[78-L] How to Play Baseball

[Michael Biel]

From: Rodger Holtin <rjh334578 at yahoo.com>
> Saw my first story on spring training today, which reminds me...
> Everything I know about baseball I learned from the 2-disc set of How
> to Play Baseball by Joe E. Brown on a pinkish Victor label 45-5804 and 45-5805. 

The label color is officially "Rose".

> These are 12" RCA Victor labels, automatic-coupled (1/4 and 2/3) with
> the words "Non-Breakable" just above the center hole, pressed in some
> sort of plastic, heavier than V-Discs.

It is vinylite, but a heavier pressing weight and thickness.  The DJ
records that Victor pressed in vinyl in the late 40s-early 50s were
thinner than these kids recordes, and eventually were VERY thin
razor-edged pressings.  The kids records only got margainly thinner,
mainly in the mid-50s when the label colors switched to blue and then
yellow.  

> They are from album Y-351, although I don't have the album.  Can somebody send me a picture of the album?  

I just saw a B&W picture of the cover during my anti-Steinweiss research
yesterday but didn't take a photo of it.  Hopefully someone has it and
can get you a color scan.  Glad to know it is a 12-inch set, I don't
think I noticed in the picture, but it might have been with other albums
which would have given me a clue
 
> This set raises a number of questions, and much as I hesitate to ask more
> than one at a time, here they are.  When might these have been recorded? 
> Brown goes into his Elmer the Great character a number of times, so those
> movies were still in fresh public memory.  
 
These albums are among the highest numbers in this series in the 1948
catalog which came out at the end of 1947. During my research I was
surprised to see certain children's sets in 1945 ads, so these might be
earlier than 1947, but when I have a chance to get back to that
particular journal I can find out for sure.   

> They look like wartime records and looks like the Dumbo labels.
> I have the Dumbo album Y-350, which is a TEN inch set from the
> soundtrack of Disney's Dumbo, records numbered also in the
> 45- series, 45-5141, 45-5142 and 45-5143. 

That is a reissue.  The original black label shellac set is P-101 and
the original manual sequence records were 27660-62. So despite the
proximity of the two Y-series album numbers, the Dumbo set has a much
earlier vintage.

> I am amazed that Baseball is a 12" and Dumbo is 10" in the same series. 
> Is this a unique situation, to have differeent sized discs in the same
> numbering series?

No they are actually not in the same series but you need the catalog to
know this.  The 10-inch series is 45-5000 and up, the 12-inch series is
45-5800 and up.
 
Mike BIel  mbiel at mbiel.com