Memories of the Phonograph
Friends of the Phonograph
Phonograph Memories and a few stories (by FOTP and honorary* members) (1)
Axel Boilesen - 2000 - The Edison Amberola and The Jolly Coppersmith, Cotesfield, NE
Axel Boilesen - 2000 - Other Stories Growing up in Cotesfield, NE
Axel Boilesen - 2009 - Playing an Edison Amberola - "On the Beach Medley" (a 30 second video)
Betty Barr Boilesen - 2000 - Playing School - My first memory of the Phonograph, Elba, NE
Betty Barr Boilesen - Other Stories Growing up in Elba, NE
Doug Boilesen - 2001 - The Our Song Phenomenon - "The Red River Rock"
"Canned Music - Share a Coke and a Song" - Doug Boilesen 2016
Dearborn or Bust 1967 - The trip to Greenfield Village and Edison's Menlo Park via my 1917 Model T - Doug Boilesen 2015
Don't Judge a Book by its Cover...Unless is has a Phonograph on it - Discovering Abide by Jake Adam York - Doug Boilesen 2018
Holiday Gift Ideas for the Music Lover 2021 - Mark Kennedy*, AP Entertainment Writer, 2021 and Doug Boilesen
"Home on the Range" - Connections and an "Our Song" - Doug Boilesen 2017
How Axel and Doug Boilesen acquired the John Johnson 5”x 7” glass negatives in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1965. - Doug Boilesen and Doug Keister 2012
Phonographia and One Perspective on Collecting - Doug Boilesen 2018
Public Libraries as Record Lenders - Nutley Public Library 2017 - Doug Boilesen 2020
James Boilesen - 2018 - I am a Friend of the Phonograph
F. M. Barney - 1912 - Barney's story of Ezra Meeker coming into his store and recording 3 records, Elm Creek, NE
Eric Byron - 2019 - "My Fascination with Early Phonographs and Sound Recordings"
Peter Buffett * - 2010 - Excerpt from his book, Life Is What You Make It, music and an early repair made on the family phonograph
Eddie Cicotte - 1915 - A baseball star would enjoyed listening to phonograph records
Jim Copp * - 2018 - A tribute to one of the most creative storytellers on record written by David Owen in The New Yorker, 2018
Frances Robinson Friday * - 1998 - Avalon Town, the chamber pot and the Victrola
Myla Goldberg * - 2006 - Hanging on the Gramophone (Spin Magazine)
Barbara Gordon * - 1979 - The Menace of Constant Noise (I'm Dancing as Fast as I Can)
Anne Hathaway * - 2011 - Tribute to Meryl Streep during the 34th Annual Kennedy Centre Honors with gramophone on stage
Hawthorne School - 1998 - Second graders learn about the Phonograph, Hawthorne Elementary School, Lincoln, NE
Dan Jenkins * - 2014 - Listening to the Mills Brothers on my mom's RCA Victor phonograph.
Garrison Keillor * - 2017 - Memories of bringing my LP to our youth church group so that they could listen to Handel's Messiah
Douglas Keister - 2007 - Field Report on Obsessive Phonograph Collecting Disorder Submitted by Douglas Keister HSD AAC
Douglas Keister - 2020 - "The Machine"
Kim Keister - 2020 - Life, Music, and the Harman-Kardon Incident
Keira Knightley and Steve Carell * - 2012 - Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, Focus Features
John C. Koss* - 2022 - Remembering the man who brought high-quality personal stereophonic sound to generations of listeners.
Pete McKee* - Thoughts about vinyl, record stores, the life of records, DJs, and music used in his 2021 Thud Crackle Pop Digital Remaster Exhibition.
John Mendenhall* - Memories of Nipper and Character Trademarks
Paul McCartney * - 2020 - Celebrating his Friends of the Phonograph 78 RPM Birthday and "Spinning at 78"
Howard Taylor Middleton 1907 - The Talking Machine Club
Mr. R. Llewellyn Moss - 1911 - Remembering the first time he heard an Edison Phonograph, January 1878
Margaret Marty * - A Valentine for ‘Victrola’ - 2019 - On “keepsakes” and a found Valentines Day card from Dad to Mom, Courtesy of The Pine City Pioneer
Colleen Murphy * 2016* - "My first turntable was a life-changer" (from her BBC Sounds Turntable Tales - Berliner to Gramophone)
Andy Orlando - 2009 - Our phonograph in Dos Palos, California, and other memories
Judy Orlando - 2018 - Memories of growing up, family, music and the phonograph
Van Dyke Parks* - 2020 - Memories of my parents Magnavox and records
Ann Patchett * - 2011 - Dreaming Of 'California' From Far Away - Interviewed by Melissa Block as part of NPR Music's 2011 Winter Series. (Click the 4-minute Listen) (8)
Tom Rivett * - 2013 - A boy's voice from 1954 lost and found, Lincoln, NE by Cindy Lange-Kubick, The Lincoln Journal-Star
Will Rogers * - 1923 - Timely Topics
Satan Comes to Crawley Bottom - As told to Douglas Keister - 2020
Wendy Shaw - 2021 - Shocking memories of the phonograph
Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton in Antarctica 1907-09 - Shackleton’s 1907-09 expedition in his own recorded words
Maia Sharp * - 2009 - "Kodachrome" - Interviewed by Melissa Block as part of NPR Music's 2009 Summer Series. (Click the 3-minute Listen) (9)
Judy Steffes * - 2015 - Memories of growing up in West Bend, WI, with the family phonograph in the dining room
Gary Stone - 2021 - "My grandparents radio store inspired my appreciation for phonographs and radios."
Clancy Strock * - 2004 - My Grandfather Strock's Victrola, and more...Reminisce Magazine
Studs Terkel * - 2005 - "Caruso"
James Thurber * - 1933 - My mother's greatest dread was the Victrola
Andrea Von Kampen * - 2021 - The purchase of Von Kampen's vinyl album by Prince Charles at Hafod Hardware, Rhayader, Wales
Oliver Wang * - 2015 - Baby's First Record (and Record Player) - Cuepoint
You Tell on Yourself By the Friends You Keep and the Records You Play - 2012 Author Unknown
This is Our Tune...Remember? - 1945 Crosley "Our Tune" Advertisement and other "Our Song" examples
"The Miraculous Phonograph Record" by William Saroyan - Saturday Evening Post, September 1983 (10)
"Santa Claus Speaks" by Karen Fishman and Bryan Cornell 2015 - Library of Congress "Now See Hear! The National Audio-Visual Conservation Center Blog - "Santa Claus Tells About his Toy Shop
by Gilbert Girard, 1916 (Victor Record 35679) and "Santa Claus Gives Away his Toys" by Gilbert Girard, 1916 (Victor Record 35679)
Our First Radio-Phonograph by Doug Boilesen - Details of Axel and Betty's first Radio-Phonograph 1949
Mom and Dad's Record Collection - Stories Our Parents Taught Us - All Things Considered 2012
Loving an Album to Death Makes a Music Fan for Life - Darrin Wolsko* - All Things Considered 2012
"Little Darrin Wolsko spent a chunk of his childhood playing his father's copy of The Beatles self-titled album, best known as The White Album, over and over." Courtesy of the Wolsko family and NPR
A Grandson's Gift — A Spotlight — For His Grandfather's WWII Band - an NPR report by Taylor Haney March 20, 2021 about a trumpet player in WWII whose recordings were discovered by his grandson who then had them digitized and made into an album. "I put the music on and it was like my own private concert with my grandpa," he said. "It was like he'd never left. I was back in 1946 and getting to hear my ... grandpa and his young lungs playing the trumpet."
"A Record Find - How The Phantom of the Opera led me to a long-lost musical treasure in Paris" By Michael Walsh Smithsonian magazine, February 2008
In 1907, recordings were interred in metal urns at the Palais Garnier, to be reopened in 100 years (Courtesy Opéra National de Paris)
Autobiographically Organizing Record Albums - Scene from High Fidelity - 2000 * (Courtesy Touchstone Pictures)
Friends of Nipper
Nipper - 1895 - A Unique Star in Phonographia
In Memory of Friends of the Phonograph
Betty Ann Barr Boilesen - 2000
William C. Ptacek* by Rene Rondeau - 2004 (Honorary FOTP member See Endnote 1 )
Axel Christian Boilesen - 2013
FOTP Celebrations and Related Material (2)
Birthday Calendar: Legacy Friends of the Phonograph
December 6th Edison Phonograph Birthday Parties - Photo Album
Friends of the Phonograph Go GREEN
FOTP Happy Birthday Song - a.k.a. Your Birth Anniversary Song
In Memory of Friends of the Phonograph
Quotations about Memories - "You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead"
Top Five Lists by Friends of the Phonograph
Phonographs on Display - Museums, Exhibits and On-Line Collections
PhonoAvenue - Phonograph Related Museums Around the World
Phonograph On-Line Collections
PhonoExhibits - Temporary Phonograph Exhibits
Phono-Sightings - Phonographs as part of other museum displays
Phonograph Related Resources - Societies, Libraries, Archives, Recordings
Favorites of Friends of the Phonograph
Top 5 LP's selected by Friends of the Phonograph
Favorite movies selected by Friends of the Phonograph (1)
Quotations about Memories
Every man's memory is his private literature. - Aldous Huxley
It's surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time. - Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
The past is never dead, it is not even past. - William Faulkner
"When an old person dies, a library burns." African proverb revived by Malian writer Amadou Amadou Hampaté Ba
Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose.- From the television show The Wonder Years
We do not remember days; we remember moments. - Cesare Pavese, The Burning Brand
To speak the name of the dead is to make them live again - Ancient Egyptian Belief
WIthin our hearts, the ones we love are never really gone - In spirit and in memory, their legacy lives on. - Hallmark
All those moments will be lost in time...like tears in rain. - The Blade Runner
...She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love and she be fair! - John Keats, Ode on a Grecian Urn
"You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead" - Lennon/McCartney, Two of Us, 1969
A story is what holds us together, and what is left when we leave - Marshall Dodge, The New Yorker, Oct 22, 1979
"The backward look transforms its object...History cannot be touched without changing it." Siegfried Giedion
"I like the old days, but not all the days, only the good old days" - Departure, The Long Winters
It was no thought or word that called culture into being, but a tool or a weapon. After the stone axe we needed song and story to remember innocence, to record effect - and so to describe the limits, to say what can be done without damage. Wendell Berry, 1974
And suddenly the memory returns...ready to remind us, waiting and hoping for their moment, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unfaltering, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection. Marcel Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu (2)
The stereo takes back our breath, All sound is light. Abide with Me, Jake Adam York
A memory is only a Prince Charming who stays just long enough to awaken the Sleeping Beauties of our wordless stories. — Michael De Certeau (3)
How the past is documented shapes how we remember it. Lonnie G. Bunch III, 2019
"The construction and demolition of monuments are history, but monuments themselves are not history. They are useful windows on history. They disclose stories we would now like to disavow, but if we look carefully, we can also find what the monuments were intended to hide. In the name of remembering, we don't want to forget." Richard White 2020 (4)
"Memories bring diamonds and rust." Joan Baez, Diamonds and Rust
"We're just here to be memories for our kids." - Cooper to his daughter Murph, Interstellar 2014
"Sweet memories awakened" - Vitanola - Natural as Life, 1919
"Jenny Lind is only a memory..." Life magazine, March 28, 1918 (FOTP)
The Phonograph - Perpetuating "art for all time."
The Axel and Betty Boilesen Legacy Exhibit
The Legacy Phonograph Collection and stories remembering Axel and Betty Boilesen, Friends of the Phonograph