We were fascinated reading about Archeophone Records, a company out of Illinois that has rescued old sound recordings and re-released them.
It’s a fascinating niche, especially since they have found old music from wax cylinders and re-issued them. The Wall Street Journal featured their compilation of William Howard Taft and William Jennings Bryan campaign speeches from 1908.
At right, Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry.
It’s also an idea. There are lots of niches where old material has been shelved, and it needs to be restored and re-issued. There is very much American culture out there that needs to be protected. A company even found a market in Casey Kasem’s 1970s American Top 40 recordings. (You can read about it in a prior post in BrandlandUSA called We’re Lovin: Remastered Casey Kasem.)
The speeches were recorded in 2008. Go online and look at their recordings at www.archeophone.com.
