The Great War: An American Musical Fantasy. Archeophone Records ARCH 2001, 2007.

摘要

The two-disc set The Great War: An American Musical Fantasy produced by Archeophone Records presents a varied history of American recordings made during and about the First World War. The producers of this disc set have included popular songs recorded by artists ranging from Enrico Caruso to vaudeville singers Nora Bayes and Arthur Fields. To bring the era to life, they have also inserted excerpts from important historical speeches by Woodrow Wilson and General John Pershing and stories told by lesser known performers, such as vaudevillian comic monologist Cal Stewart. The compilation is dedicated to the memory of a specific U.S. soldier, Clarence D. Johnson, whose grandson includes in the notes a “Reflection” about his family singing songs from the First World War. The extensive seventy-three-page booklet of liner notes describes the songs and traces the triumphs and travails of the nascent sound recording industry, using trade magazines and government documents as primary source material. However, the authors avoid positioning these recordings in relation to other common musical practices, for instance, ignoring sheet music sung at the piano and performances on the vaudeville stage. The fifty-six tracks of this collection are sonic traces of an era that tell the American story of the war through sound, but we should remember that they are only a part of the story of music making during the war.