelphia Mummers.

Two pages from the book "Minstrel Songs. Old and New."

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The brothers George and Ira Gershwin, and DuBose Heyward wrote their opera in the 1930s and it was performed on Broadway for the first time in 1935. I have bits-and-pieces of memory of scenes from one incarnation of the opera: the 1959 movie with Sidney Poitier pushing himself around on a cart as a crippled Porgy chasing after Dorothy Dandrige as Bess that I likely saw on TV.

Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis as Porgy and Bess in the current Broadway musical.

A year or so ago at auction, I came across a Decca Records four-LP set from the 1935 opera, featuring Todd Duncan (Porgy), Anne Brown (Bess) and the Eva Jessye Choir. It was Decca Album No. 145, Personality Series. It apparently was the first of two volumes – this one released in 1940 and the other in 1942.

I picked it up because it was free and historical, but didn’t have a bit of interest in listening to it. The photo on the album cover showed black folks hanging out of windows and black men lying lazily around a yard. It looked exactly as I expected.

Some of the songs on the album were well-known, though: the lazy stroll of “Summertime (which I learned was written by Heyward)” and the brazen nonchalance of “It Ain’t Necessarily So (by Ira Gershwin),” “Bess, You Is My Woman,” and “I Loves You, Porgy (also by Heyward).” I always thought these were all written by the Gershwins.

I came back to the album today, ready to listen to some of its tunes but found that my old record player had speeds of 45 and 33 but not 78. I was inspired after having spent more than two hours over the weekend watching a new musical version of the opera called “The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess” on Broadway.

The cover of the 1940 Decca Records four-album set of songs from "Porgy and Bess."

A week or so ago I had turned up my nose when a friend suggested that she wanted to see “Porgy.” Why, I wondered. It was probably full of stereotypes– I see enough of those images on the auction tables – so why spend my money to see them in 2012.

Yet, I was curious. I’d never seen the play in its entirety, and so I warmed to the idea. I soon learned that the composer Stephen Sondheim had criticized the new production by director Diane Paulus and writer Suzan-Lori Parks, who revamped the original to make it more contemporary and fresh. He hadn’t seen the play but was reacting to their remarks about updating it. The musical opens Thursday, Jan. 12 at the Richard Rodgers Theater.

Sondheim’s comments – and the positive reviews the play is getting in previews – apparently sparked a lot of people’s curiosity. The matinee performance I saw was packed, and the audience gave the performers a standing ovation.

I stood and applauded them, too, for their performances, singing and choreography. But I’m still not sure how much I liked the play. It didn’t wow me. I didn’t cheer for any of the characters or empathize or sympathize with them. The 1935 opera played around in my head, and I couldn’t shake that indistinct notion of what it must’ve been like for the performers back then.

Photos from inside the 1940s Decca album shows Todd Duncan, Anne Brown, the Eva Jessye Choir and Alexander Smallens, conductor of the Decca Symphony Orchestra.

This new version was obviously updated. These folks, although poor, weren’t pitiful or beaten down. They showed deference to the white law enforcement with little of the Stepin-Fetchit-ness. These people lived their lives in their own swath of a community in Charleston, SC, called Catfish Row, where the men fished during the day and played craps at night, the women looked after them, and they all enjoyed their annual picnic on an island nearby. Interspersed were the killings of black men by the hands of other black men – then with blades instead guns.

The musical kept some of the commonly seen black characters: the overweight woman and the brutish man (fortunately, there were only one of both). When the male character, Crown – played by Philip Boykin – came out for his bows, the predominantly white audience booed him. That’s how well he played such an awful person. They also booed the two white police officers, who mildly terrorized the community.

Playbill noted that when the opera went on tour in 1936 and landed at the National Theater in Washington, DC, Duncan refused to perform before a segregated audience. (Another version of the story says Brown was the one who first refused.) The cast members held out until the theater agreed to desegregate.

Both Duncan and Brown were classical singers. Already a performer, he apparently was recommended to George Gershwin as a potential Porgy, while she was a music student at Julliard who applied for an audition. The original play was called “Porgy,” but Gershwin is said to have liked her so well that he filled out the role of Bess – and renamed the opera “Porgy and Bess.”

Todd Duncan as Porgy and Anne Brown as Bess in the 1935 opera.

The play was based on a 1925 novel “Porgy” by Heyward (who with his wife Dorothy wrote a play based on the book), who had grown up in Charleston. He was both hailed and criticized for his characterizations of black people - which were regarded as right on the mark or way off it.

At the play last weekend, Audra McDonald was her usual wonderful self; Norm Lewis was a very convincingly crippled Porgy, and David Alan Grier can actually sing (although I thought his character became a little too much of a caricature).

All in all, it is a production worth seeing.

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It’s not the smooth, clear, sophisticated sound we hear on today’s technological wonders, but the music of a century ago delivered on old-style music cylinders. The phonographs give us a glimpse – by ear not by sight – into the musical innovations of their day, allowing us to experience recordings as they sounded to those Americans who could afford these machines 100 years or so ago.

An Edison Standard Phonograph, circa 1898. Anthony made the wooden horn on the machine.

Anthony owns several Edison phonographs. I first learned that the man who improved on the light bulb was just as proficient in making phonographs after coming across a bevy of floor models of Edisons, RCA Victors and Brunswicks at auction a couple months ago.

Most of them were lovely, but were caked in dust and in great need of repair. They, too, appeared to be part of someone’s collection, as the lot included pamphlets, letters and other documents about the phonograph records and players.

Thomas Edison is credited with inventing the phonograph in 1877, but a man named Eldridge Johnson popularized it. Johnson formed his Victor Talking Machine Company around 1901, and his trademark of a dog listening to his master’s voice became ubiquitous.

I found the old phonographs intriguing both for their historical value and their beauty. So, I was delighted when I came across Anthony and his collection of Edisons and Victrolas. Anthony, 41, is a native of Schenectady, NY, or ”The Electric City.”

(Thomas Edison arrived in Schenectady in 1886 to open a manufacturing plant to efficiently make his light bulbs and phonographs. He formed the Edison General Electric Co. three years later and then merged with another company under the name General Electric Co.)

Anthony works with the disabled, but he’s a baker by trade, having owned a shop for nine years.

“I’ve since closed the bakery but I occasionally make wedding cakes by word of mouth,” he said. “I still enjoy the art of creating them.”

Two wedding cakes made by Anthony the baker.

I asked him to tell me about his collection. Here’s what he had to say:

How did you get started collecting phonographs? What’s the allure? How did you learn to repair them?

I really liked the appearance of the cabinet to the floor-model Victrolas but never appreciated the function of one. Once I bought my first Victrola, I realized how amazing they are.

I found my first Victor Victrola Model VV-100 at an antique shop about three years ago. I always wanted one but really could not afford the price of one in a good working condition. This particular Victrola caught my heart as its cabinet was in good original condition but needed to be serviced as it did not work. I paid $165 for it and transported it home.

I then went to various antique shops and asked around if anyone knew where I could get it serviced. Once I found a man who had experience reconditioning Victrola motors, he was nice enough to clue me in on the ins and outs of getting Victrolas back into working condition. That was the start of a wonderful, rewarding hobby that has led into Edison phonographs and probably will not stop there.

A floor-model Victrola that Anthony adapted with a horn. The sounds would have normally come out of the top two doors.

How many phonographs do you have in your collection?

I have:

6 table-top Victors
4 Victor floor models
1 front-mount external horn Victor Model P
1 Frankenvictrola that I’ve pieced together with Victor components. I handmade the wood base and wood horn.
2 Edison cylinder phonographs

Do you make your own horns? How did you get into that?

I’ve made two wood horns. One for my custom-made Victrola and one for my standard phonograph. A few reasons why I’ve made my own wood horns are because I like the challenge. I like to have unique machines and I can’t afford a beautiful original or professionally made wooden horn. Both horns are temporary and are interchangeable with original horns. I would never adapt a machine to take one of my unique handmade horns.

Where do you store your collection?

I display my collection throughout the house.

The back side of the Edison Standard Phonograph, circa 1898.

What’s the best or oldest phonograph you have & how did you get it? 

The oldest one I own is my latest addition to my collection. It is an Edison Standard Phonograph with the last patent date of May 31, 1898. I would have to say my favorite and most valuable is my Victor Model P external front mount horn, which was purchased on eBay.

How do these compare to how we listen to music today? Do you prefer the sound of phonographs?

It seems the louder music is playable, the louder we turn it up to the point where loud is not loud enough. I guess that’s just human nature. Over the years we have taken advantage of technology and lost appreciation for what life hands us. This will never happen with a phonograph. What you hear is what you get, as there is no volume control. Cabinet-style Victrolas have a slight variation of volume by opening and closing the speaker doors, but only max out when the doors are all the way open.

Edison phonographs have smaller and larger horns but there’s only so large you can go. I can’t explain why but I enjoy the sound of a Victrola/phonograph. The sound is so real.

A phonograph that Anthony assembled from Victor components. He made the wooden base and horn.

What type of music do you normally buy to play on the phonograph?

For phonograph rolls, I would buy anything I can get regardless of the style of music or condition. For 78 speed records, I prefer classical and big-band music.

Do you ever repair the phonographs and give them as gifts? Have you sold any of them?

I’ve repaired various models of Victrolas for friends and family, and only charge for the cost of parts. My profit is getting the experience and the chance to work on them. I’ve sold two Victrolas to downsize my collection and received just the amount of money I put into them.

Since I had never heard an old phonograph played before, Anthony made two videos for me.  You can see and listen to one below and the other here.

Related posts:

1. Old, dusty but neat phonographs
2. A Josephine Baker record album
3. A brooch à la Josephine Baker

The Arion Musical Club of Milwaukee, WI, was presenting Marian Anderson in a concert at Milwaukee Auditorium on Wed., Jan. 26, 1949. I can imagine how thrilling it must have been for ticket-holders (likely not many or any of whom looked like me) for this event.

At the recital, Anderson engaged her audience with Handel, Gluck, Scarlatti, Dvorak and lots of Shubert. The program seemed to be tucked between ads for pianos and accordions, corsets and hat cleaning, cameras and photo supplies, and upcoming concerts.

The front cover of the concert program featuring Marian Anderson, sponsored by the Arion Musical Club in 1949.

As I perused it, something else caught my eye that could easily have slipped by. It was a section at the end titled “Negro Spirituals.” She also sang five songs arranged by composers Harry T. Burleigh, Edward Boatner and Hall Johnson. I was familiar with Burleigh and Johnson, but not Boatner. I was pleasantly surprised to see that among the European classics Anderson had paid homage to her own spiritual roots – and thereby creating her own classics.

I wanted to know more about this aspect of the program, so I went hunting. I found that she had long been incorporating spirituals as a postlude to her concerts, and by doing so, she was following a proud tradition. Spirituals had been around for decades, but the Fisk Jubilee Singers helped to popularize them in the late 19th century.

By the early 20th century, they were coming out of the shadows and into the mainstream, finding their way into the offerings of African American concert artists and composers, according to a 1994 University of Pennsylvania exhibit called “Marian Anderson: A Life in Song.”

Anderson’s portfolio contained more than 100 spirituals, according to one account, and she usually ended her concerts with “He’s Got The Whole World In His Hands” arranged by Hamilton Forrest. One site surmised from her programs that her favorite arrangers were Burleigh, Johnson and Nathaniel Dett.

Many of those composers and arrangers were friends or acquaintances, and several dedicated arrangements to her. In other cases, she popularized some songs.

Dett’s “Poor Me” was dedicated to Anderson, who sometimes sang with his Hampton Institute Choir. Burleigh’s “My Lord, What a Morning” became the title of her 1956 autobiography. Florence Price’s “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord” was sung often by Anderson. Roland Hayes was her teacher and her inspiration.

The list of spirituals sung by Marian Anderson at the 1949 concert in Milwaukee.

My program from auction showed that she sang four spirituals, among them one of the Boatner’s best-known, “Trampin’.”

“These are the songs of my people,” she said once in reaction to a warning not to sing spirituals in the USSR when she performed there. “I shall sing them whenever and wherever I please.”

On piano at each of her concerts was Franz Rupp, a German-American who accompanied Anderson for 25 years starting in 1940.

Anderson seemed to have returned to Milwaukee pretty often for concerts sponsored by the Arion, which had been around since 1877. On March 26, 1944, the “world famous Negro contralto” – as the Milwaukee Sentinel described her – performed at a sold-out concert at the 6,450-seat auditorium. She sang Brahms, Haydn, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Charles Griffes, and her spirituals: Burleigh’s “Ride On, King Jesus”; Hayes’ “Lord, I Can’t Stay Away,” Dett’s “Poor Me” and Price’s “My Soul’s Been Anchored in the Lord.”

Two years later, she sang at the Wisconsin State Teachers Association convention in another sold-out concert during the Arion’s season. In 1952, she helped the music society celebrate its Diamond Jubilee.

All of this activity was a far cry from the 1939 incident in which the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to sing at Constitution Hall in Washington. That snub created such an outcry that First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt resigned from the organization.

Anderson instead gave a concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday, and she ended the performance with “Gospel Train,” “Trampin’” and “My Soul Is Anchored in the Lord.”

In the years before the incident, Anderson was said to have averaged about 70 concerts a year, and she apparently kept up the pace afterward. She was a busy woman during the 1940s and 1950s, entertaining U.S. troops at war, and touring Europe, South America, the West Indies and other nations.

Here are snippets of some of the spirituals.

The left page shows the Arion Musical Club's patrons list, and the right shows the beginning of Marian Anderson's program of songs.

Related posts:

1. Recruiting at Howard Univ., 1949 style
2. 1942 program with Noble Sissle & Gypsy Rose Lee

All were apparently in hiding on this day because nothing was calling my name. Just as I was about to give up, an assistant mentioned that she wanted to see how much a set of Noguchi tables would go for. I hadn’t noticed the tables, so I followed her into the room where the sale of furniture and other top-named items was starting.

Along the way, I read the bid sheet, which described the tables as “Noguchi style,” so my interest waned. With their curved black bases and glass tops, the coffee and side tables truly did resemble the works of sculptor Isamu Noguchi.

The Transcriptors' Skeleton turntable waiting to be auctioned.

As I stood near them, I noticed an item I had completely overlooked in my walk-through. It was a glass box with a turntable inside. In fact, it looked more like a work of art than a utilitarian apparatus for playing records. It was quite lovely in its transparency.

I had not seen so immodest a record player before, and was curious about the maker. The auction bid sheet described it as “Michel Turntable Record Player. High Quality Turntable in Custom Glass Cabinet. Michel Turntable was used in the movie ‘Clockwork Orange.’”

A guest appearance in Stanley Kubrick’s “Clockwork Orange?” Now, I was genuinely intrigued.

In Googling, I found out that the turntable was a Transcriptors Skeleton designed by the founder of the company that produced the one seen in the 1971 movie. That was actually a Hydraulic Reference turntable.

Actor Malcolm McDowell and the Hydraulic Reference turntable in a scene from the movie "Clockwork Orange."

The Hydraulic’s origin was muddled on several websites, which had combined the design history of Transcriptors founder David Gammon and Michell Engineering founder John Michell. Both made high-quality turntables that were very similar. Their individual websites kept the histories separate.

According to the Transcriptors site, Gammon created his design of the Hydraulic Reference based on the look and workings of some 17th and 18th century clocks and watches. He eschewed the wooden cabinets of most turntables, wanting instead to allow buyers to see the parts.

Gammon started the business in 1960 in Borenhamwood, just north of London, making turntables and accessories. The Hydraulic was made in 1964.

In the late 1960s, Michell moved his company to the area and started making parts for Gammon and others, according to both websites. When Gammon moved to Ireland in the early 1970s, the two entered into an agreement licensing Michell to produce the Hydraulic Reference turntable. These were tagged J.A. Michell Eng. Ltd, according to the Michell website.

Michell built his own turntable in 1977, calling it the Michell Reference Electronic.

An up-close view of the Transcriptors' Hydraulic Reference turntable.

Both men seemed to have some connection to Kubrick. In 1969, the director approached Gammon about using a Hydraulic in “Clockwork Orange.” In the movie, the turntable turns up twice, the first time as actor Malcolm McDowell listened to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

Michell built the spaceship Discovery for Kubrick’s 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and provided models and parts for other films, according to the company website.

Gammon came up with the Skeleton – like the one sold at the auction – around 1973, and it became a hit when he moved to the United States a year later, according to the Transcriptors website.

Here’s a YouTube video of a Skeleton playing John Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things.”

I wasn’t around when the turntable sold, so I’m not sure how popular it was among bidders.

Another view of the Skeleton turntable by Transcriptors.

Related posts:

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2. A woman’s work …
3. Needlepoint samplers – a girl’s work