Postcards with Phonograph Connections

Some of my favorite Phonograph Ephemera are Phonograph connected postcards.  The Golden Age of postcards in the United States is commonly identified as 1907 to 1915, and this is likewise the period when some of the most interesting and colorful phonograph ads were being created.

Phonograph postcard themes Christmas, New Years, Valentines, Love, Easter, Halloween, Happy Birthday, Greetings, Flowered Horns, Faeries and Angels, Marriage, Parades, Fairs, Children, Humor, advertisements for new records, recording artists, phonographs, and a host of other miscellaneous scenes and subjects. Postcards continue to be sent in the 21st century but the internet and digital images have significantly changed all personal messages.

The following are examples of those postcards and some greeting cards that have been used to create a short montage of a theme accompanied by a related phonograph recording.  

Select any of the following and Enjoy! (None are more than 3 minutes).

 

Happy Birthday Song for Friends of the Phonograph a.k.a. The Anniversary of your Birth Song

Happy New Year - Auld Lang Syne - Phonograph ephemera accompanied by Auld Lang Syne performed by the Mediaeval Baebes, 2014

Ring Out the Bells for Christmas - Edison Record No. 9806 (1907) and phonograph ephemera.

Here Comes Peter Cottontail, Easter and the Phonograph - Phonograph Easter postcards accompanied by Gene Autry singing Here Comes Peter Cottontail, 1950

I have collected many phonograph postcards but, without knowing what "Walter" meant in the first line of the card, the following is a challenge for deciding how many degrees of separation from the phonograph should be assigned.

Instead of any visual depiction of a phonograph on the above postcard there is simply an illustration of a man behind bars with the pre-printed message "If you can't come - write us (me).

The first hand-written line of the message reads: "Where Sarles will be if he don't give you the phonograph."

It's an intriguing and humorous opening line making it fun to speculate what it actually means. Apparently Mrs. Mary Couchman (the addressee living in White Lake, NY has loaned her phonograph to Sarles and he hasn't returned it. Or perhaps Sarles is an "ex" and they have divorced and he has kept the phonograph. Or maybe it's just part of an inside joke.

Of course it really doesn't -- the point of including this postcard in Phonographia's Postcard Gallery is to again show that the phonograph was an active part of popular culture in 1906 when this card was posted.

For clarification, before 1907 U.S. postcards, like this one, had an undivided back: that entire side was reserved for the address and postage, and the message had to be written on the front, often over the printed image.