My Old Kentucky Home - Edison Male Quartet

This item is from the CUSB collection and is a brown wax cylinder, which dates it
as 1895-1901 or so.

The band and vocalists sat in front of a deck of 8-12 single-cylinder devices. So for any one performance, there might be 8-12 copies sold.

(To make 100 copies of a song, they had to perform it 10 times.) There was no such thing as remixing. Retakes were time-consuming and expensive (and rare).

Isn't that amazing!?

Recorded music, however, was quite an indulgence. In today's dollars, the cost was $200 a song. The single-song brown wax cylinders wore quickly, too. In those days, singing music or playing the piano was a passtime like watching TV.

You bought new music in "sheet music" form, and when you learned it, you often passed it on.

My Old Kentucky Home is by Stephen Foster (1926-1864), who wrote many songs about the Old South, although he never lived there.


The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home,
'Tis summer, the darkies are gay;
The corn-top's ripe and the meadow's in the bloom,
While the birds make music all the day.

Weep no more my lady
Oh! weep no more today!
We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home,
For the Old Kentucky Home far away.

The young folks roll on the little cabin floor,
All merry, all happy and bright;
By 'n' by Hard Times comes a-knocking at the door,
Then my old Kentucky home, goodnight.

Weep no more my lady
Oh! weep no more today!
We will sing one song for the old Kentucky home,
For the Old Kentucky Home far away.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• wax
• cylinder
• stephen
• foster
• kentucky
• harmony

[ewd76]

I'd rather be historically accurate than politically correct.

[tl10397]

my grandpa used to sing this song to me when i was little

[Moir11]

@WonderBread006  Idiot!

[RADSK891]

Yo my professor just showed me this in class. Fuck Kentucky nigguh

[RunkkaajaApina]

@FunkMan53 Was popular style to sing back in those days

[steamerthesteamtrain]

yah darkies are gay

[FunkMan53]

Good version but not exactly a "Kentucky" accent. Why was he trying to sound so British??

[futurejockey8]

@WonderBread006 I hope you are being sarcastic lol 

[angryrusski]

In my opinion the best version on the web.

[crk4427]

Kentucky.....what a beautiful place.....very good people too.

[porkyminch01]

@LongviewGD182 and the difference is?

[MrGrevy]

Thank GOD they didn't change the lyrics to appease a bunch of uppity black morons. They complain about this, but have no problem with the National Association for Colored Persons or the United NEGRO College Fund. Disgraceful people.