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Fact #95858

When:

Short story:

The Baltimore American runs a feature about the life and work of Silas Leachman, a Chicago man who makes a good living - around $50 a day - by recording songs on wax cylinders at home for the phonograph. The article reveals that, "He prepares three 'records', as the wax cylinders are called, at one time," by using three recording machines simultaneously. His repertoire includes ballads, negro melodies [aka coon songs], irish, Chinese and Dutch dialect songs.

Full article:

FROM THE BALTIMORE AMERICAN, MAY 12, 1895 [re-printed from The Chicago Tribune]

Sings for Phonograph: A Chicago Man with a Voice Makes $50 a Day Preparing Cylinders.

Away out in the extreme northwestern part of the city, near the Milwaukee Railroad tracks, Silas Leachman puts in four or five hours every day singing at the top of his lungs, though not a soul is in hearing but his wife. When he gets tired of singing, he varies the proceedings by preaching a negro sermon, or gives an imitation of an Irish wake, and altogether conducts himself in a way that would lead the neighbors to consider him a fit subject for a lunatic asylum