Ain’t I Worth A Dime

Occasionally, you will still find a seller on eBay who will play you records over the phone. Often it is someone with a patchy internet connection, ­possibly dial-up, who simply can’t be bothered to learn the science of Sendspace or digitize thirty seconds of a forty-year-old soul single, and so their phone number is right there in the listing, and you can call and they will play you the record over the phone. It’s very hard to hear the difference between VG and VG-plus, and crushing your ear against the receiver only worsens matters. I’ve experienced many records this way first, only to rediscover them in fuller resplendence weeks later and lament the ostentatious guitar solo or ill-advised flute that went unnoticed the first time around because the other person hadn’t held the phone close enough to the speaker. There’s something very tender about this kind of thing: two strangers silent on opposite ends of a wire, sharing a song, possibly one about love or betrayal. Over the phone, every soul singer sounds more tortured, every poorly recorded ’80s rap record that much more desperate an exit strategy. Because, pin-drop or no, the telephone was not designed for fidelity. Its purpose was to allow us to throw our voices across great distances—to communicate with each other. Fidelity was but a luxury.

Early on, the effects could be otherworldly. In his wondrous 1910 book The History of the Telephone, Herbert Newton Casson described the “­MYSTERIOUS NOISES” that accompanied turn-of-the-nineteenth-century telephone calls. These noises were attributed to the fact that the Earth (“which is really a big magnet”) drew all manner of strange and uncouth sounds to the telephone wire. Early calls were vexed by “noises! Such a jangle of meaningless noises had never before been heard by human ears. There were spluttering and bubbling, jerking and rasping, whistling and screaming. There were the rustling of leaves, the croaking of frogs, the hissing of steam, and the ­flapping of birds’ wings. There were clicks from telephone wires, scraps of talk from other telephones, and curious little squeals that were ­unlike any known sound.”

The service improved; we grew accustomed to the occasional kink; one day, cell-phone latency will join this list of old-world problems. But there are moments when our calls are interrupted, either by Casson’s “MYSTERIOUS NOISES,” or by a dropped connection, and we are reminded of the vast machinery that enables our conversations. We are reminded that our connections—figurative and literal—are not as secure as we first hoped.

Perhaps this is why the telephone has long been such a wonderful plot device for song. A rival for our ears, the phone draws attention to...