I'd say it does. The Diamond Disc version is especially creepy!AmberolaAndy wrote:Oh does “Santa Claus Hides In The Phonograph” count?
Sean
I'd say it does. The Diamond Disc version is especially creepy!AmberolaAndy wrote:Oh does “Santa Claus Hides In The Phonograph” count?
Quite the Rube Goldberg machine. I can see how it became a footnote in history despite its solid purpose.epigramophone wrote:It worked like this. A progressive gearing system forced the turntable speed down from 78 to 33rpm, then gradually increased it as the record played. The result was constant linear speed and longer playing time, but the device was too complicated and the special records too expensive to succeed commercially.
There's more like that. One I can remember offhand is opera star Rosa Ponselle doing it under the title of Little Alabama Coon, basically same song. Mabel Garrison did it, too.TinfoilPhono wrote:Nothing remotely as weird as some of the things mentioned, but the weirdest one I have is a "royal blue" 'concert' Blue Amberol of "Mammy's Little Alabama Coon" sung by opera star Freida Hempel. Seriously, a 'coon song' in an operatic voice? It's very, very bizarre.
You may want to check out this earlier thread. The records described there sound very much like what you are describing:Wolfe wrote: I have some Japanese 78's on some label, with labels written in Japanese. One of them features two males, one is speaking (and shouting / screaming something once or twice) and one occasionally speaking and doing this singing that kind of resembles Tuvan throat singing, and one of them is plucking some kind of stringed instrument.
It's weird to me only in that I have not the foggiest idea what the record is or what the people on it are doing. It's like music and a little drama being played out.
That does sound, well, odd. My analogous records would be "Bingo-Bango-Bongo I don't want to leave the Congo" in Italian (as "Bongo Bongo") and "Bess You Is My Woman Now" and "I Got Plenty o' Nothin'" in Danish, both sides by Einar Norby, with Elsa Brems on Bess You Is. Maybe even more peculiar is Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus in Iroquois.epigramophone wrote:Another weird record I have is a Japanese Columbia 78 of "Buttons and Bows" sung in Japanese.
Edison issued a diamond disc of Maggie Teyte, who would go on to be the preeminent exponent of French art song, in George Clutsam's "Ma Curly Headed Babby." The other side is "I'se Gwine Back to Dixie."TinfoilPhono wrote:Nothing remotely as weird as some of the things mentioned, but the weirdest one I have is a "royal blue" 'concert' Blue Amberol of "Mammy's Little Alabama Coon" sung by opera star Freida Hempel. Seriously, a 'coon song' in an operatic voice? It's very, very bizarre.
I had no idea there was even an Iroquoian-speaking recording industry. How did that one come about? And why Mozart?drh wrote:Maybe even more peculiar is Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus in Iroquois.