David Giovannoni

David Giovannoni (b. 19 August 1954, Sacramento, California) is an American audio historian, researcher, and collector of early "acoustic era" records based in Derwood, Maryland. After a prolific career as an audience research analyst between 1972 and 2004, David retired from the radio broadcasting industry, focusing solely on his unique record collection accessible online to historians, researchers, and record producers via The Library of Historical Audio Recordings at i78s. Giovannoni is one of the most influential figures in the early recorded medium preservation today, alongside unorthodox and eccentric collector Joe Bussard (1936—2022), who had a drastically different approach but equally made his priceless private collection accessible to fellow music lovers, researchers, and reissue labels. Giovannoni authored liner notes for many archival releases, which got nominated for several Grammys in the "Best Album Notes" category and won the "Best Historical Album" at the 49th Annual Grammy Awards for the Lost Sounds - Blacks And The Birth Of The Recording Industry 1891-1922 2×CD compilation in 2007. Giovannoni grew up in Walnut Grove, a tiny city in Sacramento County in California. Between 1972 and 1976, he studied at the University Of The Pacific, earning his Bachelor's degree in English and Communications. David joined the broadcast industry in his junior year on the 91.3 KUOP-FM college radio. In 1977, soon after enrolling at the University Of Wisconsin, Giovannoni launched his Audience Research Analysis company, dedicated to radio audience quantitative analysis, and worked as its first president for twenty-seven years. After graduating in 1980 with his Master's in Communication, David joined NPR, serving as the director of audience research and program evaluation until 1986. He developed a proprietary AudiGraphics analytical software for radio broadcasters in 1989, distributed and promoted by an eponymous company Giovannoni established. Based on his life-long collection, David Giovannoni curated several record series inducted in the "National Recording Registry" by The Library Of Congress, including the earliest known recordings in Yiddish (featured on 13730531 CD compilation from Archeophone Records) and Vernacular wax cylinders acquired by UC Santa Barbara in 2013 — the world's first UGC "home audio" library with over 500 private recordings made by early phonograph owners. In collaboration with Mark Lynch, he assembled over 2,000 Pre-Matrix Victor recordings produced between 1900 and 1903 by Eldridge R. Johnson (1867—1945), the world's earliest record label founder. Before he invented the industrialized "matrix stamping" in 1903, the Victor Talking Machine Co. pressed all discs in exceedingly small quantities, under 200 copies or less; thus, they are virtually extinct today, particularly in acceptable condition. Incorporated in the National Jukebox by The Library Of Congress, the Giovannoni-Lynch Collection preserved many unique artists, from Sousa's Band, trombonist Arthur Pryor, and banjoist Vess L. Ossman to operatic singers Rosalia Chalia and Emilio De Gogorza or stage actors Burt Shepard and Edward M. Favor. The rarest recordings include pioneering African-American musicians, like George W. Johnson, the Dinwiddie Colored Quartet, and musical comedians Bert Williams and George Walker; equally uncommon (albeit on a directly opposite end of Americana history) are controversial "black face" performers, like Silas Leachman or Billy Golden, who centered their stage acts around grotesque and racist parody of black ragtime musicians. Among other notable highlights in Giovannoni's collection is the world's most comprehensive selection of E. Berliner's Gramophone (1892–1900) label. In March 2008, Giovannoni spearheaded the discovery, identification, and proper digitization of the earliest-known human voice recordings, made by Édouard-Léon Scott De Martinville in Paris between 1854 and 1861 (inducted into the LOC's National Recording Registry in 2011 and UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2015). David also contributed to several major online databases, including the UCSB's Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR) and its free library of label catalogs, such as Keen-O-Phone Record and Rex Talking Machine Corporation complete 1912-1918 discographies.