[78-L] Introduction (a bit long)

[Michael Biel]

From: David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca>
> White label pressings can be test pressings and they can be
> "under the counter" (party) records. What's on the one you have? 

Everything all of us have wanted to know about Party Records has been
gathered together by a Texan, David Diehl, on The Blue Pages at
hensteeth.com  Your record is probably listed there.

> Incidentally, they can also be commercial pressings supplied in
> small quantities where the customer was to provide paste-over
> labels which have since fallen off..

Also individually cut lacquer-coated discs often either had their glued
labels fall off or the recorder never bothered to put a label on in the
first place.

> these were pressed with plain white labels since presumably the
> paste-overs wouldn't adhere to blank shellac.

The main reason is that the real labels weren't ready yet, but the
customer wanted the records NOW!

> Edison Diamond Discs often turn up minus their labels.

These originally had embossed labels from 1912 thru the early 20s when
they finally figured out how to have a paper label that would still look
good after the super-long and hot pressing that these discs required. 
They allowed the blank paper label to become brown with the heat and
then glued the real labels on.  Again, the problem is that the glue has
often dried out over the years.  Bill Bryant used to supply blank Edison
format labels for us to type on and glue on our label-less records. 
There now is a book that reprinted every Diamond Disc label that we can
use for photocopying proper looking labels.

> Some days it appears there ARE no limits to the topics, but before
> long cooler heads prevail (usually after hot tempered requests to
> end certain rants or threats by long-time members to depart).

You joined just in time to come into the MJ rant, but much of the
negative part of it comes from those who don't like that type of
"modern" music and/or are upset that the musical stars they DO like had
not gotten (or probably will not get) this kind of treatment at their
deaths.  Some of those who are upset about this topic have not always
understood the extrapolation into other performers or genre of music
that has been implied but not stated in those messages.  

It would be "on-topic" if we could determine if there were any 78s
issued of MJ or if he had been a performer in the "78 era".  Records do
not have to actually be 78 rpm to qualify discussion here, so we can
discuss Electrical Transcriptions and RCA Program Transcriptions that
both run at 33 because they were from the 78 era.  Likewise early Lps
and 45s -- as far as they relate to 78s -- can be discussed.  Cylinders
also.     

> You used to be able to find 3-speed record players or turntables
> equipped with turnover cartridges for about ten bucks in any second
> hand store but not too often these days. Yard sales are still a good
> bet, and they can still be found on eBay..look for Califones, which
> were school machines and which are still all over the place.  dl

And there are "nostalgia" machines being sold all over the place, many
of which have 78 speed but none of which come with a 78 stylus.  The
same is often true with finding old players, all too often a new 78
stylus is necessary, and these now cost at least $12 on the web.  That's
often more than we pay for the machines!  I just got my daughter a
Caliphone for $5 but it doesn't have a 78 point.  (Steve B -- no need to
post about your quest here.)

That 12-inch Bing/Duke record was in the catalog a loooooonnnngggg time,
and shows up often, most commonly as a red label Columbia, but still
using the original matrices.  It was originally a Brunswick.  Look for
the Show Boat album or individual discs from it, which also started life
as 12-inch Brunswicks but ended up as red label Columbias in set C-55.  

Central Texas, eh?  There are a lot of important collectors in that
area, as well as Kurt Nauck, one of the most important 78 auction
dealers.  He just told us that the unsold list is up on his site.  If
you are close to Spring you might want to go there.  

The two boxes you got sound interesting.  You seem to have gotten a good
start. Maybe the Texas people can steer you to some good record shows. 
I had a chance to go to the annual sale in Austin a few years ago when
it happened the same weekend that ARSC ended.  There were some 78s there
but not like the Jazz Bash we had in New Jersey last week.  

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com  


Bart wrote:
> I joined the mailing list about 2 weeks ago and I thought I'd introduce
> myself briefly. I'm surprised at how active a list it is. 
> 
> I'm too young to have memories of the 78rpm era except for its dying echo.
> I was born after, but not long after, it ended. As a child, when I had my
> first record player, I had some 78's to play with; mostly classical music, 
> albums missing a broken disc, that sort of thing, which the grown-ups 
> considered too old, obsolete, or incomplete to worry that a kid might break 
> them. And I broke a few, but far less than you might imagine. It was an 
> early training in regarding records as precious and fragile that was only 
> strengthened in the Hi-Fi days of the seventies. I don't have sentimental 
> memories of swing and big bands - my memories are of Led Zeppelin, CS&N, and
> Pink Floyd and the like. 
> 
> I did, as a child, have some non-classical 78's. I remember a few, like 
> Song of India, and the St. Louis Blues on a twelve-inch by Duke Ellington 
> with vocals by Bing Crosby, and an album set with a missing broken disc of
> songs by Burl Ives. Also had the Texas A&I (now defunct university) Fight 
> Song and Alma Mater on a 10 inch locally produced disk. That's still around.
> I remember the photos of Arthur Fiedler as a young man with dark hair on 
> classical recordings of the Boston Pops, and also Sir Thomas Beecham, Bart.. 
> 
> Really liked that St. Louis Blues. And Creole Love Call which I also
> had by Duke Ellington. 
> 
> It was the Ellington sides that reignited my interest in older music. 
> Although there was already a sort of inevitability about it. I lost 
> interest in rock-n-roll in the succession of punk to new wave to rap and 
> hip-hop. In those years I was going backwards. I had always been interested
> in the music of the late sixties though my generation's music was rightly
> the music of the seventies. As pop went places I didn't want to go I went 
> to the music of the early sixties and fifties; at least the musics that fed
> the rock-n-roll stream: blues and doo-wop and rock-a-billy and such. 
> 
> In it's early days I largely missed the digital/mp3 revolution. It would be
> better to say I came to the party very late. For reasons relating to the 
> need for a specific, very expensive program in my work, I had to keep running
> a Windows 3.x machine longer than most anyone else. Mp3's were introduced 
> after Win 3 and I never found in those days MP3 player software written for 
> Win 3. Eventually got a more modern machine for fun and a few years ago 
> wondered idly, "There's supposed to be a lot of music on the Internet, I 
> wonder if I could find that old Duke Ellington tune."
> 
> What I found were sites like The Internet Archive, The Cylinder Digitization 
> Project, and The Virtual Gramophone. From that I developed a big interest in
> old music, but what appealed to me most was the music of the 'teens, the first
> decade, and the nineteen-twenties. Not only was this great music, it was 
> completely unheard and unknown - and because of the equipment needed to play
> some of it – the cylinders - almost unknowable before the digital
> revolution. 
> (Sometime in the late thirties, certainly after the war I largely lose
> interest.
> That's stuff I've had heard before in movies, on TV, radio, LPs etc. It
> wasn't
> the boundless unknown of the earlier era.)
> 
> I recorded my (legally acquired!) sound files onto CD's and took them to
> work, 
> played them at home, just surrounded myself with my newly discovered
> favorite old
> music. Then people would say, "You like that old stuff? I've got some old
> records
> you can have if you want them." And I always do want them. So I've
> acquired a 
> small collection (around 200) disks. I don't expect they are rare, or
> valuable, 
> or even especially interesting except for a tiny handful. I'm not
> interested in 
> what they are worth because I don't intend to sell them - I'm a confirmed
> pack-rat.
> But I'm full of questions about them. 
> 
> I don't have proper a set-up to play them now, though I can play them on 
> an old turntable at 33 or 45 and record them on the computer, then speed up 
> the recording digitally. I don't have a proper stylus, and probably don't
> have 
> enough weight on the tone arm. I would need to acquire equipment to play them
> in a casual fashion, but like (almost) all of us budget is limited.
> Nevertheless
> I have gotten good transcriptions from some of the latest discs. (Were the 
> grooves smaller at the end of 78 production?)
> 
> The bulk of my collection came in two boxes from two individuals. One was
> mostly hot sides from the late thirties, Cab Calloway, Benny Goodman, Artie 
> Shaw, and other big recognizable names. Most were well-loved, which is a 
> euphemism for very worn. The other box from a different individual showed 
> more refined taste: Paul Robeson, Edith Piaf, Jack Hylton, Noel Coward and 
> Broadway recordings, foreign pressings, durium Hit-of-the-Week records, Paul 
> Whiteman, even a Little Wonder.
> 
> I apologize for the long post. My posts will be shorter in the future. I 
> don't expect to post too often - I'm here more as a student than a teacher, 
> an enthusiast than an expert. But I know there are real experts on this list
> and I have a million questions. I want to know what others recommend and what
> they've used / are using to play their records. I want to see a picture of 
> Rae Eleanor Ball (there doesn't seem to be one anywhere on line). I want to 
> know when Benny Bell recorded "Humoresque in C major". I want to know what 
> became of the Lass brothers, Mark and Boris, after they were arrested and
> charged
> in that fine art forgery scandal. I want to know the story behind a disc
> I have
> that has a basically blank label with no record company name or logo, nor 
> performers' names, just a song title and a number, and a different performer 
> on each side. Mostly, I want to know when certain records were recorded or 
> released, some sense of from when they are dated - for records where that 
> information isn't readily available in on-line discographies. 
> 
> I understand this list is mainly devoted to record collectors, but I don't 
> understand yet the limits of that discussion and what is off-topic. Has there
> been much discussion of old songs independent of the recordings of the song
> (who 
> wrote it, stories about lyricist, composer, the history of the song itself)? 
> What about discussion of the early cylinders and records that can be heard
> from 
> university and government archives as opposed to just the discs I happen to
> have 
> in my living room?
> 
> Some of that will probably become more apparent as I read more postings. And 
> other questions might have been covered before, but there doesn't seem to
> be an
> obvious way to search the archive of the group's past postings.
> 
> Enough for now. Hello to all from central Texas and I hope to learn more from
> the busy traffic on this board.
> 
> How do you read them all???
> 
> Bart
> 
> 
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