Marsh Laboratories

(Founded 1922) Recording studio founded by pioneering electrical engineer Orlando R. Marsh (1881 – 1938). In early 1920s Chicago, Illinois Marsh pioneered electrical recording of phonograph discs with microphones when acoustic recording with horns was commonplace. Marsh Laboratories, Inc., no longer exists but the building still stands and is part of DePaul University. Marsh's best known recordings were duets by King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton on the Autograph Records (2) 78 rpm phonograph disc label. His best selling Autograph records were those of Jesse Crawford in 1924 playing the Wurlitzer pipe organ in the Auditorium Theatre, Chicago using his then new electrical disc recording system. This was before the Victor Talking Machine Co. and Columbia Records started to use the Western Electric licensed method of electrically recording records using microphones in 1925.