Bob Koch
A man playing a record on an Edison phonograph.
Curator Nate Gibson demonstrates a hand-cranked Edison phonograph on display in the exhibit "Press Play: Recorded Sound from Groove to Stream," in the Special Collections area at UW Memorial Library through Dec. 22.
Before the late 19th century, music, speeches and everything else “heard” needed to be experienced live and was never to be heard again.
After the invention of sound recording, what was a seemingly magical wonder soon transitioned to mass production, spreading in physical and eventually virtual formats.
Press Play: Recorded Sound from Groove to Stream, a new exhibit on display through Dec. 22 in the UW-Madison Memorial Library's ninth-floor Special Collections area, examines how recordings have been made and duplicated since the days of Edison (and, even before, surprisingly). Coordinated by Mills Music Library, Press Play should be interesting to music listeners who are even slightly curious about the before-streaming times. The exhibit takes a concise trip through the beginnings of capturing sound through the many methods of preserving it, from cylinders and discs to the inescapable mp3. There are also side trips into the basics of how records are made, the art of (and occasional controversy over) cover design, and recordings as promotional items for other businesses. The exhibit is likely to be catnip for serious record collectors. And it’s just a glimpse into Mills' themed collections of music, books and more. (Pro tip: The public can borrow items from Mills, including some LPs and CDs.)
Mills Music Library's focus on Wisconsin's role in the history of recorded sound gives Press Play a lot of extra oompah. Drawing from the extensive Wisconsin Music Archives, the majority of the items in the exhibit's 20 cases are records or related historical items — label catalogs or documents, books and more — from Wisconsin labels, or have some relation to the Badger State. It’s a primer on Wisconsin's rich musical heritage, making a case for the state as a hotbed of recording activity for a century, from the legendary Port Washington label Paramount to Sauk City's prolific Cuca Records to modern day studios such as Coney Island (all represented in the Wisconsin Music Archives).
Thanks to the ongoing work by Mills staff to digitize the library's collections of vintage recordings (with a particular focus on traditional and other music of the upper Midwest), visitors can also hear mp3s of many of the items on display. A listening station with the exhibit, and QR codes throughout, allow a viewer to call up the exhibit playlist on a cell phone, so bring your headphones or earbuds. Among the recordings you can hear are some favorites of garage rock fans: “You Know I Do” by the Crucibles (a Madison record which was No. 1 on the want list of this writer for years) and a frenetic cover of “Shakin' All Over” by Raylene & the Blue Angels.
The exhibit was curated by Nate Gibson (an audio-visual preservation archivist for the UW library system who works at Mills Music Library), along with the other members of the Mills staff: Library head Jeanette Casey, librarians Matt Appleby and Tom Caw, and library services assistant John Oldham. Gibson says the exhibit came together during the last few months, after Mills staff learned the Special Collections exhibit space at Memorial Library would be available for exhibits coordinated by other campus departments.
When Mills was chosen for a slot, Gibson proposed a showcase that could include the WMA. “What kind of things do we collect, and what do we do with those collections? So throughout the [exhibit] text…I'm just trying to show why it's important to collect and also to sort of [examine] the question of the future of music archiving,” Gibson says.
As listeners have moved to streaming, many bands have also switched their focus from physical media to all-virtual availability — presenting a new challenge for libraries and other archives, he notes. “It's hard for me as a curator and archivist to know what we can get. How can I support your band, how can you be part of the Wisconsin Music Archives, how can we provide access on campus?”
The progression of music formats in Press Play underlines the importance of archives, and preserving recordings that may be lost as their media are discontinued. Or, as Gibson says, “If Spotify takes their music away, or if Naxos takes their music away from their server, then we don't have it.”
Gibson will present a curator's talk about Press Play at 3 p.m. on Oct. 26. The exhibit area at Memorial Library Special Collections is open from 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Monday-Friday. Visitors without a UW-Madison ID card need to check in at the welcome desk for a day pass; it's free but you'll need to show a government-issued ID. Also, if you have not visited Special Collections in the past, you may want to ask for directions; not all of the elevators in Memorial Library go to the ninth floor.
