Great Speech Type Animation

I'm doing the "First promotional message recorded on an Edison Phonograph" by Len Spencer.

The speech is important because it was the first promotional message recorded on a phonograph, therefore giving something new, fresh, and interesting for the audience. I can just imagine regular people listening on the radio in 1906 and see their exciting faces! Anyway, it was an important step in history and that's why it's important and interesting.

Len Spencer has a pretty good voice. The speech is a little blurred, not very crisp like our digital recordings today, but hey, it was recorded in 1906 on the Edison phonograph, give it some credit. Spencer's tone throughout the whole speech is dreamy and also exciting. He used a first-person narration—"I" was the Edison phonograph—so it was more interesting. He was promoting something new, and since it was an advertisement, he emphasized a lot on what "I" can do. That's why I think it has a dreamy quality... like having the phonograph can solve all your problems. "I can love...", "I can give...", I can aid..." and I had to giggle when I heard "I give pleasure to all, young and old." I thought, "Wow! I wish I can have a phonograph."

After listening the speech, it made me want to buy a phonograph, so it can solve all my problems... and do all my homeworks...


Short bio on Len Spencer

Born in Washington D.C. on January 12, 1867, Len Spencer became one of the earliest stars of recorded music. He was a rising star on the vaudeville circuit when Thomas Edison created his wax cylinders as a way to capture sound. Originally conceived as a helpful dictation tool, Edison and others soon realized the broader applications to the cylinder, most notably in the realm of entertainment.

Spencer was hired by Edison to help promote his retooled invention, and created the first recorded promotional advertisement in 1888 for the "genuine Edison phonograph." Spencer recorded hundreds of songs on cylinders for Edison and Columbia (the Washington-based recording company that evolved over time into the huge Columbia Records company, now part of the Sony conglomerate), including "Little Liza Loves You" in 1891, one of the best selling cylinders of all time.

He was also one the first white performers to record with an African-American artist, George Johnson. Johnson had an enormous hit wax cylinder in the mid-1890s with his number, "The Laughing Song," which—because of the inability to mass produce wax cylinders—forced him to sing the song several thousand times over. He re-recorded the song with Spencer on metal cylinders and sold thousands more, and began a lifelong friendship with Spencer.

Spencer's early recorded output included best-sellers like the "Lord's Prayer" and speeches by famous public figures, including a posthumous release of President McKinley's speech at Buffalo's Pan-American Exposition in 1901, the day he was assassinated. Spencer was well-known for clear diction and rich baritone, and became a master at comic dialects, recording dozens of songs with vaudeville star Ada Jones, using Italian, Irish, German, Jewish, African American and rural American voices to comedic effect.

In 1902, he recorded the already well-known novelty tune "Arkansas Traveler" onto a 78 rpm disc with banjo great Fred Van Eps and fiddler Charles D'Almaine, and was a national star after it became the first song to sell more than a million copies. The invention of the recorded disc a couple of years earlier by Emile Berliner (also in Washington D.C.) greatly facilitated the mass production of recordings, and Spencer was among the first to benefit. He recorded many sides for the Berliner Gramophone Company in Washington, and for all the other recording companies of the time (Columbia, Victor, etc.) including "A Cowboy Romance" and "A Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight," as well as songs by budding composers George M. Cohan and Irving Berlin.

He moved to New York where he continued to perform and where he founded an artist booking agency, The Lyceum (which employed Spencer's old friend George Johnson as the doorman, working dressed as an admiral). He died in New York in December 1914.

I'm excited to do this project, but I wish we can have more time to do it. It's my first After Effects project (and for most of us in class) so it should be... um... interesting.