Champaign’s Archeophone Records Receives Another Grammy Nomination
Cover of "Edouard-Leon Scott De Martinville, Inventor Of Sound Recording: A Bicentennial Tribute”. The book and record from Champaign-based Archeophone Records has been nominated for a Grammy for Best Album Notes. Archeophone Records
Champaign-based Archeophone Records is once again up for a Grammy, this time for a release honoring an early pioneer in sound recording.
Archeophone Records is run by Richard Martin and Meagan Hennessey. It specializes in researching and re-releasing early and historical recordings. And an Archeophone book and record about an early pioneer in sound recording has been nominated in the category of “Best Album Notes”.
David Giovannoni is cited as the writer of the album notes, in the nomination of "Edouard-Leon Scott De Martinville, Inventor Of Sound Recording: A Bicentennial Tribute." The Recording Academy announced it and other nominations for the 60th Grammy Awards on Tuesday.
Edouard-Leon Scott De Martinville (1817-1879) was a French printer and bookseller who in 1857 patented an early sound recording device called the phonautograph, which recorded sound as a sequence of patterns etched in lampblack on glass. The resulting recordings, call phonautograms, were meant to be studied visually, not played back. But in recent years, there have been efforts to produce sound from the phonautograms.
The Archeophone release consists of a 48-page book about Scott de Martinville, and a recording (included as a 7-inch 33 1/3 RPM flexi-disc and also available online) of phonautograms recorded from 1857 to 1889. The phonautograms were made by Scott de Martinville and others, including Thomas Edison, whose invention of the phonograph in 1877 was influenced by the earlier device.
The Scott de Martinville book and record is the 9th release from Archeophone to be nominated for a Grammy. In all, the label’s releases have garnered six nominations for Best Historical Album and eight for Best Album Notes. Archeophone’s “Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1891-1922” was awarded the Grammy for Best Historical Album in 2006.
The Grammys Awards are scheduled to be presented on Jan. 28, 2018. The Archeophone release on Scott de Martinville will be competing with album notes from five other recordings, ranging from the complete piano works of Scott Joplin to collections by gospel singer Washington Phillips and country songwriter Arthur Q. Smith.