[78-L] BACKGROUND ARTIFACTS (WAS Hal Kemp record question)

[JACK DANEY]

> 
> Date: Fri, 17 Apr 2009 09:48:22 -0700
> From: "Taylor Bowie" <bowiebks at isomedia.com>
> Subject: [78-L] Hal Kemp record question
> To: "78-L Mail List" <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
> Message-ID: <D7C27AD75D5045D6832E96AF65A29409 at TaylorPC>
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> 
> OK,  I'm ready to tear down the curtain of silence here.
> 
> One of my fave of the later Hal Kemp Orch records is Victor 26300 of "Let's
> Do It" with a great vocal by The Smoothies.
> 
> I have listened to this record for years,  and at two points in it I swear I
> hear somebody...coughing.  One is during the little intro passage,  and the
> second is right as the reeds start their first passage in the chorus.
> 
> If anyone has this record,  please play it and let me know if I'm hearing
> things or just "hearing things."
> 
> Thanks from
> 
> Taylor


As Dave Lennick pointed out it's not likely you're  "hearing things". Around
1944 I had Miller's Bluebird 78 of the "Anvil Chorus." On side two behind
the softer passages I could  hear an animated conversation going on. It was
plainly audible but too much in the background to make out any details or
discern whether there were one or two persons. The reissues I have are minus
the artifact.  I've come to suspect that it was probably a one-sided
dialogue of someone in the vicinity of the recording lathe talking on the
phone and as the result of some leakage somewhere it wound up on the disc.
In a recording studio, almost anything was possible and Murphy's law was
always at the ready.

Better than that is Harry James' 1941 recording of "The Devil Sat Down &
Cried." On the instrumental interlude between vocals one can (almost)
plainly hear someone way off mike shout, "Aw, go F...yourself!"  I'd never
noticed it until it was brought to my attention by the local small record
shop proprietor in the mid forties. Once having heard it it was impossible
to miss. I asked Helen Forrest (who is on the record) about it when I worked
with her in 1956. She was unaware but said that with that band in those
days, anything could happen. It's on all the reissues I've heard, btw.  Next
case....
JD














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