What's the *oldest* recorded music you actually enjoy listening to.

Russ Columbo

 

I like electric guitar music & although it was invented & recorded prior to WWII the style of playing & recording that I like is post war. So @ 1947/48.
The internet has been fantastic in helping find these pioneers of rock & roll.

 

Robert Johnson and classical music from 1954 and later.

 

Oldest is probably Robert Johnson

 

1900-10s - Enrico Caruso, Original Dixieland Jass band
1920s - Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong. Blind Lemon Jefferson

 

16th Century Elizabethan lute playing.

 

Folk and delta blues from the '30s is about as far back as I go.

 

I've been known to have a wee Hank Williams session now and again.

 

Charley Patton

 

French accordion pioneer Emile Vacher (1888-1969).

 

I sometimes listen to 1950s jazz or rock 'n' roll but most of my listening is from the 60s/70s and beyond.

 

Caruso, have his complete works.
also a fan of early country and jazz, Carter Family, Jimmie Rodgers etc.

 

Country blues from the 20s and 30s and country/old timey from 20s & 30s

 

Harry Champion always cheers me up if needs be, like this one
A Little Bit Of Cucumber 1915

 

I agree.
1923: Bessie Smith's first recordings

I don't think that I have anything in my collection earlier than that year (except for a Caruso LP).

 

I love a lot of jazz records from the 30s, especially Billie Holiday stuff. It has an effortless swing and joy and character that her later more lauded stuff failed to match. I like a lot of film songs from the 30s and 40s as well, in a sentimental nostalgic way event though I wasn't born until decades after.

A lot of swing and trad jazz from that period is well worth hearing - it is almost a revelation if your knowledge of jazz is restricted to the canonized Blue Note classics...you go from atonal, indulgent noodling to something with actual groove and melody and emotion.

 

Well, for one I'm a classical and traditional world music fan, so I enjoy early recordings of that stuff. The recordings were rough enough in the first couple decades of the 1900s that it can be a bit distracting, but by the 1920s, that's no longer the case.

With other types of music, I've not explored a ton of stuff from the first two decades of the 1900s, but I've enjoyed plenty of what I've heard--Art Hickman, Arthur Pryor, Eddie Cantor, Ada Jones, Billy Murray, Eubie Blake, the Original Dixieland Jazz (or Jass) Band, etc. (And Eubie Blake is one of my top 25 or 30 pianists overall, by the way).

However, the earliest recorded musical artists, excluding classical, that I'm a big fan of would be some of the jazz artists who first started recording in the 1920s, such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Chick Webb, Sidney Bechet, Fletcher Henderson, Fats Waller, Bennie Moten, Jelly Roll Morton, Benny Carter, Earl Hines, Coleman Hawkins, King Oliver, Jimmie Noone, Red Allen, Johnny Dodds, Luis Russell, etc.

So basically the 20s is the decade for me when the quality of new recording artists outside of classical reached a stride that continues to today.

 

Bessie Smith. I probably don't go a month without listening to her.

 

When I spend my time with my Dad, he often is playing Al Jolson "The World's Greatest Entertainer - he's played Al for as long as I remember. Those recordings, and he's got every single performance ever captured for posterity, date back to at least 1911.

I like spending time with my Dad, and so naturally, as a music lover, I've grown to appreciate and often enjoy Mr Jolson's repertoire. It's good to share something. I've even got a very early set of recordings myself which I listen to occasionally.

 

Classical music, followed by Elvis

 

1890s.

How can you not enjoy hearing history?

 

Louis Armstrong's Hot 5s & 7s from the 1920 and also the King Oliver stuff that came before it ... but I listen to early Armstrong all the time -- it will be 100 years old soon

 

The earliest blues and country music.

 

Another vote for Billy Murray...


I have been known to spend hours at the Internet Archive binge listening to his recordings. I also like his duets with Ada Jones.

 

Frank Sinatra - Capitol Years.
I have a few older things but I don't listen to them often.