Wikipedia:Featured sound candidates/When Johnny Comes Marching Home

When Johnny Comes Marching Home
A recording by Emile Berliner, inventor of the first lateral disc audio record, one year after he received the patent on the device. The song originally dates to the American Civil War. This recording was created during the Spanish–American War, a conflict in which the American media played a significant role.

Audio post-processing has been applied to reduce static and adjust pitch. Pitch is unsteady because the turntable did not turn at a constant speed when this very early recording was created.


 * Recorded in: United States
 * Date: June 1898
 * Artist: John Terrell, baritone; piano accompaniment
 * Recording medium: 1 sound disc : analog, between 66 and 72 rpm, mono. ; 7 in.
 * Articles appearing in: Propaganda of the Spanish American War, Berliner Gramophone, When Johnny Comes Marching Home


 * Conominate (research) and support. - Durova Charge! 00:47, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Conominate (audio editing and format conversion) and Support what was a very poor, static filled, 110 year old recording. Sedd&sigma;n talk Editor Review 00:51, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Support Clearly such an old recording is important and notable. I see no reason why this should not be featured. Calebrw (talk) 17:44, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Support - Excellent. I really like it, very historical. ....add: Quite notable, free license, although the quality isn't the best there is. « Milk's Favorite Cøøkie  01:49, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment on reviews. First of all, just a comment about the previous review: "I really like it" is not one of the criteria; nor is the fact of being historical; and "excellence" is very vague—which criterion are you referring to? Please review according to the criteria. If the nominator and co-nominator want their votes to be taken seriously, they should provide review-type information. TONY   (talk)  02:09, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Comment on nomination text. I removed the lyrics, which took almost a whole page's worth of vertical space. Please don't paste in the text from the info page verbatim. Reviewers are supposed to peruse the info page as part of the process (Criterion 5). TONY   (talk)  02:09, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Oppose.
 * Although the benchmark for Criterion 2 (recording quality) can be loosened for historical recordings, there's a limit. The musical performance is pretty appalling: in terms of tempo, beat and rhythm, it's all over the place. The recorder sounds as though it's been grafted from a recording of a child's doodling on the instrument, at least at the opening. The voice is variously out of tune and of poorly controlled vibrato. Technically, the recorder sound is like a bad electronic sound, especially at the opening. Now, to disregard these, I'd have to be convinced that this recording has very special historical value. Is it so rare? Don't a lot of better recordings from 1898 survive?
 * Cr 5 (description page). Guess we don't know where in the US it was recorded. No link for "first lateral disc audio record", yet this seems to be central to the claim of historical notability. Is it mentioned anywhere on WP? If so, a section link would be good. The punctuation here—"Artist: John Terrell, baritone; piano accompaniment"—is unclear. Is John Terrell the pianist as well as the baritone, or did someone forget to insert the accompanist's name? If he's both, make it "baritone and pianist". When you say "between 66 and 72 rpm", this makes a lot of difference. Where does this info come from?
 * Cr 5: the info page says it's not used on any WP page.

But overwhelmingly, we need to balance the crappy performance and recording quality with historical notability. That's the potential deal-breaker here. TONY  (talk)  02:08, 26 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually:


 * Cr2 (recording quality): As noted above, this was recorded at variable 66-72 RPM. In 1898 that was the state of the art.  The flat phonograph disc itself had been patented only one year earlier.  The turntable was hand cranked and did not yet have a mechanism to ensure constant rotation speed; hence the variability in playback tempo, etc.  The baritone uses a historic style of vibrato that was common in vaudeville and other popular performances until the 1920s-1930s, when the "crooning" singing style developed around different technical limitations in early radio.  These are not performance flaws; they're the natural artifacts of a recording that was made at the very dawn of a technology by the patenter himself.
 * I disagree; the vocalist is pretty appalling. I could sing it better myself, from scratch, and I'm not a singer. For example, the cacophony at the start (you wonder where the speech ends and the music starts). The choas of the whistle/recorder playing (are there two of them? They're very uncoordinated. I know lots about vibrato through the musical periods, including the 20th century. Every time the guy sings "Hurraaaah", he sounds like a billy-goat or a sheep bahing. His breathing is amateurish: he chops off some of his phrases (not long ones) prematurely. Shall I go on? "Hurrah", btw, is just about the only word you can comprehend. The bad musical performance is separable from the recording technique itself. I'm commenting on them separately. TONY   (talk)  06:28, 26 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Cr5 (description page): featured sound criteria specify (iii) the date and venue of the recording, where they are recoverable. All the recoverable information has been obtained and supplied.  This is a flexible standard and some flexibility is appropriate for the very earliest recordings.  We do have an accurate date, and considering that Emile Berliner made recordings in at least four countries during this era, we're fortunate to know the country.  Other source data comes from the source link.  The name of the pianist is unknown.  As explained above, 66-72 RPM is the variable recording speed per technological limitations.  Emile Berliner's biography, which is linked in the nomination, identifies him as the inventor.
 * OK. But if the name of the pianist is unknown, can you state that on the info page—it's unclear at the moment. TONY   (talk)  06:28, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Changed as requested. Durova Charge! 17:23, 26 June 2008 (UTC)


 * Tony1 is mistaken in the assertion that this is not used in any articles. It is used in three articles.  Links are provided above.  Also, he deleted the entire lyrics for unexplained reasons when he posted these comments.  I would gladly have addressed his concerns if he had expressed them, but I was not notified when the already promoted featured sound was de-promoted and he posted his opposition afterward.  It was by accident that I discovered this reinstated and altered nomination, as well as his lengthy posts here and on Talk:FSC.  Really, I have never seen a featured candidacy of any sort develop this way.  I hope there has been some good faith misunderstanding that can be addressed; the developments today are surprising and frustrating.  Durova Charge! 04:36, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
 * Wrong: I explained that the lyrics took up a huge amount of space. They should be either on the info page or, preferably, linked to. Where exactly are the lyrics in WP? If they're nowhere, you surely don't expect listeners from a linked article to go back to the FSC nomination page, do you? TONY   (talk)  06:28, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
 * When_Johnny_Comes_Marching_Home: the discussion is much simpler when voters reply in a cooperative spirit and read the links that are already supplied. I'm going to bed now.  Will follow up later.  Durova Charge! 06:46, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I've asked a few people to visit and review; not sure they'll be interested in doing so, though. Durova, can you give a little justification of the historical value? For example, is there a great paucity of such recordings in existence, that is from the turn of the century? TONY   (talk)  03:16, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Oh for Heaven's sake, people! Do you really expect this recording to be of magnificent quality with its age? While I agree that some of Mr. Terrell's performance seems to be a bit unsophisticated, I am not going to judge one way or the other because of the record's inconsistent rotational speed. (It's hard to tell exactly what flaws are because of Mr. Terrell's performance, and what flaws are because of the crude and unreliable recording device.)

If you really want to hear some good Berliner discs, may I recommend this link: http://madoresobscuremusicblog.blogspot.com/2012/05/six-berliner-records-1896-1900-various.html.



- while the oppose is valid historical importance seems to be the dominating factor in consensus here --Tawker (talk) 19:06, 10 July 2008 (UTC)