Indiana University continues to provide a professional musical environment, whoseon-campustalent was available to participate in the recording that honors the label. The confluence of Gennett Records’s newly available recording technology-and its relative proximity to Chicago, the riverboat towns of Cincinnati and Louisville, and Indiana University (from which Carmichael graduated)-contributed to Richmond, Indiana’s reputation as a go-to place for making recordings. But, also significant was the fact that Gennett Records’s patent challenge opened the door for other record companies to document early jazz talent.Īnd now, Wallarab’s suite calls attention to the importance of Gennett Records’s early recordings by featuring fond re-imaginings of the music of four of the company’s most famous musicians: Joe Oliver, Bix Beiderbecke, Hoagy Carmichael, and Jelly Roll Morton. As a result, in 1922 Gennett Records was able to make its own records without challenges from Victor. Less recognized as well was Gennett Records’s success in challenging the patent for Victor’s innovative record-making technology. Its record-making initiative was named after the piano company’s owners, the Gennetts. In the absence of sufficient, efficient, and economical recording devices, many homes in the late nineteenth century contained pianos so that one or more residents could play sheet music of popular, classical, or religious music. Starr Piano Company happened not to be located near a major waterway or railroad line. Gennett Records began as an outgrowth of a manufacturing facility, the Starr Piano Company, founded in 1872 in Richmond, Indiana. Though less recognized, Gennett Records produced equally significant recordings in the middle of the great Midwest. Much recognition, and even a few entire books, emphasize the contributions of other early jazz labels, like Dial, Savoy, Decca, Bluebird, Atomic, Vocalion, Brunswick, or Okeh. But also because of his vision for developing an eleven-part suite of four movements, lavishly produced, that honors the importance of Gennett Records in the development of jazz. Not only because of co-founder Brent Wallarab’s imaginative interpretations of influential early jazz recordings at Gennett’s studios. The Buselli/Wallarab Jazz Orchestra’s recording of The Gennett Suite is a remarkable event.
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