What's The Earliest Song You Like?

As in earliest recorded.

Which rules out "The Song of the Ass" by Anon. 13th century, which is GRATE!

OK fair point - earliest written and earliest recorded, then! Curse me and my pop-centric ways!

Louis Armstrong's recording of "Potato Head Blues". I have no idea what the year is...

"Rio"; "Whip It"; "I'll Be Mellow When I'm Dead"

That's easy. Billy Murray's "Grand Old Rag," 1906. The oldest one I love is Ada Jones and Billy Murray's "Googy-Oo," which is from 1909. A grand bit of corn about...well, basically the same subject as "La-La Means I Love You."

Sinec they're out of copyright, I believe everything on all of those early Edison cylinders are perfectly legal to download from the file- sharing program of your choice. I've not tried to look for Edison Cylinder stuff on Audiogalaxy, but Napster had a fuckload of things all the time...all you had to do was search for files with "1906" or "1909" in their names.

As far as I know, I don't like anything recorded before 1928, which is the year Oum Kalthoum's "Tebi'ni Leh" was recorded, as well as some pretty good Hawaiian steel guitar music.

& why? As in why don't I like anything earlier, or why do I like this? I don't really have much of an answer as to why I like this, as usual, but I like virtually nothing else from this phase of Oum Kalthoum's career. I think one thing I like about it is that I think I get its structure more than I usually do in songs from this period. It's not exactly catchy, but there's a chorus in which she repeatedly increases the volume and intensity of a certain phrase as she coms to the end of it and it's quite memorable.

I genuinely like the sound of the recording featured on this page, especially the tail end of it which starts to get pretty wild. (Lots of nice wax cylinder recordings on that site, btw.)

More in the realm of songs: at my old job as a recording engineer, I transferred a ton of klezmer and Judaica 78s, some of which dated back to the 1900s. I enjoyed some of them a great deal, though I have to admit my favorites were probably the '20s-'30s novelty songs that mixed Yiddish and English, like "Kun-Yi-Land (Coney Island)".

In general I love the sound of 78s, and wax cylinders are nice too. (I don't know that I've ever actually heard anything taped on a wire recorder.) MP3.com has a ton of old recordings, both under the moniker 78RPM, which has several subsites (78RPMtwo, 78RPMopera, etc.), and an Edison Recordings site which is linked from the 78RPM page. The 78RPM guy used to have a *ton* of good stuff up there, but he seems to have withdrawn a lot of it, which is a shame.

Robert Johnson-Hellhound BLues
I think its early 1930s
Favorite Written in English is the Cuckoo Song

Porbably 'If I had Possession Over Judgement Day" by Mr. Johnson as well, which may well only indicate how little od music i've bothered tracking down. Charley Patton's pretty damn amazing.

I think that marlene detrichs falling in love again and the carter familes will the circle go unbroken are earlier.

Either Scott Joplin or the Carter Family.

although i can listen to early blues, ragtime, jazz, whatever, it all really starts to mean something to me with stuff from the fifties. mainly sinatra and the croonier elements of c&w, is suppose. it may be because they can contain a touch of arch irony which isn't apparent in much music that i've heard from before then. but it may just be that the tunes are more closely structured to those that i grew up with in the 60s and 70s. or something else entirely.

James Johnson's "Carolina Shout", assuming it predates Louis Armstrong's Hot Fives and the Bristol Sessions.

As for recorded, there's a lot of great King Oliver that I love. For written, Thomas Tallis' Spem in Alium is one of my favorite pieces ever.

I'm sure I've mentioned this before somewhere, but my fave early song has to be the wonderfully joyous 'Fishing Blues' by Henry Thomas, 1928. It's the very last track on the Harry Smith Anthology. Thomas was already in his fifties by the time he cut records for the Vocalion label, and as the Anthology sleevenotes point out, "his recordings are one of the few examples of archaic 19th-century African-American music to be preserved on disk. His unique musical style continues to intrigue modern listeners, especially his use of the quills, a form of pan-pipe made from cane."

Canned Heat 'adapted' his 'Bulldoze Blues' for their song 'Goin' Up The Country', and John Sebastian wrote a tribute song called 'Henry Thomas'. There's a fabbo Yazoo CD that collects all his known recordings, and it still sounds fresh today.

I also love 'Dark Was The Night...' by Blind Willie Johnson from 1927, but I'm not sure if that counts as a 'song' exactly...

"Train Kept A Rollin" by the Johnny Burnette and the Rock & Roll Trio (1956?) is the oldest one that I love in a non-curatorial, "damn this specific performance is really speaking to me" sense. It just sounds completely insane.

Written: Ockeghem's Missa Prolationum
Recorded: probably Robert Johnson - "Love In Vain". There may be a jazz tune or three recorded before that which I like, but nothing immediately leaps to mind.

lets go to bed by the cure. the video and everything messed with me. honestly.

The first Autechre single.

Paul Robeson's "Ole Man River" - 1929, I think, though I'm not sure...

The Standard Quartette's "Keep Movin'," from 1894, because it sounds like a horde of benevolent ghosts desperately rattling at the walls of my stereo's speakers, and if they can only line up their voices the right way they can tell me what I need to know.

"Luna Mezz'a Mare"... original recording must be pre-20th century.

Heard a slew of early Chinese and Indian stuff -- recorded somewhere in the 1900s or the like -- that merrily messed with my head, I seem to recall...

Earliest composed song for me would be Palestrina's motet "Sicut Cervus," the tenor part of which I had to learn as a college freshman. (COLIN MEEDER TO THREAD!)

I'm goint to take this question as earliest in my history as opposed to earliest recorded. It was "Proud Mary" by CCR. I don't know how I first heard it, but a friend of my father's ended up buying me the LP. Later, when I was maybe 8, I became fascinated by seeing the film clip of Ike and Tina performing the same song.

Probably some Northern Soul song. Apparently I would dance around in the livingroom singing along with tunes my dad played on the stereo. First single bought was Hot Chocolate's girl crazy.

Blurry by Puddle Of Mudd

Mike, would you shove it in my face?

Desi the Rat and the Gay Moose!! YES!!!

Anyway, I've got heard some amazing recordings of Rosa Ponselle when she was young (i.e. before lack of proper training did her head in) that are amazing. They seem to be quasi-bootlegs, though, with really misleading track information on them.

"and the band played on", sung by dan quinn, 3 november 1899
"hear dem bells", sung by the brilliant quartet c.1896
"bye bye ma honey", sung by billy goulden, 4 november 1895

all from a tape called ORIGINAL SOUNDS OF THE 1890S, of (i assume) edison cylinders, tho the quinn cd poss be a v.early gramophone disc

they all sound as if they're floridly drunk, esp. as regards time sense (so does the sousa march band, also on the tape, which was at the time considered a marvel of precision — william tell overture sounds like they all fell over while recording, which makes ME think that the 19th century idea of timekeeping is really quite a lot difft to the present-day post-clicktrack idea...)

carnival of venice played by jean moeremans on saxophone c.1898 has the greatest bum note in the history of the recording industry, haha i think this note was the secret invention of jazz!!

(if it's "punctum" you're after, dj shadow can fuck off, edison is yr man: ORIGINAL SOUNDS is sadder than a trunkload of faded daguerrotypes)

"Rivers of Babylon", which is Psalm 137, written, um, something-or- other BC.

Mike, would you shove it in my face?

Uh...what?

Desi the Rat and the Gay Moose!! YES!!!

Uh....WHAT?!

Desi the Rat and the Gay Moose were the HEROES of the "Secret Cervix" show. C'mon, don't be a square!

carnival of venice played by jean moeremans on saxophone c.1898 has the greatest bum note in the history of the recording industry, haha i think this note was the secret invention of jazz!!

er no the bum note is in american medley, cornet solo w. paris chambers, 10 apr 1897: obv the inadevertent invention of jazz wd happen on a cornet not a sax, like duh

thesis: the saxophone community "stole" the idea of jazz from the cornet community

*clicking wheels in thought* Earliest song I can remember was "O mio Babbino Caro" sung by Maria Callas, done in early 1930's. Isn't a song necessarily, but I DID love "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" (Noel Coward, 1935).

I used to have this fixation with British music-hall songs recorded in the very early C20 - I can barely remember any of the details, but they appealed to the historian in me. More recently, I heard John Peel play this old recording of Tommy Handley singing "Get Yourself Up Early In The Morning" the other week and I'm not ashamed to say it moved me like little else does.

Oh hahahah, I thought merely earliest song I liked. Hmm. Earliest recorded? Probaby some R. Johnson's Hellhound on My Trail. (No, i am not Greil Marcus - I'd already be dead if I were.)