Homepage logo Project Homepage [spacer] Search Collection Browse Collection Project Overview Cylinder History Donate Collections Help Contact Us Links Links [spacer] Special Collections UCSB Libraries Banner

American Vaudeville

Listen to the program


Twenty-five cents would buy you a full afternoon or evening of live entertainment in nearly any city or town between 1880 and 1930. At the local vaudeville house you could enjoy eight to ten acts by magicians, singers, acrobats, actors, trained animals, and comedians. The "variety stage" might be filled by a Shakespearean troupe or an opera singer, and followed by a blackface act, ragtime band, or sacred vocal quartet. The best, as well as the worst, of these acts made sound recordings so that you could enjoy your favorite routines again and again on your own phonograph.

More on the history vaudeville can be found at the website of the Library of Congress exhibition, Bob Hope and American Variety. - Samuel Brylawski, UC Santa Barbara, Editor, Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings.


Page author: David Seubert.
Last modified: 02/23/07 10:53:55
Direct questions or comments about this page to the author or to the Web Administrator.


[Official Seal] This is an official University of California, Santa Barbara Library web page.

Featured Cylinder

Si and Sis, the musical spoons - Ada Jones and Len Spencer. (Edison Gold Moulded Record: 9815), [1908].


Streaming Audio

Listen to a live stream of the new Edison releases of December, 1908 on streaming Cylinder Radio

Cylinder Radio feed


Keyword Search



Did You Know?
The oldest recording of the human voice is a phonautogram recorded in 1860 by the French inventor Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville.

Creative Commons License
Copyright information