You may wonder (get it?) about Little Wonder discs.

I recommend Little Wonder Records and Bubble Books: An Illustrated History and Discography, by Tim Brooks with Merle Sprinzen (Mainspring Press, 2011).

Selling for a dime between 1914 and 1923, the Little Wonder disc is a one-sided record measuring five and a half inches in diameter, only slightly bigger than a modern compact disc. I rarely call them "78s" since many Little Wonder sound best at 80 rpm. Performances last around 110 seconds.

Henry Waterson and Victor Emerson launched the tiny product, taking a big business risk. Can a record be priced at ten cents and yield a profit? The discs did generate revenues. Perhaps they were too lucrative since lawsuits followed the marketing of this little disc, Emerson suing Waterson for more compensation.

Emerson and Waterson were minimalists, pushing the industry to a new kind of limit. How short can recorded performances be and still sell? Popular songs thrive on repetition, a new melody or fresh chord progression likely to strike listeners as "catchy" when it reappears--and then reappears yet again. Even on ten-inch Victor discs a listener can be wearied by the repetition that is evidently needed for a song to be "put over."

Records that are too brief simply don't become hits (among the least popular Beatles recordings is ragtime-based "Her Majesty," zipping by in a mere 23 seconds). But Little Wonder discs are not much briefer than 45 rpm recordings of the mid-1960s. Little Wonder discs do have room for the repetition needed in popular songs though they lack space for, say, the banter found on Collins and Harlan records of this period issued by Victor or Columbia.

I've stressed popular songs, but Little Wonder does not ignore opera. Indeed, an Italian branch of Little Wonder marketed (in its 0200 series) tenor and baritone arias from such warhorses such as Il Trovatore, Lohengrin, Aida, and Faust. You won't find a complete Parsifal performed by the Little Wonder Opera Company.

This book cited above is really an expanded and improved version of a booklet credited to Tim Brooks and published with spiral binding in 1999 by the New Amberola Phonograph Company. That 1999 booklet itself grew from an earlier article titled "Ever Wonder About Little Wonder," printed in 1979 in a hobby magazine. From a little acorn grew a great oak--or at least a fine book.

This new and bigger edition is credited to Brooks with Merle Sprinzen. Bubble Books (also small records from this era) are now covered in addition to Little Wonder discs. However, Bubble Books are discs for kids, so that is a Catch-22. The authors recognize that Little Wonder discs are important enough for treatment in a book, but to "fill out" that book, the authors include pages about Bubble Books, thereby trivializing the Little Wonder phenomenon. Typical Bubble Book titles are "Tabbyskins" and "I Had a Little Doggie"--fluff!

Bubble Books made no lasting contribution to the recording industry.

We must not pretend that Little Wonders made a substantial contribution (except maybe to establish that a market exists for budget labels). Almost no Little Wonder material has been reissued.

Nobody using modern technology reissues Little Wonders except here on youtube. We should not overstate the appeal of these discs, which I think sound rougher than Victor, Columbia, and even Emerson discs.

Nonetheless, I like Little Wonders. Some feature the earliest recordings of songs that would become standards for jazz bands and pop singers--"Chinatown, My Chinatown," "(Back Home Again in) Indiana," "Smiles," "Who's Sorry Now?," "Swanee," "Whispering," "Rose Room," "Poor Butterfly."

Little Wonders provide a type of "soundtrack" for scholars since Little Wonder discs featuring WWI songs sold well.

Some--certainly not all--Little Wonder discs feature fine singers and musicians performing standards or otherwise interesting songs.

Some singers cut the same titles for both Columbia and Little Wonder (by the way, Little Wonders takes are unique, never dubbings of Columbia material), but it didn't always work this way. Little Wonder 1376 features the Peerless Quartette singing "My Little Bimbo Down on the Bamboo Isle" whereas Columbia on A2981 issued Frank Crumit singing this Clarke-Donaldson number.

Guesswork was involved to identify performers, and not all listeners will agree on identifications. Is that Maurice Burkhart on eight discs? Burkhart did not record for Columbia after January 1913, so why would he resurface on Little Wonder discs as late as 1917? My ears tell me that "Sailin' Away on the Henry Clay" on 717 from 1917 is George H. O. Connor, not Burkhart. At least the identification for 202 is qualified: "prob. with Maurice Burkhart." Sam Ash is more likely.



California Ramblers "Sweet Indiana Home" (Walter Donaldson song) = Little Wonder disc 1647

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