[78-L] Unusually long 78RPM sides

[Michael Biel]

From: Bryan Wright <bryan at claxtonola.com>
> Over the past few years as I've been indexing my collection, I've made 
> notes of playing times (when pitched correctly). Ignoring those budget 
> label multi-track 78s of the 1950s and ignoring special promotional 
> records that might have especially short sides, here are some of the 
> extremes I've come across for 10-inch 78s. Of course, this is out of a 
> relatively small sampling of approximately 2,000 78s I've catalogued 
> so far:

Shortest: Mercury 70318 (Sammy Spear: "Watermelon") - 1:19
Longest (lateral fine-grooved "long play" of the early 1930s): Velvet 
Tone 10506 (Ben Selvin: "Snuggled On Your Shoulder") - 5:07
Longest (lateral 1920s era standard groove): Victor 19874 (Victor 
Salon Trio: "Mother Machree") - 3:49      FWIW, Bryan W.

>> A pair of electioneering speeches by Ramsay MacDonald in 1929
>> [on a 10-inch English Columbia]
>> runs 4:50 and 4:56 and they didn't have to shrink the labels. dl

American Columbia occasionally let an ethnic record run long rather than
issue it on a 12-incher.  I have some Jewish records with one side with
a tiny label, with grooving all the way up to it.  I've never timed
them, though.

The final side of the MacLeish broadcast "Air Raid" on Columbia
Masterworks runs real short -- they eliminated the closing announcement
which would have filled it -- and it is a 12-inch single-sided disc, no
less.

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com