WILLIAMSBURG -- As a child, Wilbert Davis had a passion for collecting old things such as colored glass bottles and other items he found in the woods and in abandoned houses around his home.
He continued that passion for collecting antiques in later life, visiting thrift stores, flea markets and antiques malls to find treasures that struck his fancy.
Now the nation's premier historical institution is interested in some of the things Davis has collected.
"I've always been interested in these kinds of things . . . because they're old," Davis said during an interview last week at his James City County home.
Sitting by the front door is the object of the Smithsonian Institution's interest -- an early 20th-century Thomas Edison wind-up phonograph. It's a Victrola record player that looks like a small chest of drawers on four carved legs with a hinged top and two cabinets.
Davis bought it for about $600 in a Norfolk antiques store "because it caught my eye."
Lift up the top, wind the lever and the machine still plays the quarter-inch-thick records Davis has collected. The Smithsonian has an interest in one of those records, too, but more information is needed to determine if the items have a place in the collection at the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which will be built on the National Mall next to the Washington Monument, museum staff said.
"At this point, we are very interested in what Mr. Davis has collected," said Michele Gates Moresi, curator of collections. "We are planning a very large exhibition on music, which would include both instruments and recordings. Now we have to go through the review and consideration process . . . have someone who is more of an expert in these things to look at the items."
One vaudeville recording, titled "A Scene on the Levee," jars the 21st-century listener. As it plays, the listener bears witness to two periods of U.S. history when oppression of blacks was rampant -- slavery and the early 1900s.
In the recording, a group of men portraying black slaves in the 19th-century South are gambling in a field. Abruptly, a slave master scolds the men, telling them to stop playing and "roll that cotton."
The slaves immediately comply, begin to work and break into song.
"Roll that cotton. Roll that cotton. Roll that cotton, roll," they sing.
The material, obviously offensive today, doesn't bother Davis, who says it's a part of black history.
"Those are slaves in the field, but they're played by white people in blackface," he said. "They used to do that a lot on TV, and they would travel around and put on shows wearing black face paint. It's interesting."
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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