by Edwin P. Baxter with Henry Ford's Old Fashioned Dance Orchestra
Hammer dulcimer wasn't an instrument that lent itself to acoustic recording, but soon after Columbia switched to electrical mastering they brought in Henry Ford's aggregation on January 15 of 1926. Edwin Baxter was one of
two dulcimer players to appear with Ford's aggregation, the other being William Hallup (a brief mention of Ford's orchestra appears at "folkworld.de").
Ford was evidently very serious about the autheticity of this music, very keen on preserving the "old time" sound, so what one hears on this disc is likely as accurate as could be made at the time (though the use of a tuba for
the bass doesn't seem authentic). The recording is great, a little sloppy in the beginning but not bad, and the sound is joyous. The disc from which this sample was taken had some issues with crackle, as many Columbias do
from this period, but running it through noise reduction helped a great deal.
