Gone electric

This just in:

On Feb. 25, 1925, Art Gillham’s recording session made history. The technology changed who was heard in recordings, how artists approach their music and how we hear it.

One of the most significant innovations in recorded music took place a century ago in New York City. On Feb. 25, 1925, Art Gillham, a musician known as “the Whispering Pianist” for his gentle croon, entered Columbia Phonograph Company’s studio to test out a newly installed electrical system. Its totem was positioned in front of him, level with his mouth: a microphone.

This was the moment when the record industry went electric. By the end of the year, a writer for the Washington, D.C. newspaper the Evening Star marveled at “the capitulation of the world’s leading musical artists to the power of the microphone.”

You can read the complete story at The New York Times.