[78-L] Why Do You Care About 78's?

Thu Mar 5 19:53:57 PST 2020

Why do you care about 78s?

[also relates to: Re: [78-L] Are Long Messages OK Here? (within reason)]

I came home one afternoon from the fifth grade in January 1961 and
discovered little stacks of record albums all over the living room, the
couch, the coffee table, the end tables, the dining room table and even a
few on the floor. These were a mix, mostly 1920s Victor albums and dime
store albums from the 40s. No sets with pictures. Mom was in the kitchen and
I yelled and said "What are all these photo albums doing laying all over the
living room?" She came back dish towel in hand to the living room and said
"These are record albums, Rodge."  

"Where did they come from?"   

"Mrs. Carter (the neighbor across the street) is the executor of her maiden
aunts estate and they got rid of everything else except these records and
she didn't know what to do with them. We decided that we would put them in
the oven warm them up and scallop the edges spray paint them and make candy
dishes out of them and sell them at craft fairs. But I got to looking
through some of them and remembered that our music teacher used to play some
of these for us when I was a kid in school [1930s] and so I said that I
wanted to take them home and listen to some of them before we turn them into
crafts. And she was OK with that so I came home, got your sled and hauled
them across the highway." 

Did I mention it was an icy, cold, snowy day in rural New York State near
Rochester?

The family entertainment center at the time was a 1950 Admiral radio - phono
- TV combo unit. The turntable played 7 inch, 10 inch, 12 inch, and the
speed selector read 45-STD-33. (It came to live at our house for Mom's
benefit a few weeks before I did and I learned to master the phonograph
mechanism by the time I was three, so says my mother. Literally, I cut my
teeth on the cabinet door.)  So I tossed my books on the stairway and opened
up the first album and the first record I pulled out had only one side!  It
was a 10 inch red seal Victrola record of John McCormick singing Beneath the
Moon of Lombardy.   So I carried it over to the Admiral and asked mom what
speed it played at and she said "that would be the standard speed, son."
Sure enough, John McCormick played perfectly and I was intrigued. The next
two records I pulled out were the Teddy Bear Blues by the Virginians on
Victor 18992 and Flamin' Mamie by the Coon-Sanders nighthawks on Victor
19922. I was hooked. 

Dad worked for Eastman Kodak Company as a manager in the printing
department. He was working lots of overtime including a good many double
shifts in the early 1960s. Some 20 years later at his funeral I learned from
his coworkers that the reason for all of that was because of their
government security clearances, they had the government contract for all (or
most) of the printing of blueprints and documents related to putting a man
on the moon, or at least in space.  That's why dad worked all those hours
for three or four years, the day these records came home being one of them. 

So, little brother and I frequently got packed off to bed long before dad
came home. But this night I was awakened in what seemed like the middle of
the night by my dad's uproarious laughter. I crept down to the top of the
stairs to be sure everything was all right. I hadn't seen or heard him laugh
very much at that point in his life, for good reason, it turned out, but
this night he was clearly having an excellent evening enjoying himself and
he laughed hard enough to wake up us kids. 

The next morning at breakfast I asked Mom what Dad was laughing so hard
about she said "Well, he got to looking through some of those old records
and he pulled out two of them that he laughed at so hard. Wow, I said. What
were they? She said they were records by Harry Lauder. I said I have to go
look through them after school.  She said "they will be easy to spot because
I think they're the only ones with purple labels. Dad had remembered
listening to Harry Lauder on the radio in the 30s when he was a kid and
those records brought back all those pleasant memories. My first order of
business when I got home from school that afternoon was to find the Harry
Lauder records. And I did. Three of them ! And I have continued to find them
everywhere I can ever since.  My books stayed on the stairs for the next 10
years while I played records.

That initial exposure to a collection of about 110 records that spanned the
years from Teddy Roosevelt to Harry Truman, the styles from Enrico Caruso to
Eddie Arnold, Iturbi to Ink Spots gave me a lifelong appreciation for almost
every type of American or western music from Bach to boogie. I had to learn
the Beatles later in life. 

I joined the school band so that I could learn to play the trombone like
Tommy Dorsey. They did not need any more trombone players but the band
director wisely pointed me to the bass fiddle, which became my ticket to
play in everything from the string Quartet to the orchestra to the dance
band, pit orchestra for several musicals at our school and neighboring
districts, and later in college, some bluegrass groups, I even got to make a
record with the cheerleaders! Mmmm. Those were the days! (Murphy's law: I
never got to see or hear the record.)  Steve Brown of Goldkette & Whiteman
fame became my hero. 

When I got to college and the college radio station, I took a bunch of those
records with me albeit on cassette tape, and spun them into a radio program,
which turned out to be unexpectedly quite popular. I graduated, married my
college sweetheart, lived a normal life where I worked in sales and helped
her raise the five swell kids. 

Record collecting turned out to be an STD at my house. My wife was a major
fan of the Statler Brothers since grade school, and she decided that she
could write their discography like the ones on my shelf (Rust, et al.), and
she did. The Statler Brothers discography was published by Greenwood Press
back in 1997 and she gave a presentation at ARSC in Nashville that year.
ARSC gave her an honorable mention as she broke new ground with overdub
session documentation. 

Two of the kids collect records and a third one has a fascination with
machines. 

After I retired from sales I ultimately came back to my alma mater about 20
years ago where I work part time as cafeteria cashier (most fun I've ever
had and got paid for it) and teach an introduction to broadcasting class. I
have also been back on the radio for the last 20 years, playing big band
records every Saturday morning.  Sometimes I toss in a ringer - like Harry
Lauder or the Yeastfoamers. 

So, what is it that I like about 78s? For one thing, as has been mentioned,
there's a lot of stuff still on 78 that has not made it to any kind of
re-issue format, and sometimes the few that were made came out and
disappeared before I ever heard about them, so they are scarcer than the
78s, Harry Lauder being a prime example. Yes there were a few floating
around. One album made by RCA Camden, two albums on the Everest labels and a
few things issued in Europe that I learned about long after they, too, were
out of print. C'est la vie. 

It takes a big budget to buy all of the specialty CDs that have been
produced when you can get them, but it sorta ruins the thrill of the chase
one enjoys looking for 78s. 

And it's not just music. 

Dave (Blue Pages) Diehl, formerly of 78-L, and I grew up together.  He was a
stamp collector and I was a coin collector.  He noticed stuff on the labels
and I noticed stuff in the wax.  Been a great team for 60 years.

And in the process of looking for those elusive 78s of Benny Goodman on blue
wax Columbia, I have run into a lot of other interesting things. And that
brings me to two stories to tell here.

I found some Presto lacquers made by a family in Hooker, Oklahoma in 1938.
There was just enough personal information on them that by 2008 I felt like
with a little help from ancestry.com and my genealogist wife and other
people like that that I might actually be able to find this family.  Sure
enough. In the summer of 2011, Jen Murphy in California gathered her kids
and grandkids and her mother around the dining room table and played them
the CD of mother Geraldine playing the piano and tap dancing in 1938.
Geraldine's daddy, the wheat farmer from Oklahoma who bought the Presto
model D, made his recording debut by reading the instruction booklet. The
newest record in the batch was from 1946 and it ends with he and his wife
reading stories to each other from the newspaper or How to Win Friends and
Influence People, and watching the VU meter to see if it registered the
kisses. Yes. It was a fascinating collection of records.  Priceless.

Within the last few weeks I started tracking down two other people. Radio
station KBOA out of Kennett, Missouri was invited to do a remote from the
Piggly Wiggly store in Senath, MO on a hot day, probably post war I guessed,
to tell the world they now had air conditioning! The store manager staged an
impromptu game show in the store which was broadcast on the radio and a
portion captured on an unmarked 12-inch 78rpm Audiodisc. A lady named Carrie
and a guy named Charlie are identified, her by her age, him by the number of
kids he had. A friend of mine found them on Find A Grave in the Senath
cemetery from which I was able to find birth and death dates for both of
them.  That allowed me to date the record to 1951. I have tracked down their
descendants. The trick now will be to get them to answer my letters. But
this is the 21st-century, the age of spam, passwords and endless privacy
statements and we have created an era of universal paranoid
distrust/mistrust of everyone. It's also the era of the millennials who have
clearly demonstrated their total disrespect for history and their elders. I
doubt I will ever hear anything from them. I'm shipping the record to the
Missouri Historical Society. Their archivist was very excited to hear this
thing.

Does any of this explain why I like 78s?

Rodger Holtin

78-L Member Since MCMXCVIII

For Best Results Use Victor Needles

-----Original Message-----
From: 78-l-bounces at klickitat.78online.com
[mailto:78-l-bounces at klickitat.78online.com] On Behalf Of David Jessup
Sent: Thursday, March 5, 2020 2:48 PM
To: 78-l at klickitat.78online.com
Subject: Re: [78-L] Why Do You Care About 78's?

I seem to share some experiences with other 78-L members as children, so...

Early memories are of hearing children's records (stuff like the 7-inch
yellow-wax Peter Pan issues, along with earlier Children's Record Guild (?)
and the like.

My grandmother was a kindergarten / elementary school teacher (and
grandfather a school district supervisor) so she had these as teaching aids.
Some are still in a box in my office.

Later, like J E Knox and others, I realized the swing band stuff I wanted to
hear originated on 78s, and because many are essentially direct master
recordings, they're the best sound source.

(Love vinyl test pressings & radio station promos!)

Given my published work and continuing research, it's essential I deal with
'em.

Overriding all that... they're fun!

Dave Jessup

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