[78-L] re-issues

[David Lennick]

Steven C. Barr wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Taylor Bowie" <bowiebks at isomedia.com>
>> I think there is some crappy cut 10" version of the 12" Berigan "I Can't 
>> Get
>> Started"  which to me is even more stoopid than a shortened  "Sing, Sing,
>> Sing."  Again,  must have been somebody at Victor who thought such a 
>> version
>> would sell...but to whom?
>>
> To folks (a LOT of them!) who owned 10" record players...or radio-
> phonographs which usually accepted 10" 78's (in a FEW cases, unless
> told otherwise?!). The market for 12" 78's peaked around 1916-18,
> and virtually evaporated in the depression years...and the RCA
> "plug-in record players" were designed around 10" 78's!
> 
> While a tighter groove pitch might have made it possible to issue 12"
> originals on 10" records...this solution seems to have never occured
> (or been ignored) to the CMFIC's of RCA/CBS (the ONLY record
> companies of that era?!)...so they issued carefully-shortened versions
> of these originally-12" records?!
> 
> ...stevenc 

"I Can't Get Started" WAS dubbed almost complete onto a ten-inch master for the 
Berigan Memorial Album (I don't know how much was lopped off..I can't think of 
one reason ever to play that disc) but I'm sure the ten-inch dubs were to reach 
  a wider audience and for the juke boxes.  Paul Whiteman's "Sweet Sue" was 
dubbed intact onto a ten-inch master and pressed in later editions of the 
Columbia Bix album, George Avakian's note about "dropping the florid intro" 
notwithstanding.

Don't know about those Victor attachments not accepting twelve-inch 
records..the 1936 catalog clearly says that it will "actually reproduce the 
music from either ten or twelve inch records through the amplifier and speaker 
of your radio with all the tone and quality of which the radio is capable".

dl