Archeophone Records

Archeophone Records is an independent record company and archival music label established in 1998 by Richard Martin and Meagan Hennessey. The couple operates the company from Champaign, Illinois, with a focus on preserving and presenting the earliest eras of American commercial sound recording. Rather than functioning primarily as a contemporary artist label, Archeophone works with historical source material recorded on cylinders and early discs, applying restoration, remastering, research, and editorial documentation to recordings that might otherwise remain inaccessible to modern listeners. The label's catalog covers a broad range of early American cultural and musical history. Its releases include jazz, popular song, vaudeville, spoken-word recordings, dance music, religious material, campaign speech, and other forms of commercial or public performance captured during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The artists and ensembles represented in its catalog include Billy Murray, Bert Williams, Guido Deiro, Nora Bayes, Jack Norworth, Eddie Morton, the Six Brown Brothers, the Benson Orchestra of Chicago, and Art Hickman's Orchestra. Archeophone has also issued compilations devoted to performers and groups such as Vess Ossman, Arthur Collins, Byron G. Harlan, Henry Burr, Bob Roberts, Ada Jones, Fred Van Eps, Sophie Tucker, Harry Lauder, and the American, Peerless, and Haydn Quartets. The label's work combines specialist archival practice with historically oriented album production. Its releases generally seek to identify the performers, repertoire, recording technology, recording dates, and cultural setting of the source material, while improving the listening quality of fragile or technically limited originals. This approach makes the catalog relevant both to collectors of historic recordings and to researchers studying the development of American entertainment, popular music, recording technology, vaudeville, race and representation, religious broadcasting, political communication, and early jazz. Archeophone's historical releases have received substantial recognition from the recording industry. Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1891–1922 won the Grammy Award for Best Historical Album in 2006. The label later received two Grammy Awards in 2024 for Centennial, which won Best Historical Album and Best Album Notes. Archeophone has also received numerous Grammy nominations for historical albums and album notes, including projects about early phonograph recordings, campaign debates, gospel evangelism, Sophie Tucker, Isham Jones, the Fisk Jubilee Quartet, James Reese Europe's Society Orchestra, banjo recordings, minstrel-show routines, Emile Berliner, and other subjects. The company is distinct from Archéophone, the sound-recording equipment manufacturer associated with Henri Chamoux. Archeophone Records' identity is centered on the preservation and interpretation of recorded heritage rather than on manufacturing recording hardware. Its continuing role is that of a specialist archival label serving a niche but internationally relevant audience interested in the origins of recorded sound and American musical culture.

Archeophone Records was founded in 1998 by Richard Martin and Meagan Hennessey, a husband-and-wife team based in Champaign, Illinois. The label was created to document and preserve the early history of American sound recording. Its activities center on recordings made before the modern recorded-music industry reached maturity, particularly material originally issued on wax cylinders and early disc formats. The company's catalog reflects the variety of entertainment and communication captured by early recording technology. Archeophone restores and remasters recordings in genres and formats that include jazz, popular song, vaudeville, spoken word, dance music, gospel, political speech, and other forms of public performance. Because many of these recordings survive in technically challenging formats, the label's role extends beyond ordinary reissue production. It involves locating historical sources, assessing their condition, improving their audibility, identifying performers and repertoire, and supplying documentation that places the material within its social, technological, and commercial context. Among the performers and ensembles released by Archeophone are Billy Murray, Bert Williams, Guido Deiro, Nora Bayes, Jack Norworth, Eddie Morton, the Six Brown Brothers, the Benson Orchestra of Chicago, and Art Hickman's Orchestra. The label has also assembled thematic or performer-centered compilations involving Vess Ossman, Arthur Collins, Byron G. Harlan, Henry Burr, Bob Roberts, Ada Jones, Fred Van Eps, Sophie Tucker, Harry Lauder, and the American, Peerless, and Haydn Quartets. These projects collectively illuminate the development of popular entertainment, vaudeville performance, early jazz, instrumental virtuosity, commercial singing, and the recording business. A notable dimension of Archeophone's work is its attention to subjects that are important to music history but underrepresented in standard popular-music catalogs. Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1891–1922 addressed the participation of Black performers and creators in the formative period of commercial recording and won the Grammy Award for Best Historical Album in 2006. Other releases and nominations have explored early phonograph obscenity debates, presidential campaign speech, gospel evangelism, the career of Sophie Tucker, the Fisk Jubilee Quartet, James Reese Europe's Society Orchestra, early banjo recordings, minstrel-show routines, and the origins of commercial gramophone discs. Archeophone's historical orientation has earned repeated Grammy recognition. In addition to the 2006 award for Lost Sounds, the label's Centennial won Best Historical Album and Best Album Notes in 2024. Numerous other Archeophone projects have been Grammy nominees in the historical-album and album-notes categories, demonstrating the importance of research, restoration, and editorial context in the label's production model. The company remains separate from Archéophone, a manufacturer associated with Henri Chamoux. The similar names refer to different entities: Archeophone Records is a record company and archival label, while Archéophone concerns recording equipment. Archeophone Records' continuing identity is defined by specialist preservation and publication of early recorded sound, with releases intended for collectors, historians, musicians, and listeners interested in the origins of American recording culture.

1. 2024Centennial receives two Grammy Awards

   Centennial wins Best Historical Album and Best Album Notes.

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2. 2006Lost Sounds receives a Grammy Award

   Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1891–1922 wins Best Historical Album.

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3. 1998Archeophone Records is founded

   Richard Martin and Meagan Hennessey establish Archeophone Records in Champaign, Illinois, to document and preserve early American recordings.

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A specialist archival record label that combines audio restoration, historical research, and annotated album production to preserve early American recordings.

• Restored cylinder and early-disc recordingsArchival recordings1998

  Archeophone's core product is the carefully restored and remastered historical recording. The label works with cylinders and early discs containing jazz, popular music, vaudeville, spoken word, gospel, dance music, and other material. Releases typically present the recordings with historical identification and contextual information, allowing difficult-to-hear source material to be studied and enjoyed in a modern listening environment.

• Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1891–1922Historical compilation

  This archival compilation documents the contribution of Black performers and creators during the formative decades of the American recording industry. Its subject matter extends beyond individual songs to the broader history of representation, access, and participation in early commercial recording. The release brought together restoration work and historical scholarship and won the Grammy Award for Best Historical Album in 2006.

• CentennialHistorical album

  Centennial is an Archeophone historical release recognized at the 2024 Grammy Awards. It won both Best Historical Album and Best Album Notes, reflecting the importance of its archival audio work and accompanying documentation. The available reference material identifies the release and its awards but does not provide a complete track listing or detailed production history.

• Thematic performer and ensemble compilationsArchival compilation

  Archeophone has issued compilations devoted to early recording artists and ensembles including Vess Ossman, Arthur Collins, Byron G. Harlan, Henry Burr, Bob Roberts, Ada Jones, Fred Van Eps, Sophie Tucker, Harry Lauder, and the American, Peerless, and Haydn Quartets. These releases organize historically significant recordings around performers, repertoire, or recording culture and generally combine restored audio with editorial notes.

• 2024Centennial wins two Grammy Awards

  Centennial won Grammy Awards for Best Historical Album and Best Album Notes, giving Archeophone Records two major honors for its archival release work.

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• 2006Lost Sounds wins Grammy Award for Best Historical Album

  Archeophone Records received the Grammy Award for Best Historical Album for Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1891–1922, recognizing the label's archival restoration and historical presentation of early recordings by Black performers and creators.

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1. Archeophone Records
2. Archeophone Records official website