Here is Geoff Edgers at The Washington Post:
John Levin had no idea what he’d stumbled upon at first. About 10 years ago, the collector paid about $100 for a box of wax cylinders at an auction in Pennsylvania coal country. Those cylinders — the oldest commercial medium of recorded music — sat in his house for years until Levin put one of the unlabeled, decaying brown tubes onto his custom player and heard an old country song. Like 133 years old.
Levin immediately knew what he had.
“A true unicorn,” he says now.
In the world of early recordings, unicorns are cylinders that are reputed to exist but that have never been found. A session with cornetist Buddy Bolden, say, or a monologue from Mark Twain. What Levin heard coming out of his player was another name on his undiscovered list, New Orleans performer Louis Vasnier. The unlabeled cylinder he’d bought contained Vasnier singing and braying his way through “Thompson’s Old Gray Mule,” a song later recorded by hillbilly masters Uncle Dave Macon and Riley Puckett.
This month, Archeophone, a specialty label devoted to restoring recordings dating back to the 19th century, released a 45-rpm record of the 1891 performance. Label co-founder Rich Martin’s research on Vasnier comes with a revelation: The oldest country recording in existence was recorded by a Black man.
Read the rest here.
Listen to a clip: