[78-L] acoustic recording

[Royal Pemberton]

I'd thought 'A certain smile' by Johnny Mathis was the last US Columbia 78
(41193), but I can't remember where I read that.  So what were the final US
and Canadian Columbia 78s?

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 3:38 PM, David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca>wrote:

> Indeed, the dates vary. Columbia actually discontinued 78s in the US in
> 1957,
> as did a few other labels (a very late RCA Elvis from '59 was mentioned
> here a
> few weeks ago) but Canadian labels kept 78s into 1959 and '60 in some
> cases.
> And the speed stayed in use for production libraries till 1968 because of
> superior fidelity and ease of cuing in studios.
>
> dl
>
> Royal Pemberton wrote:
> > Certainly RCA Victor and Columbia released their last US 78s in 1958, but
> > didn't Atlantic/Atco release their last ones in February 1960?  And what
> > about Chess and their labels?  (I have the Argo release of Rod Bernard's
> > 'This should go on forever' on 78 from 1959.)
> >
> > On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 3:28 PM, David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca
> >wrote:
> >
> >> 78s didn't disappear till 1958, stereo LPs didn't disappear in 1982 (in
> >> fact
> >> they're still being manufactured).
> >>
> >> dl
> >>
> >> Royal Pemberton wrote:
> >>> And if you include the Phonautograph in the chronology (c.1857) that
> >> makes
> >>> acoustic recording the only method for 69 years.
> >>>
> >>> I remember seeing a photo in THE FABULOUS PHONOGRAPH showing three
> horns
> >> in
> >>> use on a  Victor recording, of a quartet....three of the singers on one
> >>> horn, the lead singer on a second horn, the musicians playing to the
> >> third
> >>> one.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 9:35 AM, DAVID BURNHAM <burnhamd at rogers.com>
> >> wrote:
> >>>> Michael Biel wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Caruso's daughter Gloria was three years old when Caruso died.
>  Masters
> >>>> could not be played back without ruining them, so when they played
> back
> >>>> a wax master it was either a test that they weren't planning on using
> >>>> anyway, or a duplicate master on a parallel machine.
> >>>>
> >>>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> >>>>
> >>>> Were they able to record two discs at once in the acoustic era?
> >>  Certainly,
> >>>> if a single horn is feeding two recorders, such an arrangement would
> cut
> >> the
> >>>> available power to each recording head in half.  I think I would opt
> for
> >>>> your first thought - that it was a test recording.  If the blank waxes
> >> were
> >>>> larger than the final record, they could use the area beyond the
> useful
> >>>> diameter for the test.
> >>>>
> >>>> So far, the acoustic era has been the longest era in recording
> history.
> >>>> Although comercial recording didn't get under way at the beginning,
> from
> >>>> 1877 to 1925 acoustic recording was the only recording - 48 years.
> >>>> Electrical 78s had their era for 23 years from 1925 to 1948.  Mono LPs
> >> from
> >>>> 1948 to 1957, a mere 9 years, stereo LPs from 1957 to 1982, 25 years
> and
> >> the
> >>>> CD from 1982 to the present - 28 years and counting.
> >>>>
> >>>> I'm curious to know if they ever tried multi-horning - using one horn
> >> for
> >>>> the voice and a second for the piano or orchestra or whatever.  They
> >>>> certainly had long enough to try this kind of inovation, they were
> aware
> >> of
> >>>> the complications of trying to get all of the musicians around a
> single
> >>>> horn.  Flexible tubing should enable the horns to be moved around and
> >>  the
> >>>> recording engineer could even have chokes, similar to those used to
> >> control
> >>>> the volume of an acoustic gramophone, to control the recording volume
> >> from
> >>>> each horn.  I'm sure that likely they didn't but it's an interesting
> >>>> thought.
> >>>>
> >>>> db
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