The Billy Murray Online Discography

Lambert 2-Minute
Cylinders (1903)   
   

  
Data compiled from the Mainspring Online Discography Project

Related Sites: The Billy Murray Pages  |  The Billy Murray Discography: Index

Lambert was the first American company to produce celluloid cylinders on a regular commercial basis. Early pressings were dyed a bright pink; however, black was the Lambert standard by the time that Murray recorded these selections, and no pink pressings of these numbers have been reliably reported.

Murray also recorded all four of these songs at his first Victor session, on September 2, 1903. The Lambert recording files have not survived, and exact release dates for Lambert — which often assigned blocks of numbers out of chrnological order — can be difficult or impossible to determine accurately. Although it is certainly possible that these are the first Murray recordings to have been made and/or issued after he came East, no documentary evidence exists that could confirm or refute that theory.

Some additional details concerning these cylinders — including labeling and core variations, and an unusual test pressing — will appear in The American Cylinder Index (Volume I) and another upcoming work, coming later this year from Mainspring Press.

The Lambert 2-Minute Cylinders

All reliably reported pressings are in black celluloid. Titles are given as shown on the
pressings, with the correct form shown in brackets.
    

New York: c. Autumn 1903

BILLY MURRAY
Self-announced; with unknown pianist
  

   
I’m Thinking of You All of de [sic: the] While
  (Reed)
   
Lambert 851
   
My Little ’Rang Outang
  (Madden-Morse)
   
Lambert 852
   
Up in the [sic: a] Cocoanut Tree
  (Madden-Morse)
   
Lambert 853
   
Alec Busby, Don’t Go Away
  (Cannon)
   
   
Lambert 854

    

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