Researcher Donates Rare Edison Recordings to National Park Service

The National Park Service at West Orange's Thomas Edison National Historical Park recently received a donation that museum officials say makes its Edison recordings collection "significantly more complete." 

Raymond Wile, the nation's the foremost expert on Edison disc records, gave to the institution a major cache of antique music recordings on cylinder and disc that date from 1905 to 1929. The records were made by inventor Thomas Edison’s National Phonograph Company and Thomas A. Edison, Inc. 

The music preserved runs the gamut:  Performances include rare takes by Italian operatic soprano Claudia Muzio, country music pioneer Ernest Stoneman, Czech violinist Vasa Prihoda, jazz quintet the Original Memphis Five, 1920s radio star Vaughn De Leath and banjoist Vess Ossman.  

Wile's donation also includes 18 color photographs of a reunion of Edison recording artists that he hosted at the National Park Service on Oct. 18, 1974. Those photos represent just one adventure in the researcher's clear passion for Edison recordings, which he began collecting and researching in the early 1950s, a few years before the National Park Service acquired the Edison Laboratory in 1956.  

At that time, Thomas A. Edison, Inc. was still manufacturing products in factory buildings surrounding the laboratory.  A company-led foundation provided public tours and historical research services at the laboratory, known then as the “Edison Foundation Museum.”   

“Many of the old record operation employees were still around and working at the museum,” Wile recalled.  

During the 1970s, Wile led a popular series of recording artist reunion programs which involved inviting still-living Edison phonograph artists as special guests, and playing unpublished “test pressing” recordings that the artists had not heard before.

The National Park Service preserves approximately 28,000 disc phonograph records, 11,000 cylinder phonograph records and 9,800 disc metal molds at Thomas Edison National Historical Park.  The park’s sound archive represents the world's most complete collection of Edison disc phonograph records.