Davenport’s Historic Fredlo Studio Shows its Roots Through an Historic Undocumented Jazz Recording

In May 2023, Special Collections staff applied and were awarded the State Historical Society of Iowa’s Historical Resource Development Program (HRDP) Grant. With this grant, we strove to digitize and make the Fredlo Recording Studios Collection accessible. The project was completed in 2025. Now, we are ready to share this collection of Quad Cities music history through stories about individuals, groups/bands, ensembles, and other unique contributions.

We are thrilled to partner with Neal Smith to present these stories found within the Fredlo Recording Studios Collection.

The Fredlo Recording Studios Collection at the Richardson-Sloane Special Collections Center has recently acquired a set of previously undocumented jazz recordings made at Inter-City Recording Service in Moline on March 15, 1948. Inter-City Recording Service, a direct predecessor to Davenport’s storied Fredlo recording studio, operated from its location at 1715 15^th Avenue, Moline, between March 1947 and September 1949. Run by recording engineer and former dance band leader Fred Mauck, the company engaged primarily in the production of acetate recordings for personal and commercial broadcast use, with the business listed as a “transcription recording service” in the 1949 Moline city directory.s post.

The set of records in the collection consists of two aluminum-base acetate discs: a single-sided 10” and a 12” with a song on each side. Both records spin at 78 r.p.m., the standard playback speed of the era. Before tape recorders were made available and affordable to the average consumer, acetate discs could be created, one at a time and on the spot, using cutting lathes which were common in smaller studios like Inter-City. The ephemeral nature and limited durability of these recordings meant that they were best suited for use in radio, as demo recordings, or as personal audio keepsakes. Such recordings were almost always made without fanfare and exist in remarkably limited quantities.