[78-L] Was - Judy Canova Now - Al Jolson Decca

[Michael Biel]

On 3/17/2012 11:41 AM, Mom's Garage wrote:
> Mike, just picked up an Al Jolson Decca 10" EP Microgroove "Featured in the Columbia Technicolor Production"  Where does this fit into the 12" OTR Al Jolson series you just mentioned?  Thanks,  Miss Patti.

The 10-inch LPs were almost all the same as the 78 albums.  There were 
two movie albums, Jolson Story and Jolson Sings Again, and you don't 
give any indication of which one you have.  When the 10-inch LPs were 
deletd in the mid-50s, Milt Gabler compuled all the recordings Jolson 
had recorded for Decca into a series of 5 12-inch LPs Dl 9034 thru 37 
with a gold stripe around the edges and an umbrella series title The 
Jolson Story.  The songs on the old albums were intermixed on these new 
albums (along with a few singles which hadn't been put on an album), so 
the songs on your album were all over these five.

  Since this was everything they had of Jolson, they next went on to the 
master tapes of the Kraft Music Hall broadcasts which Jolson had 
reportedly put in a vault for his adopted son's legacy.  DL 9050 was the 
first of these, and the format of the cover matched the other five, but 
there was a note that these were from the Kraft broadcasts.  Three of 
the final four used color paintings on the cover, DL 9063, DL 9070,  DL 
9074 and DL 9095.  None of the broadcast LPs were complete broadcast or 
even extended sections.  They did have some of Jolson's intros to the 
songs and the final album had routines with Oscar Levant.  The one that 
was titles Al Jolson Overseas wasn't, despite the two pictures of Al in 
Korea.  They were domestic Kraft broadcasts.  The sound quality is 
magnificant because these were the original 30 Inches Per Second 
full-track tapes recorded by Jack Mullen on his Ampex 200's.   The Decca 
masters were mainly from lacquer safeties, many of them Western Electric 
Wide Range Vertical.  I'm not sure if we've gotten an aacounting of when 
they went vertical and when they went to tape.

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com