[78-L] Bessie Smith Album

[Royal Pemberton]

Based on what I'd read in Tyrone's listings, some of the sides were recorded
prior to when Columbia records sported those deep, coarse-pitch runout
grooves.  And some of the sides were pre-electric; IIRC a couple of them
dated to 14 January 1925.  And all of the originals ended in a concentric
groove, not the eccentric groove by then in use by all known US labels, so
it's likely the dubbings were made so as to give all the sides these more
modern features.

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 4:47 PM, Michael Biel <mbiel at mbiel.com> wrote:

> We had a discussion about the size issue a few months ago and I meant to
> bring it up to you had discussed this in your book Jazz By Mail.  In the
> 20s some Columbia records WERE 9 7/8-inches depending on the presses
> used.  I also measured the outer groove diameter on a bunch of Columbia
> and other 78s that were in my daughter's apartment at the time (so it is
> not an exhaustive study) and I noted that the majority of these random
> Columbia records of the 20s did not have grooving diameters that
> exceeded those of labels that were always 9 7/8-inch pressings.  Some
> Columbias were even smaller.  A few did have grooving areas that were
> too large, but most were small enough to easily fit into 9 7/8-inch
> pressings with the proper lead-in area and a lead-in groove added.
> While I don't doubt that this is what the young George Avakian was told
> at the time, and I don't doubt what he told you, the determination for
> the situation with this specific set would be to check original
> pressings of these specific sides that were used in this set and measure
> the groove areas of the original pressings.   I bet most of them would
> fit, and I bet you might even find some original pressings that are 9
> 7/8.  ARC might have wanted to maintain consistency and not have a
> mixture of dubs and original masters, so if even one of the masters was
> too large--or missing--they might have decided to dub them all.  For all
> we know this diameter story might have been a cover-up for missing
> masters.  The truth will come out only if we measure the originals --
> not necessarily the diameter of the pressing, but the diameter of the
> outer groove.
>
> Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com
>
>
>