[78-L] Glass Base 78s

[Michael Biel]

Now that we have had a chance to see and somewhat hear at a distance the
discs under discussion on the postings you made back in December (and
could have told us about in the first message) it is obvious what you
have.  These are excerpts of Orson Welles' "Radio Almanac" programs from
May 24 and June 28, 1944 that were dubbed at 78 for customers or perhaps
one of the performers.  Two were done at Radio Recorders, which as I
mentioned before, did all of the official recording for CBS in Hollywood
because CBS didn't want to be bothered operating their own recording
service like most other networks and stations.  But anybody could
contract with the studio to make recordings and possibly to make copies
of recordings, and the same is the case with Glen Wallachs' Music City,
which is the store he was operating when he went into business with
Johnny Mercer to found Capitol Records.  The picture of the store on the
label is quite interesting.  I've never seen it before.  If that disc is
not glass, it probably is aluminum base, steel base, or fibre base.  It
wouldn't be vinyl (although the Germans were using vinyl for recording
discs during the war, known as Decelith.)

It turns out that many of the programs in this series contained what
later became known as Dixieland Revival performances by Kid Ory and
various other performers.  I haven't checked to see if I already have
this series among the hundred or so Orson Welles programs I have, but
here is a contents listing of the first half of 1944 of programs in this
series that are known to exist and are probably in circulation.

http://www.radiogoldindex.com/cgi-local/p2.cgi?ProgramName=Radio+Almanac

If I don't have them, now that I know about them I am going to get them.

Apparently none of the recordings you have are unique or otherwise
unknown.  

It would help if you (or anyone else) have a question that we be given
complete info about the records instead of leaking a little info here
and a little more there over a whole series of postings.  If you had
asked in the first posting about these discs that you have posted on
YouTube, we would have had the answers immediately.  One of the labels
has a rubber stamp of GLASS, like was discussed.  Another actually says
COPY, so we could have immediately said that these were dubs made for
clients or customers.  They might have been authorized or they might
have been for friends or customers who were told that these studios had
a master of the whole program.  And we could have told you immediately
that the recordings were not unique.  We also would have mentioned that
unlike one of the YouTube descriptions, glass base discs were not an
"experiment".  They were a NECESSITY.  They were not "short-lived" but
were manufactured and used for the entire period of the war, beginning
in early 1941 and lasting thru mid 1945 although some remaining glass
base discs would be used until the studio ran out of them.  

When you can provide the information, please don't make us guess at it. 


And when you post recordings on YouTube, please don't just use the
camera's built-in microphone at a distance.  Make a direct wired
connection to the audio system into the line-in on the camera, or use an
external mic right at the speaker.  If your camera doesn't have a
line-in or mic-in connection (and why in the world someone would buy a
camera that doesn't have at least a microphone input jack is a complete
mystery) bring the speaker to the camera.  Don't have the speakers
across the room from the camera's microphone, bring it close enough to
get decent audio.  It is not that hard to do. 

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com  


-------- Original Message --------
From: 78records at cdbpdx.com
>> Here is a YT link to the badly broken record:
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ni3wCOFfZE
>> CDB 


At 08:49 PM 6/17/2009, you wrote:
>>> I posted these Radio Recorder records on YouTube.  View one of them here:
>    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMQU1L1N4Bk
>>> Here is another YT posting showing a record that came with this 
>>> group, this one recorded on a vinyl(?) MUSIC CITY blank:
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYsCf1r-HJg
>>> Rare or common?   Thanks!  CDB

From: Robert M. Bratcher Jr. <bratcher at pdq.net>
> Those are some interesting records!!!!