See this article [NYTimes] for information on early 'pop' music.

Much is available from UCSB.

FOR a couple of months now my iPod has been stuck on Stella Mayhew's "I'm Looking for Something to Eat." It's a lurching little waltz-time pop tune, drawled over brass-band accompaniment. The lyric is hilarious, the lament of a gal on a diet who can't stop eating, and it climaxes with a glutton's soul cry: "I want some radishes and olives, speckled trout and cantaloupe and cauliflower/ Some mutton broth and deviled crabs and clams and Irish stew." I can't get it out of my head ? so far, it's my favorite record of 2006.

As it happens, it's also my favorite record of 1909. It is an Edison Phonograph Company wax cylinder, recorded 97 years ago by Mayhew, a vaudeville star who liked to poke fun at her considerable girth. In certain ways, the song is up to date: the satire on dieting is plenty relevant in the early 21st century, and Mayhew's slurred talk-singing is a bracingly modern sound. But the noisy, weather-beaten recording is unmistakably a product of the acoustic era ? the period from about 1890 to the mid-1920's, before the advent of electric recording ? when musicians cut records while crammed cheek-by-jowl-by-trombone around phonograph horns in rackety little studios...

Interesting article. I recently attended the University of Maryland in College Park. The music library has the largest collection of piano rolls. They have a number fo them digitized (if not all) and two very fine player pianos. The curator cued up Rachmaninov playing the "Flight of the Bumblebee" for us one day. It was creepy; it's like the ghost of the performer is in the room playing the work.

http://www.lib.umd.edu/PAL/IPAM/IPAMcollection.html