[78-L] RCA Victor Double Feature series -- 46-xxxx

[J. E. Knox]

Greetings from FixitLand!

agp wrote:

> Continuing RCA Victor questions, over at Glenn Longwell's site he has
> an RCA Victor disk in a series called 'Double Feature' -- catalogue
> 46-0002. The A side looks to be Al Goodman with two tracks --The Girl
> that I Marry and  Who Do You Love I Hope.
>
> I'm curious about this series and don't see any listing for it at  
> Steve's site.
>
> I did some looking in Billboard back issues and the only mention I
> saw of a Double Feature series was on in 1948/1949 on Universal
> Records. They used a technique they called 'Quality Control' (an odd
> name) to jam 5 minutes a side, with a pitch of 132 grooves per inch
> over the standard 96 (I think). It was two song, and gap or 5 seconds.
>
> Supposedly the big deal was acceptance by jukeboxes requiring a
> retrofit thingie (electric eye!) to get you the track you wanted and
> ONLY that track. The benefit to jukeboxers was you could double the
> songs in the box and in theory increase the collection of nickles. In
> practice this probably didn't work as give the constraints of time
> and being able to only to listen to one song at a time!
>
> In any event, I could find any info on RCA's Double Feature series.
> Any one know about it

RCA Victor's "Double Feature" series (45-0xxx on 10-inch, 46-0xxx on  
12-inch) originally "doubled" the featured artists (rather than  
offering extended playing time or anything like that). For example,  
the common 45-0002 combined Tommy Dorsey and Duke Ellington; side A  
was "The Minor Goes Muggin', Duke Ellington featured with Tommy  
Dorsey and his Orchestra, while side B was "Tonight I Shall Sleep",  
Tommy Dorsey featured with Duke Ellington and his Famous Orchestra.  
Series started at 45-0000 (which I have, but don't recall here at  
work), and ran only a couple years or so. Some of them were issued in  
albums, either in the P-xxx popular series or in a K-xx series of  
"original cast" albums. I checked Ty's site for a listing but it  
appears they aren't in the Abrams Files. Now that I think of it,  
45-0000 is a Victor, rather than RCA Victor, as are the first eight  
or 10 or so, meaning the series started late in 1945. I haven't  
looked at those records in some time.

The 45-xxxx series was partitioned a few years later, and the 45-5xxx  
series was assigned to children's records. There are Spike Jones  
items in that series.

Here's a link to a 1948 Billboard RCA Victor ad listing a few of the  
45-00xx Double Feature records:

http://tinyurl.com/6hdl3hk

Take care,


J. E. Knox "The Victor Freak"