PHONO TERIA

03/20/2026

Now, what in the phonoterror???

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1DhaVW9GDh/

02/26/2026

Oscar Holden (1886-1969) - the "Patriarch of Seattle Jazz" - arrived in Seattle in 1925 and quickly became a central figure in the city's jazz scene. www.historylink.org/File/11074

02/20/2026

AFM Seattle Local 493, the "Negro Musicians' Union", was founded in 1918 in response to a Jim Crow system of turf boundaries among local musicians. It finally merged with AFM Local 76 in 1958. historylink.org/File/10329

Pictured here, the Wang Doodle Orchestra, Seattle, 1925

01/07/2026

100-year old+ cartoon panels of generational taste dispute after the influenza pandemic and before radio:

DIANA DILLPICKLE
1. "I'll just take away and hide pa's favorite records, then he can't play anything that isn't up to high musical standard."
2. "Drat such high-falutin' stuff!!"

12/22/2025

PHONO TERIA encouraged 🌈

In the 1920s and early 1930s Americans flouted traditions. Women known as Flappers drove automobiles, wore short skirts, and smoked and drank in public. Gangsters ran speakeasies defying prohibition laws and leading to a spike in crime. Young people played and danced to strange music. On this day in Washington (Dec. 22, 1933) a state legislator blamed the social disorder on “jazz intoxication.”

State Representative William A. Allen, who lived near Alki Beach, introduced a bill claiming “people are becoming dangerously demented, confused and distracted or bewildered by jazz music.” He urged Washington Governor Clarence Martin to “bring about immediate cessation” of playing jazz in public. Violators faced heavy penalties. “All persons convicted of being jazzily intoxicated shall go before the Superior Court and be sent to an insane asylum,” Allen threatened.
His bill calling for a commission to study the deleterious effects of jazz on society never made it out of committee. Jazz intoxication has spread unchecked in America ever since.

Post written courtesy of David J Jepsen - Historian

Image from WSHS collection. Four women, members of a jazz band, holding different types of saxophones, pose outdoors in Puyallup, WA. Photographic print. Creator Marvin D. Boland Creation Date Sep. 23, 1922 Catalog ID: 1957.64.B6663

11/30/2025

iphonoteria shuffle

11/10/2025

Phonoteria was gifted a few phonOcord records. They were records that you could live-cut your own by yourself with the special two arm phonograph system with built-in microphone. It was a bit of a fad in the late '50s and early 60s. We've previously posted about the similar VOICE-A-GRAM postcard.

PhonOcord, also called RECORDIO, were slightly smaller than the emerging 45s size and played at 78rpm. It was also a poor quality recording. They cut the groove from the inside to the outside that makes it look almost like it's playing backwards. It's so close to the spin-hole that modern auto-return arms won't reach it. See comments to listen to a bit of one of these phonOcords.

10/09/2025

♾️❤️Yoko 🎁Lennon
Get me drunk and I'll tell you about hugging her.

Yoko Ono (Japanese: 小野 洋子, romanized: Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana as オノ・ヨーコ; born February 18, 1933) is a retired Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking.[1]

09/02/2025

On this day in Washington (Sept. 2, 1938), a Seattle waterfront legend was born. Ivar Haglund – restaurateur, storyteller, and troubadour – opened the city’s first aquarium.

That waterfront attraction was the beginning of Ivar’s Seafood Restaurants, including Ivar’s Acres of Clams. But the “Mayor of the Seattle Waterfront” is best remembered as the champion of pranks and spoofs.

He offered a $5,000 reward to anyone who could deliver a sea monster Haglund reportedly spotted in Lake Washington. He staged a wrestling match between the prizefighter Tony “Two-Ton” Galento and Oscar the Octopus. He advertised his “Ever-Rejuvenating Clam Nectar” (used cooking oil) as an aphrodisiac. Most famously, he placed his star seal, Patsy, in a baby buggy and walked her to Frederick & Nelson department store to visit Santa.

Haglund frequently appeared on local radio stations, telling stories, strumming his guitar, and singing lines from the nineteenth-century ballad “Old Settler. “I laugh at the world and its shams. As I survey my happy condition, surrounded by acres of clams.”

Post written courtesy of David J Jepsen - Historian

Image from WSHS collection: An Ivar Book of Ballads from Puget Sound. Creation date: ca. 1953. Catalog ID: 1999.122.78.

08/10/2025

Phonoteria did it first in Seattle with Victrolas!!!