What 78 are you spinning right now ?

[Clunky]

Jeff some great finds. Congrats on the new TT. As I've said before ive used a Lenco 75 with continuously variable speeds between 16 and 83 rpm. In reality i usually play shellac at 78 as I'm too lazy to do the research into the correct speed. I've a photocopy of an old strobe disc which helps adjust the speed.

Bigger changes to 78 play back have been a choice of 3 stylii sizes (Expert) and a better phonostage( a cast off from my vinyl playback chain)

[jeffcrom]

Tried out some "troublesome" 78s on the new rig. Coleman Hawkins' rare Asch album doesn't sound much better, even though my copy is in excellent condition - Asches are just lousy pressings on noisy shellac. My perhaps two most worn 78s, by blues singer Maggie Jones on Columbia, still sound terrible - they're just too far gone. But one of my treasures, Blind Willie Johnson's "Lord I Just Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes/Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning" sounded pretty good with the right stylus and some careful EQ-ing.

[jeffcrom]

Schubert - Trio No. 1 in B flat, op. 99: Thibaud/Casals/Cortot (Victor 12" four-disc set). This was another test for the new turntable/cartridge, and it displayed the most improvement yet over the old rig. When Victor began recording electrically, they wasted no time in putting out a series of great chamber and orchestral music as the "Musical Masterpieces" series. This one was recorded in London in 1926 (the first recordings by this trio, I believe) and issued in the U.S. the next year. My copy is visually in pretty good condition, but never sounded good when played on my old 78 turntable - there was some nasty hissing beyond the usual crackly surface noise. The hissing is gone, I think due to using a truncated needle which doesn't drag the bottom of the groove. I really enjoyed this music this morning.

Edited February 14, 2015 by jeffcrom

[jeffcrom]

Lots of 78s recently. Yesterday it was Mel Powell's Commodore session (the first under his name). I enjoyed Benny Goodman's playing so much on this session that I then spent 40 minutes or so playing Goodman red-label Columbias. The winners were the 1940 big band version of "Henderson Stomp" and three sides by the Sextet with Charlie Christian.

[Clunky]

Dizzy Gillespie-----------Good bait/ I can't get started---------(manor)

Diz plays supremely over a fairly pedestrian backing on "I can't get.." Good Bait is better but still relatively straightened out compared to versions to come. Byas at least gets a fine solo. Swing-to-bop, with bop on realy hinted at . Nice sides non the less.

Edit to note that this thread is 10 years old exactly today. 78s last longer.

Edited February 23, 2015 by Clunky

[jeffcrom]

Dizzy Gillespie-----------Good bait/ I can't get started---------(manor)

Diz plays supremely over a fairly pedestrian backing on "I can't get.." Good Bait is better but still relatively straightened out compared to versions to come. Byas at least gets a fine solo. Swing-to-bop, with bop on realy hinted at . Nice sides non the less.

I love that version of "Good Bait" as an example of the difference between swing and bop. It's straight swing until the first bridge, when Dizzy takes it to pure bebop territory.

Edit to note that this thread is 10 years old exactly today. 78s last longer.

Except when they don't. I went to play my Billy Eckstine big band Nationals this morning, only to find that the best one, "Cool Breeze," was broken. No idea how it happened, but it kind of hurt.

And thanks for starting this thread; as you can see, I've enjoyed it.

[jeffcrom]

A couple of hours of 78s tonight, starting with a bunch of Johnny Hodges:

It Shouldn't Happen to a Dream/A Little Taste (Mercer, 1947)
Let the Zoomers Drool/Searsy's Blues (Mercer, 1947)
Globetrotter/A Gentle Breeze (Mercury, 1951)
Sideways/A Pound of Blues (Mercury, 1952)
Who's Excited/Below the Azores (Mercury, 1952)
Through For the Night/Latino (Mercury, 1952)
Wham/Come Sunday (Clef, 1952)

Then, a little armchair journey to New Orleans:

King Oliver: Stingaree Blues/Shake It and Break It (Bluebird, late 30s pressing of a 1930 recording)
George Lewis Ragtime Jazz Band - Willie the Weeper/Mama Don't Allow (Good Time Jazz, 1950)
George Lewis Ragtime Jazz Band - Yaaka Hula Hickey Dula/Burgundy Street Blues (Good Time Jazz, 1950)
Baby Dodds Jazz Four - Winin' Boy Blues/Careless Love (Blue Note, 1945)
Celestin's Original Tuxedo Orchestra - Maryland, My Maryland/Marie Laveau (Regal, 1947)
Celestin's Original Tuxedo Orchestra - My Josephine/Hey La Ba (Regal, 1947)
Papa Celestin and His Tuxedo Dixieland Jazz Band - Tiger Rag/The Darktown Strutters Ball (Columbia, 1953)

Bunk's Brass Band - Didn't He Ramble/You Tell Me Your Dream (American Music, 1945)

Personal notes on the New Orleans discs:

Today was the day that I started yearning for New Orleans again. That makes sense, because it's been a little over four months since my last visit, and the pangs usually start at about the four month mark.

The King Oliver record is one of my favorite 78s from my collection, even though it's a later pressing. It's great music, in excellent condition.

As I've said before, the 1950 George Lewis session sounds so much warmer on shellac than on CD.

The 1947 Celestin session is moving to me for several reasons - Alphonse Picou, the pioneer first-generation jazz clarinetist, is on board, and I love hearing alto saxophonist Paul "Polo" Barnes play on his composition "My Josephine," which he also recorded with Celestin back in the 1920s.

The 1953 Celestin record represents Papa Celestin's last studio recording, I think. It was recorded 61 years ago, but I heard one of the musicians two or three times in New Orleans. Pianist Jeanette Kimball was the in the band the first time I visited Preservation Hall in 1990, and I heard her there once or twice more.

The Bunk Johnson brass band American Music sides are the first recordings of a New Orleans brass band (apart from a one-and-a-half minute clip from a 1929 newsreel). If I was going to give a lesson on where jazz came from, I would play "Didn't He Ramble" from this session. It's not jazz at all - it's a 6/8 march. But no one is reading; everybody's improvising. It was a short step from this loose march to jazz.

Edited March 5, 2015 by jeffcrom

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

The Champs- Tequila (Challenge)

[jeffcrom]

Spinning lots of shellac lately - much more than I will post about here.

78 hunting is interesting; I do a good bit of it, because you never know what you might find. Almost every antique store in my part of the US has at least a few 78s for sale. Of course, they're usually not anything interesting - pop vocals, semi-classical fluff, etc. Here in Georgia, you find lots of country discs, but for the most part, the records show that, then as now, most people liked the more homogenized forms of country music - so it's mostly Carson Robison instead of Charlie Poole, Cowboy Copas instead of Hank Williams.

But the odds against finding anything really excellent make it more exciting when you do. Yesterday I visited an antique store in an Atlanta suburb and walked out with a stack of records. The winners were:

Fletcher Henderson (as "Roseland Orchestra") playing "Sorry" - a 1927 disc on the Banner label. The flip side is by Fred Rich's dance band. I almost didn't shell out the two bucks to get this one. The record is in rough shape, visually, and I thought the odds were against it being Henderson. (Sam Lanin's band also recorded under that name.) But it sounds pretty good; it plays far better than it looks, and apart from a mediocre vocal chorus by Andy Razaf, it's musically excellent. There's a short, but very exciting solo by Coleman Hawkins, as well as a very good half-chorus by the underrated Bobby Stark on trumpet. I had never heard this track before; I'm glad I have now.

And I picked up twelve beautiful British Decca records - Alexander Borovsky playing Liszt's first thirteen Hungarian Rhapsodies, from 1930, I think. They are evenly split between 10" and 12" discs, and most are in near-mint condition. Some of the Rhapsodies are complete on one side, some are split between two sides, and the first is spread over four sides. The wonderful performances made me "get" these pieces as never before.

[jeffcrom]

Early-to-mid-1920s jazz and near-jazz by Bennie Moten and The Benson Orchestra of Chicago.

I've got 19 discs by the Benson Orchestra, an accomplished and enjoyable dance band. When the Great Record Purge happens in a few years, I'll keep about three of these, including the 1923 disc pictured above, which has what I think is Frank Trumbauer's first recorded solo. But I probably most enjoyed the flip side of one of the Benson discs, "Sweet Georgia Brown" by Oliver Naylor's Orchestra - a nice, hot side by a band filled with New Orleanians.

[jeffcrom]

John Kirby and Orchestra (Asch). A really nice three-pocket album from 1945, with Emmett Berry and Budd Johnson in the band, along with Kirby veteran Buster Bailey. Typical lousy Asch pressings, but it sounds pretty good on the new rig with some quick adjustment to the EQ.

And to indulge in the fetisization of this album as an object/artifact a little bit - what a cool David Stone Martin cover.

Edited March 14, 2015 by jeffcrom

[Clunky]

Mary Lou Williams - ( Asch) 351- three 78 album with Bill Coleman and DSM cover too. Nice.

I've this Asch set which sports a rather less typical DSM cover (and not as good IMO)

[jeffcrom]

Clunky, I've always thought that the Mary Lou Williams album you pictured represented DSM's worst-ever cover.

A bunch of 78s today. The highlight was the December 21, 1944 Black & White session by Cliff Jackson's Village Cats, with Sidney Bechet and the DeParis brothers. These two 12-inch vinyl 78s are visually in excellent condition, but never sounded very good with my old 78 rig. On the new turntable/cartridge/stylus, they sound very good indeed, if a little thin in the bass.

[clifford_thornton]

that looks cool.

[jeffcrom]

This post is to document my further descent into madness.

So my new turntable has a switch which enables it to play vertically-cut records. These records are the losers in the lateral vs. vertical record technology war of the early 20th century. By 1920, nobody but Edison was still making vertically-cut records, and they held out until the company was almost out of business before starting to issue laterals. But Edison insisted that his quarter-inch-thick vertical records, playable only on Edison machines, were superior to all other records on the market.

Sonically, he might have been right. I've picked up half a dozen Edisons, and they are really excellent-sounding acoustic recordings - some of the best-sounding acoustic records I've ever heard. But they really take up a lot of space - I've got to be choosy about picking up Edisons. But that's not hard - the good news/bad news is that most of what Edison recorded was crap, musically. But there are some interesting Edisons - Fletcher Henderson recorded two sides in 1923 (not paired on the same record, unfortunately), the Louisiana Five, a band I particularly like, made four sides, the early country music pioneer Ernest Stoneman made a bunch of records for Edison, as did the California Ramblers, and the Fisk University Jubliee Quartet recorded as the Southern 4.

So here are the highlights of my descent into Edison madness so far. I won't mention uninteresting flip sides.

Fletcher Henderson - Linger Awhile (1923). A stock arrangement, it sounds like. But toward the end, the band loosens up and gets pretty hot.

Louisiana Five - Foot Warmer/Be Hap-E (1919). Alcide Nunez's New Orleans clarinet takes the lead.

Rudy Wiedoeft - Saxophone Fantasie (1920). An elaborate semi-classical piece by a pioneer recording saxophonist I admire.

Southern 4 - Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray/Good News, Chariot's Comin' - O Mary, Doan You Weep, Doan You Moan (1921)

Ernest Stoneman - The Old Hickory Cane/Watermelon Hanging on the Vine (1926)

The picture of the Henderson disc above, taken from Ebay, is apparently my copy. Edison didn't press the labels into the shellac, like everyone else - they glued them onto the fiber core. So lots of Edisons have label damage, or sides with the labels missing.

Oh, and a ten-inch Edison side contains an average of four minutes of music; some sides play longer than that.

So I've gone a little crazier - but, again, I think that the fact that most of the music on Edison is lousy will keep me from going too crazy.

Edited March 31, 2015 by jeffcrom

[Clunky]

Eddie Miller-------------Ain't misbehavin ' / Peg 'o my heart-------( Jump)

Not a rarity I'd suspect but the only Jump 78 in my collection. Misbehavin' is beautiful with Miller's tenor dancing with George Van Eps' guitar. Another elegant session.

[jeffcrom]

I love those Eddie Miller trio recordings for Jump. I have two 78s and a 10" LP, and used one ("Ain't Misbehavin'," I think) on one of my blindfold tests.

Last night - blues and R & B 78s. Tonight, Prez - nothing I haven't mentioned before...

But I really like listening to Aladdin 137 and 138 back-to-back - that's the session with Joe Albany. And Mercury 8934 ("Three Little Words" and "Neenah") really has that "Oh my god, he's right here in the room with me" presence. You can hear the air going through the horn.

Then Big Bill Broonzy with Punch Miller on Okeh and Columbia. Punch Miller was a badass in his prime.

[gmonahan]

This post is to document my further descent into madness.

So my new turntable has a switch which enables it to play vertically-cut records. These records are the losers in the lateral vs. vertical record technology war of the early 20th century. By 1920, nobody but Edison was still making vertically-cut records, and they held out until the company was almost out of business before starting to issue laterals. But Edison insisted that his quarter-inch-thick vertical records, playable only on Edison machines, were superior to all other records on the market.

Sonically, he might have been right. I've picked up half a dozen Edisons, and they are really excellent-sounding acoustic recordings - some of the best-sounding acoustic records I've ever heard. But they really take up a lot of space - I've got to be choosy about picking up Edisons. But that's not hard - the good news/bad news is that most of what Edison recorded was crap, musically. But there are some interesting Edisons - Fletcher Henderson recorded two sides in 1923 (not paired on the same record, unfortunately), the Louisiana Five, a band I particularly like, made four sides, the early country music pioneer Ernest Stoneman made a bunch of records for Edison, as did the California Ramblers, and the Fisk University Jubliee Quartet recorded as the Southern 4.

So here are the highlights of my descent into Edison madness so far. I won't mention uninteresting flip sides.

Fletcher Henderson - Linger Awhile (1923). A stock arrangement, it sounds like. But toward the end, the band loosens up and gets pretty hot.

Louisiana Five - Foot Warmer/Be Hap-E (1919). Alcide Nunez's New Orleans clarinet takes the lead.

Rudy Wiedoeft - Saxophone Fantasie (1920). An elaborate semi-classical piece by a pioneer recording saxophonist I admire.

Southern 4 - Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray/Good News, Chariot's Comin' - O Mary, Doan You Weep, Doan You Moan (1921)

Ernest Stoneman - The Old Hickory Cane/Watermelon Hanging on the Vine (1926)

The picture of the Henderson disc above, taken from Ebay, is apparently my copy. Edison didn't press the labels into the shellac, like everyone else - they glued them onto the fiber core. So lots of Edisons have label damage, or sides with the labels missing.

Oh, and a ten-inch Edison side contains an average of four minutes of music; some sides play longer than that.

So I've gone a little crazier - but, again, I think that the fact that most of the music on Edison is lousy will keep me from going too crazy.

If I may ask, what turntable do you have that has a switch allowing you to play vertical Edisons?

gregmo

[jeffcrom]

It's an Esoteric Sound Rek-O-Kut CVS-14. I hate the name, which was an old brand bought by Esoteric Sound. But it's kind of an amazing table for my needs. (I've talked about it some on another thread, so pardon me for repeating myself.)

Before I got this turntable, I had a variety of records that I couldn't play properly - a handful of verticals, some very early "78s" that actually play properly at around 71 RPM, some Audiophile microgoove 78s from the 1950s, and even some modern stereo 78s. I now can quickly switch between three headshells with different cartridges - stereo LP, mono LP, and 78. And I have several size styli for the 78 cartridge, and will add more over time. So I can combine any speed with any cartridge. (I finally heard those Audiophiles as they were supposed to sound!)

Anyway, I'm having fun.

[Clunky]

Hurricane Jones. ------ Hurricane Boogie/Laughing Rag ------- (Oriole)

A wild Welshmsn who by an account on the inter web would perform a partial striptease as he played boogie woodie piano cum early rock and roll. Two decent sides of exuberant piano with added bass & drums one side and peels of cackling laughter on the other . File under , unusual.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

my dream r&r 78

[jeffcrom]

Slim Gaillard and Dave Brubeck. No idea what compelled me to go from one to the other on the same evening.

And Frank Sinatra's 1947 Columbia recording of Irving Berlin's "What'll I Do?" This was one of my mom's favorite songs, and I never got it. Well, today I got it. This is a gorgeous rendition. And I wonder if this is the version my mom heard back in the day - she would have been 16 when this came out.

[JSngry]

And Frank Sinatra's 1947 Columbia recording of Irving Berlin's "What'll I Do?" This was one of my mom's favorite songs, and I never got it. Well, today I got it. This is a gorgeous rendition. And I wonder if this is the version my mom heard back in the day - she would have been 16 when this came out.

That might well have been the one, but just for comparison, the 1962 version on Reprise (from All Alone) is magnificent and maybe that was the one? Or maybe not?

[paul secor]

Slim Gaillard and Dave Brubeck. No idea what compelled me to go from one to the other on the same evening.

And Frank Sinatra's 1947 Columbia recording of Irving Berlin's "What'll I Do?" This was one of my mom's favorite songs, and I never got it. Well, today I got it. This is a gorgeous rendition. And I wonder if this is the version my mom heard back in the day - she would have been 16 when this came out.

One of my favorite songs, Jeff - though I haven't heard the version you wrote about.

[jeffcrom]

California Ramblers subgroups today:

Varsity Eight on Cameo

University Six on Harmony and Velvet Tone

Five Birmingham Babies on Perfect

The Goofus Five on Okeh

Jazz with a small "j' rather than a capital, but I enjoyed it. The winner was "Copenhagen" by Five Birmingham Babies, with some great Adrian Rollini bass sax.