78 Collectors: Why are they so weird?

http://www.tedstaunton.com/labels/1910-1919.pages/Parlophon.1/image/parlophon.1.gif

http://www.tedstaunton.com/labels/1920-1929.pages/Pathe.Actuelle.2/pathe.actuelle.2.htm

http://www.tedstaunton.com/labels/1920-1929.pages/Grey.Gull.1/image/grey.gull.1.gif

http://www.tedstaunton.com/labels/1920-1929.pages/Aeolian.Vocalion.2/image/aeolianvocalion2.gif

http://www.tedstaunton.com/labels/1920-1929.pages/Mimosa.3/image/mimosa.3.gif

http://www.tedstaunton.com/labels/1920-1929.pages/Homo.Baby/image/homo.baby.gif

huh, huh, "homo-baby"

http://www.tedstaunton.com/labels/1920-1929.pages/Nadsco/image/nadsco.gif

Nadsco OTM.

http://www.tedstaunton.com/labels/1900-1909.pages/Busy.Bee.Record/image/busy.bee.record.gif
Founded in 1904, this company had a Sherwin Bisbee as one of its principals (which probably gave rise to the label name). Originally, the company made machines which played outsized cylindrical records, but as the public began to show a preference for discs, switched their product line over in 1906

http://www.tedstaunton.com/labels/1920-1929.pages/Beltona.1920.1929.1/image/beltona.1920.1929.1.gif

i might scan a bunch of vintage 78 sleeves & post them on this thread if i can't find an archive readymade online.

http://www.tedstaunton.com/labels/1940-1949.pages/Beltona.1/image/beltona.1.gif

http://www.tedstaunton.com/labels/1940-1949.pages/Beltona.2/image/beltona.2.gif

Just over a cent a disc on that ebay auction, that is insanely cheap. You only need to cherry pick a handful of them and you'll be in profit.

Probably already cherry-picked, no? Outside of collectible labels are most 78s actually worth anything? I guess most collectors just trade them with each other.

wow. beautiful labels.

Jesus, talk about eye candy! LOL at "Homo-Baby", too.

why do i spend all my spare time now reading 78 auction lists?
help me.

also i want old issues of 78 quarterly.

has an ILXor ever participated in Nauck's 78 auctions? I made really low bids on a bunch country & blues titles, and i probably won't win any of them, but you never know i guess?

you gotta figure he's got several hundred bidders per auction at leaast? maybe several thousand?

http://www.78rpm.com/images/auction/5790_BabyBonnieGE.gif

http://www.78rpm.com/images/auction/5902_SloppyHenryOK.gif

Do you also play them, Ian? Just curious.

Yeah. I bought a portable turntable with a 78 speed option, for the living room. I plug old computer speakers into it. Audiophiles and serious 78 collectors would probably be appalled.

anybody know where i can get a good sounding 78 record player? preferably one that i can hook up to my stereo, not one of those old-school windup ones.

i believe numark has a fairly affordable model that will play 78s (as well as LPs and 45s of course.)

http://www.turntablelab.com/dj_equipment/1/132/5007.html

good prewar blues-related article in this month's Harper's -- with this tidbit relevant to this thread: "“The serious blues people are less than ten,” one who contributed to Pre-War Revenants told me. “Country, seven. Jazz, maybe fifteen. Most are to one degree or another sociopathic.” Mainly what they do is nurse decades-old grudges. A terrifically complicated bunch of people, but, for reasons perhaps not totally scrutable even to themselves, they have protected this music from time and indifference. The collectors were first of all the finders. Those trips to locate old blues guys started out as trips to canvass records. Gayle Dean Wardlow became a pest-control man at one point, in order to have a legitimate excuse to be walking around in black neighborhoods beating on doors. “Need your house sprayed?” Nah. “Got any weird old records in the attic?”"

oh man i should check that out.
i have met a fair few weird 78 guys in past couple years. i really had no idea the numbers were that low, though who knows what constitutes a "serious" collector. i mean, i'm not a serious anything guy, so does that mean i have a chance of winning lesser condition discs if all the older 78 collectors already have copies in better than V condition? it's a funny thing to think about. weird old men. is there a single female 78 collector?

well, yeah "serious" to this guy must mean someone with an insanely deep collection and a willingness to spend fortunes on single records ....

right. but you wonder how big the intermediate community is. or i do, anyway. people not willing to spend much money on a single record, competing over beat-up and worn copies of records the guys with big bank accounts wouldn't deign to touch.

talking about the american primitive II collection (same article):

To do it right entailed remastering everything fresh from 78s, which in turn meant coaxing out a transnational rabbit’s warren of the so-called serious collectors, a community widespread but dysfunctionally tight-knit, as by process of consolidation the major collections have come into the keeping of fewer and fewer hands over the years.

i guess as the older guys die off they might leave their collections to other record collectors.

Earlier this year a fairly advanced collector in New York donated his collection to Syracuse University upon his passing, and it was transported to the campus in something like six or seven FedEx trucks.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/05/record.collection.ap/index.html

yeah i think i read about that -- was it mostly classical? anyway, that's great that some major universities are interested in preserving alla that, like the santa barbara cylinder project thing. reading about these "single copy" records makes you realize how ephemeral a lot of that stuff is. makes you want to become a weird 78 collector!!!

ah, guess not: "Included are recordings from 1895 to the 1950s, with big band, jazz, country, blues, gospel, polka, folk, Broadway, Hawaiian and Latin among the genres. The collection also contains spoken-word, comedy and broadcast recordings, and "V-disks," which were distributed as entertainment to the U.S. military during World War II."

50 tons! Will be interesting to see if anything cool turns up with the v-disks. I think I was reading something recently about some lost early Charlie Parker being on v-disk.

Listening to LP compilations of 78s really does lose a certain amount of the recordings' nuance. there is much more audible detail when the recording is heard at its intended 78 rotations per minute.

"The first grooves of the Jimmy Strange sides are missing due to a rimbite; no other copies are known to exist."

^^ love shit like this.

I bought a few things from the guy who runs the Old Homestead label. I bought up a bunch of their LP stock, and also found a few 78s in their catalog I wanted:

HARRELL, KELLY Victor 19596 New River Train/Rovin' Gambler
LEAKE COUNTY REVELERS Columbia15189 Wednesday Night Waltz/Good Night Waltz
GEORGIA YELLOW HAMMERS Victor 20943 My Carolina Girl/The Picture On The Wall

I didn't read this thread past the first 2 or 3 posts until now and I just knew that, like guys who talk about how such-and-so a girlie is "annoying" because they wanna make hump w/em, ian was going to turn into the 78 collector he was dissing.

Reassuring, it is.

haha, i'm never going to turn into one of THOSE guys.
i promise.

In coming weeks I'll be digitizing a (small) private collection of Arabic 78s (abt. 90 pieces). Watch this space for mp3 action. If anyone has any suggestions for cleaning up the sound of the wavs once ripped, i'd love to hear 'em.

Awesome!

yeah, i'm pretty psyched. i've never tried to do a decent restoration job on damaged source material before. so it'll be an experiment. but fun.

I'm pushing megatons of love your way, Ian.

Super-curios about Arabic musics! Godspeed, ian.

But those old 78 labels are just heartbreakingly beautiful, and prove that the world has since fallen to ruin.

Good luck, Ian. That's really cool.

Why are you so weird?

Just kidding -- Awesome! Keep us posted!

What they all said. :-)