Audio Glimpses of the Past

I spend a good bit of time in antique stores these days, searching for 78s. A couple of months ago, I visited an Atlanta antique store which had an interesting-looking box. It looked like it might have records in it, and it did - not 78s, but 40 or 50 home-recorded discs. They were 12" discs; some were marked as 33 1/3, and some were labeled with song titles or rudimentary information about the radio programs they were recorded from. I bought three of the most promising-looking of the records, took them home, and found them to be easily playable on my turntable. Moreover, they were quite well-recorded, for the most part. A couple of the sides were pretty disappointing - they proved to be nothing more than recordings of disc jockeys playing records, but several of the sides were intriguing and musically rewarding enough to get me pretty excited.

Radio was once a more interesting and creative medium than it is these days. Bands of all types commonly broadcast live from clubs and ballrooms, their sounds carried over the various radio networks to listeners across the country. These broadcasts were sometimes recorded by hobbyists with home recording equipment, which until the late 1940's meant a disc recorder of some kind. The person who recorded the stash of discs I found labeled some with his name, and even with information about the equipment he used.

Our recordist was named J.M. Keith, apparently from Atlanta, since most of the radio stations he recorded from were Atlanta stations like WSB and WAGA. On a couple of discs he engraved the make, model, and serial number of the recorders he used. The earlier records were made with a Presto Model Y, serial #4111. The Model Y paired one of Presto's cheaper recorders with an amplifier and speaker. Later, Mr. Keith upgraded to a Presto 6N, serial #1891. The 6N was a high-quality machine, used by many radio stations. And it wasn't cheap. The price for 6N was $735 in 1950; it probably wasn't much less in 1948, when Keith seemed to have acquired his.

Our friend J.M. Keith had somewhat eclectic tastes; he recorded all kinds of music. There's a really horrible "lounge" quartet from a club in New York, several disc jockey shows, and lots of recordings from the semi-classical Bell Telephone Hour. Listening to those first three discs and examining the labels and sleeves gave me some insight into Mr. Keith's labeling system, though, so I went back to the antique store and bought all of the records that I though might contain worthwhile music. I ended up with a dozen discs. They all seem to be have been recorded in 1947 or 1948. I played them all one evening, one after another, and it was like a trip back in time - like listening to a couple of hours of late-forties radio, dialing to different stations every twelve minutes or so. Most of the discs are quite well-recorded, although in a few cases, the surfaces have deteriorated a little bit. And Mr. Keith would occasionally record with the gain set too high, resulting in some distortion.



There ended up being six sides of music that were interesting enough to digitize and preserve:

Three tunes by the Ray McKinley big band from the Roosevelt Hotel in New Orleans, August, 1947. One of these is Eddie Sauter's amazingly forward-looking "Sand Storm," which the band had recorded in the studio a year and a half earlier.

Three selections by a very different big band, that of Noro Morales. "Caramba Bebop" from this broadcast is a very hot piece of Latin jazz, with an oddly wonderful piano solo by Morales.

A broadcast by the Adrian Rollini Trio. Rollini was the first great bass saxophonist in jazz, but by 1947 he was playing vibes and doubling on chimes. These are the only hot jazz chimes solos I've ever heard.

A side split between Rollini's trio and the Mary Osborne Trio. Osborne was an excellent Charlie Christian-inspired guitarist, but she's featured mostly as a vocalist here.

Twelve or so minutes from an August, 1948 broadcast of the Grand Ole Opry. This is an interesting broadcast, but I was surprised at how lame most of the music was. The other side of this disc is much better:

Part of the WSB Barn Dance program that followed the Grand Ole Opry. Barn Dance was similar to the Opry, but the music (and comedy) is more "down home."

I have uploaded selections from all of these broadcasts (except the Grand Ole Opry) here. Once on the page with the links, you can click to listen or right-click to download. I hope you enjoy these audio glimpses of the past. And thank you, J.M. Keith.

Wonder and Madness at 78 Revolutions per Minute

My record collecting has been out of hand for years. My wife just shakes her head when I come home with more recorded music. But until fairly recently, I could tell her, "Well, at least I don't collect 78s." Those who have read this blog regularly know that I can no longer make that claim.

Record collectors are a little nuts anyway, but collecting 78 RPM records is just over the top. In an age when an iPod can hold 1000 hours of music, filling your home with highly breakable pieces of shellac which hold six minutes of music is just ridiculous. And they will fill your home - 78s take up a lot of room. I'm up to seven boxes.

So why bother? Well, the reason I got into 78s is that there is still some music which can't be heard any other way. Not much, these days, with some exhaustive CD reissue programs around the world, but there are still 78s that have not been reissued in any other form. The Boyce Brown record on the Collector's Item label (discussed in an earlier post) is a prime example. I've got more than a few very cool records which are unavailable in any other form.

And even though most of the stuff is available in other formats, there is still something kind of magical about hearing the music as the musicians expected it to be heard at the time. I'm not saying that they wouldn't have preferred more advanced technology if it had been available, but most of the music issued on 78s was conceived to be issued in that form.

And a well-made 78 in good condition can sound wonderful. There is always some surface noise present, but the ears quickly adjust to that. Many LP and CD reissues of material from 78s filter out the surface noise, which also takes out frequencies of the music, removing some of the "life" from the sound. I never had any complaint about the sound quality of my CD reissue of the 1923 recordings by A. J. Piron's New Orleans Orchestra - until I found one of the original records in excellent condition. The 78 sounds much better than the CD. There are certain records in my collection that I cherish for their sound - I can hear Louis Armstrong's breath through his horn and hear Eddie South's bow on the strings of his violin.

There's more to my love of these old records - something less tangible. They are artifacts from the past - windows to a forgotten world. As I hold or play a 78, I often speculate on who originally owned the record - why did they buy this particular record - did they enjoy it? I recently bought a box of records from an antique dealer in Chattanooga. There were a few records in the box which "didn't belong" - they obviously came from another source. But most of the box seemed to be from a single collection. Whose records were they?

Well, the original owner was probably from the country, presumably somewhere in East Tennessee or North Georgia. The vast majority of the records are what we would now call country music, but the style was usually called "hillbilly" at the time. Most of the records come from a ten-year period starting in 1924; the earliest record is a real gem from that year - an Okeh record by Henry Whitter, the first "hillbilly" artist to record. The record buyer's tastes leaned, for the most part, toward the more commercial side of country music - Carson Robison is the most-represented artist, and his music was slicker and more "citified" than the more down-home hillbilly musicians. But there were plenty of amazing "real-deal" records in the box, too, by groups like the West Virginia Night Owls, the North Carolina Ramblers, and the Carter Family.

The person (or family) who accumulated this collection was probably fairly religious - there are quite a few "white gospel" discs in the stack. He (or they) was probably Irish, and not too many generations removed from the Emerald Isle. There are Irish songs performed in country style (like a Conqueror record by Mac and Bob), but there is one straight-up record of Irish dance tunes by the Four Provinces Orchestra, an Irish band out of Philadelphia.

My precursor's record buying tailed off around 1934, but there were a few later records in the stack, like the bizarre gospel song "Television in the Sky," recorded in 1939 by the West Virginia trio of Cap, Andy and Flip. The most recent record is a 1942 Roy Acuff.

I owe this mysterious person a debt for bringing together this fascinating collection of early country music. And I'll keep buying those ten- and twelve-inch shellac discs until I totally run out of room.

Report From the Deep End

Like I said in my last post, I've gone off the deep end. The 78 RPM Boyce Brown record I bought hasn't come yet, but I've pulled out my old box of 78's, and I'm having a blast. My old 78 turntable proved to be noisy and unreliable, so I picked up a reasonably-priced vintage Miracord table and a cartridge designed for 78's.

I remember some of my 78's being this cool, but there are others I didn't remember at all, and which I don't think I ever listened to. So far the coolest discoveries I've listened to are:

A Paul Bley single on the Emarcy label. Even when playing a standard ("Autumn Breeze"), Bley is concerned more with melody than chords. Could this be Bley's only 78?

A Kenny Clarke side, with mostly French musicians, on Dizzy Gillespie's Dee Gee label. Early bebop just sounds cool at 78 RPM - very organic.

A two-sided tune ("That's My Baby") by saxophonist Marvin Johnson, who was the in Les Hite band that backed up Louis Armstrong in the early thirties. This blues features punning, double-entendre lyrics and some nice, Benny Carter-like alto sax solos.

West Coast blues singer Estelle Edson, on the Black & White label. Yeah, who's she? But she's backed by the Oscar Pettiford All Stars with Lucky Thompson on tenor sax.

Two red-label Okehs by Sara Martin, from 1922. She wasn't the greatest of the classic female blues singers, but on one of these the accompaniment is by young Thomas "Fats" Waller. Too cool.

Okay, I'm gone; I know it. I checked Ebay tonight, and I've got my eye on a 78 by the great jazz pianist Dodo Marmarosa (on the Atomic label) and one on the Trumpet label by Mississippi bluesman Willie Love. I'm gone.

Jeffery Finally Descends Into Madness

I have officially gone off the deep end.

Everybody who knows me is aware that I am an obsessed record collector. I have more jazz records and CDs than anyone should be allowed to have. I’ve known for years that I’m slightly crazy in this regard. But I have always reassured myself with one fact: at least I don’t collect 78's.

I just shake my head at people who collect 78 RPM records. I mean, those folks are nuts. They’ll pay hundreds, even thousands, of dollars for a rare, but highly breakable, piece of shellac containing six minutes of music. That’s crazy. And do you know how much room a collection of 78’s takes up? Aside from that, most worthwhile 78’s have been reissued on LP or CD, anyway.

Yeah, I know I’ve had a box of 78’s for years; my grandmother gave it to me when I was a teenager. And I learned a lot about jazz and classic pop music from those records – I first heard Sidney Bechet, Benny Carter, and Coleman Hawkins, among others, on records from this stack. But I haven’t played any of those records for at least ten years. I don’t even know if the only turntable I own that will play 78’s even works any more. And it doesn’t matter anyway, because I don’t collect 78's.

But yesterday I bid on, and won, a 78 on Ebay. No, wait – let me explain! I have long been fascinated by an obscure jazz saxophonist who was active in Chicago in the 1930’s and 1940’s: Boyce Brown. And one of his sessions produced a 78 on the Collector’s Item label. I’ve been trying for years to find these two sides on an album, but according to Tom Lord’s jazz discography, they have never been reissued. So….

Well, you know the rest. And no, I didn’t pay three or four figures for this record – barely into two. So I’ll be digging out my old 78 RPM turntable to see if it works. When the record arrives, I’ll write something about the great Boyce Brown. In the meantime, think of me as I descend into madness.

Ya! Ya! or Mama Tried

This is about Budd Johnson, Richard Davis, and my mom.

Budd Johnson (1910-1984) was a jazz saxophonist who played and recorded with Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie, but who is probably best known for his long association with Earl Hines. He was a big-toned, swing-era player, but he enthusiastically embraced bebop in the forties - he participated in what has been called the first bop recording session, a Coleman Hawkins date that also included Gillespie and Max Roach, and he played with and wrote arrangements for Billy Eckstine's pioneering bop big band.

Richard Davis (b. 1930) was the favorite bassist of both Eric Dolphy and Stravinsky. He was associated with the avant-garde during the sixties, but in more recent years his music has tended to be more mainstream. In any case, he is a player of matchless technique and taste.

My mom, who died in 2005, fostered my interest in jazz, sometimes influencing my tastes in ways she didn't realize. When I was 12 and had just taken up the saxophone, one of my Christmas presents from her was the first record I owned - Budd Johnson's Ya! Ya! on the Argo label. She found it in the cut-out rack of Treasure Island (yes, there was a department store called Treasure Island) and bought it for me because the cover had a picture of Johnson holding a tenor sax.

My first reaction was of disappointment. I had just discovered rock music (a few years later than most of my friends) and I wanted a rock album like my brother got that Christmas. But I gave it a listen, and liked about half of the tracks right away. They were, of course, the most obvious, bluesy tunes on the album. Even though I didn't know anything about jazz, I could tell that the bass playing was good - George Duvivier played on half of the album, replaced by Richard Davis on the rest. One of the pieces that I liked, "Exotique," had a bass solo by Davis that can only be described as bizarre. It's played arco, with microtonal glissandos, quarter tones, and dissonant double-stops. It seemed a little strange to me at the time, but I didn't know anything about music, and figured, hey, these are professional musicians - they know what they're doing. I liked it.

My acceptance of this bass solo stood in good stead later, as I started to explore free jazz. Another way to look at it is that this strange solo screwed me up for life. It's like the pop psycologists say - it's all my mom's fault.

I listened to Ya! Ya! today. It still sounds pretty good.

Horo Records

Okay, this is a geeky record collector's post.

Around 1977, when I was a student at the University of Georgia, I used to haunt the library, devouring all the books and magazines about jazz that I could find. The periodicals room carried a couple of European jazz magazines that I never would have discovered otherwise. One day a found an ad (I think in Jazz Journal International) that fascinated me. It was a listing of the Horo Records catalog, with instructions on how to order directly from their office in Rome. I photocopied the page and kept it all these years.

The record listing was mouth-watering. Lacy, Konitz, Sun Ra, Don Pullen.... I didn't have much money at the time, but what disposable income I had all went to records. I ordered Gil Evans' Parabola and Steve Lacy's Threads, and sure enough, several weeks later a box from Italy arrived on my doorstep.

I learned some things about Horo records right away: first, the music was incredible. One side of the Lacy album was solo - not an unusual setting for Lacy - but the other side found him collaborating with Alvin Curran and Frederic Rzewski (from the legendary live electronic group MEV) in an electro-acoustic trio. The Evans album was recorded while he was touring Europe with an eight-piece band. The voicings and textures Evans got with only four horns (including Lacy and Arthur Blythe) were amazing. I also learned pretty quickly, though, that Horo records were cheaply pressed and that the covers tended to come unglued and fall apart.

After that first order, I always meant to place another order or two, but somehow never did - maybe I didn't have the money, or maybe something else seemed more important at the time. And all of a sudden, Horo Records seemed to disappear. You couldn't mail-order them or special-order them - they were just gone.

I picked up a few more of Horo's issues at used record stores over the years, but I always kicked myself for not getting more of them when I had the chance. Many of them became highly prized collectors' items, particularly the three Sun Ra double albums. Then, while Googling around the internet tubes one evening about five years ago, I found a website that Aldo Sinesio, the owner of Horo, had set up. He was selling off the remaining stock of his records at prices which, while not cheap, were not unreasonable, considering the demand. I bit the bullet and picked out a handful, including the three Sun Ra albums, Max Roach's The Lodestar, another Lacy (his solo album on the label was already sold out), some George Adams/Don Pullen, MEV's United Patchwork (again with Lacy), and Konitz with Martial Solal. Once again, I intended to place another order when I could afford it, but by the time I tried again, the website was gone.

My latest Horo came in the mail today. I found Sam Rivers' Black Africa - Perugia on Ebay. Much to my surprise, no one else bid on it, so I got it at a decent price. I'm enjoying the familiar shiny and attractive, but flimsy , jacket, and the great music with the usual background crackle of the cheap vinyl.

And if anyone wants to know what to get me for Christmas, well, Steve Lacy's Eronel or Roy Haynes' Jazz a Confronto would be nice.

Record Collectors Anonymous

My name is Jeff, and I'm a record collector.

For years I told myself that it was just about the music. I bought records because I loved music, period. And that is the main reason I buy records (including CDs). But, in retrospect, that has never been the whole story. I still remember the first record I bought - how it smelled, how it felt in my hands, what the typeface on the jacket looked like. I love the music, but I've always loved the objects themselves. My iPod is a great convenience, but it will never be my primary method of listening to music, and not just because of the inferior sound. (To anyone who argues that MP3s sound as good as CDs or mint LPs, I would say that your ears ain't that good.) With my iPod, I can't hold the LP cover or CD booklet, see who wrote the third song, or look up who the trombone player is.

I was looking through a stack of blues 45s at a record show a few years ago, and I thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be cool if Calvin Leavy's Cummins Prison Farm on the Soul Beat label turned up in this stack?" Two records later, there it was. It was a great moment. Cummins Prison Farm was a regional blues hit for Leavy in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Memphis in 1969. While it's not that well-known a song, I certainly could have found it on a blues CD reissue, but I wanted the original 45. Why? I'm not totally sure. Sometimes I think the blues were made to hear three minutes at a time, on 45 or 78 RPM singles. I just know that I wanted both the music and the object. And what a cool thing this single is: three minutes of intense blues with a weird, searingly loud guitar solo in the middle, backed with three minutes of relaxed funk/blues - all encased in a seven-inch circle of vinyl with a big hole in the middle.

A few nights ago I was listening to an album I prize highly: Pee Wee Russell Plays Pee Wee from 1957. I love this album for a lot of reasons. Here are some, arranged from most reasonable to most insane:

1. The music, which is a delight. A solid rhythm section, including Walter Page and George Wettling, provides a surface on which Pee Wee traces his odd, thoughtful, abstract clarinet lines. Pee Wee was one of the real improvisers of jazz; he was never predictable. The music here is excellent.

2. The vinyl is in mint condition, or pretty close. Okay, this is reasonable for a music lover - you want the music to sound as good as possible, so you want the record to be well-pressed and in excellent condition.

3. The album is pretty rare. Hmmm... now we're on slightly less solid ground. I mean, I guess any real music lover would be interested in a hard-to-find example of one of his/her favorite artists. But you can find Kind of Blue by Miles Davis in any mall CD store, and I'd have to say that the Miles album contains greater music.

4. The cover is in mint condition. Okay, this is just ridiculous. If the vinyl is in good condition, a music lover shouldn't care that the front cover, with its semi-abstract painting, is glossy and unstained, or that the seams are solid, with no splits, or that the back cover is full of interesting information about the short-lived Stero-o-craft label. Ridiculous.

5. Finding and buying this record was a rush. This is even more pathetic. Why should my memories of coming across this record in an antique store on Montgomery Street in Savannah still give me pleasure five years later? It's the music that's important.

The last point states a truth about record collecting: part of the appeal is the thrill of the hunt and the excitement of the unexpected find, especially at a bargain price. Musically, A Fireside Chat With Lucifer on the Jupiter label is one of my favorite Sun Ra albums. It's also one of my favorite pieces in my collection, partly because I paid nine dollars for an album that regularly sells for 250 bucks at auction.

Yeah, it's mostly about the music. But I recognize that, to a small extent, I'm a sick boy. Years ago, my friend Brian had a dream about my record collection. As I remember, he dreamed that I had three copies of every record in my collection: one to listen to, one to read the liners notes from, and one to just sit on the shelf. It's sad how cool I think that idea is.