Just the other day, I heard one of the earliest popular recorded sambas, Donga’s “Pelo Telefone,” from 1916 and released on an Edison talking record, probably a wax cylinder. A few years later the ...

Phonograph Inventor Thomas Alva Edison has a lot to answer for—as the most casual record-shop browser can testify. Sir Arthur Sullivan once declared: “I am terrified at the thought that so much ...