Theo Wangemann was hired by Edison in 1888 to figure out how to market the new wax cylinder phonograph.
From the New York Times article about the discovery: “In June 1889, Edison sent Wangemann to Europe, initially to ensure that the phonograph at the Paris World’s Fair remained in working order. After Paris, Wangemann toured his native Germany, recording musical artists and often visiting the homes of prominent members of society who were fascinated with the talking machine.”
Now the National Park Service has released all the digitized recordings.
I always love it when I find home recorded acetates. The records are not actually made from acetate, but they are usually a metal record with a fragile lacquer coating.
The reason I enjoy these is that I never know what I’m getting when I drop the needle. Most of the time it’s someone’s piano recital, or other boring stuff. Then when I find something like today’s post, it makes up for all the bad organ music I listened to.
I found these two 8″ records at a white elephant sale a few years ago, and they are dated 1941 in pencil. The first side was unremarkable piano music in one track taking up the whole side, but the flip side only contained a single short track. On it was children playing with the microphone! A little yelling, which I assume is being done while they are enjoying making the monitor gauge needle jump into the red. Then the child laments off mic that “There’s no noise in it!”, then sings Happy Birthday”. I don’t know why, but I like this random private moment captured in time. Continue reading "There’s No Noise In It"
This was an interesting find. These two 12″ discs are radio promotions for the 1949 William Castle film-noir from Universal-International: Johnny Stool Pigeon.
Johnny Stool Pigeon stars Howard Duff (as the Federal Agent), Dan Duryea (as the Killer from Alcatraz), and Shelly Winters (as the Woman). Hooray for well-rounded female characters in Hollywood!
The first record is just 8 radio spots in 60, 30, and 15 seconds.
The second record is a “Personal Interview with Dan Duryea”. The “interview” is just a one-sided conversation. The records were sent out to radio stations with a script to be read by the DJ, so that the listeners might think that the actor was visiting their local radio station. Continue reading "Johnny Stool Pigeon"
This is a 10 minute field interview by Frank Reynolds for the Modesto, California radio station KTRB and aired on May 14th, 1954.
Frank is interviewing Mr. and Mrs. Cliff Horst the day before they opened Cliff’s Bakery and Delicatessen at 23 McHenry Ave in Modesto.
This Electrical Transcription (ET) is a large 12″ acetate that was unfortunately stored in a plastic bag, which drew oils out of the record and soaked into the label (as seen in the scan).
Today’s audio offering is an odd one. This 45 record from Dictation Disc is a practice disc for increasing your shorthand speed. The record is undated, but from the tone of the voice work feels very mid-century to me.
A man in his best 1950′s voice dictates various fictitious business letters in increasing speeds. For example, the second track has our man thanking Mr Smith for his order of butter and asks for feedback about their packaging, but in… very… stilted… 50… words per minute.
These tracks are ripe for sampling. If you are inspired, please feel free to take these and make magic. All I ask in return is that you send me a copy and I’ll group them into a future post.
I’m not sure what year this came out, but the voices do not sound like Mel Blanc to me. This bright yellow record came to me without the sleeve, but I found a blurry photo of it online.
There is a shocking lack of information online about Irv Carroll and his humorous songs.
One of the few mentions was from the 3/14/1942 issue of The Billboard that stated that he just released his first single (Let’s All Snore) on his new Bluebird contract.
This is an “Official Mickey Mouse Club” 45 rpm record from 1955 called Mousekedances – 6 Dances and how to do them. Unless there was an insert that has been lost, they only tell you how to do two of the dances. Oddly the instructions for the Big Bear dance do not match up with The Big Bear Boogie, so I won’t be including it in this post.
So for those who are keeping track, that’s 6 Dances and how to do one of them.
Side 1 has one of my favorites from this record: The Mickey Mouse Mambo. This probably marked the end of the Mambo craze in the US. You know an adult musical fad is over when they record a version for children.
My other favorite song is The Big Bear Boogie with the chorus of “Hug a bear, hug a bear, hug a boogie-woogie bear”. That will get stuck in your head. It’s not a bad thing.
I found a few Disney kids records at an estate sale last weekend that were in excellent condition. Here’s a 78rpm “Golden Record” from 1955 with two songs from The Lady and the Tramp.
It’s been Christmas tradition for me to post Frank Kelly’s parody of ‘The 12 days of Christmas’: Christmas Countdown. Most of you may know Frank from his character “Father Jack” in the BBC comedy Father Ted
From the IMDB:
Scored a UK Top 30 hit in December 1983 when the humorous ‘Christmas Countdown’ reached 26 in the UK singles chart. He later received a letter from the Queen explaining how the record had given her “great pleasure”.
It’s been Christmas tradition for me to post Frank Kelly’s parody of ‘The 12 days of Christmas’: Christmas Countdown. Most of you may know Frank from his character “Father Jack” in the BBC comedy 
