Ojai Sam
Staff member
Year founded: 1998
Founders: Richard & Meagan Hennessey
Still Active: Yes
Website: https://www.archeophone.com/
Genres: Historical Jazz, Pop, Theater, Spoken Word
Format: CD, download, vinyl
Artists: Billy Murray, Alexander Graham Bell, Nora Bayes, Bert Williams, Henry Burr, Enrico Caruso
From the Archeophone Records website:
Since 1998, the GRAMMY-winning reissue label Archeophone Records has been preserving, restoring, and publishing recordings from the acoustic era of sound—the years from 1890 through 1925 when records were made into the acoustic horn, that is, without electricity. Our reissues feature top-notch audio restorations and extensive notes, illustrations, and original research that make these historic recordings accessible. Almost any type of music or spoken-word recording from the acoustic era is within our purview.
Archeophone has produced 83 reissues to date, with material ranging from spoken word and comedy to spirituals, ragtime, pop and early jazz and dance bands. We’ve also provided audio transfers, consultation, and record-finding services for TV shows such as Boardwalk Empire and select PBS presentations.
Our releases have been nominated for 23 Grammy Awards and have been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and on NPR. Archeophone is an institutional member of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections and the Antique Phonograph Society. Owners and in-house production team of Richard Martin and Meagan Hennessey are voting members of NARAS’ Producers & Engineers Wing and were co-founders of FirstSounds.org, the research collaborative that unveiled humanity’s first recordings of its own voice in March 2008. In 2011, Martin and Hennessey were honored on Slate.com’s list of 25 cultural innovators of our time.
I have been buying Rich and Megan's releases since they started out 25 years ago. Each one is a treasure trove of music, presented in the best possible sound with well-written booklets. They have managed to open a window on an otherwise largely forgotten but vitally important body of music recorded largely before electrical recording began in 1924.
