What is the weirdest recording you own?

[OrthoSean]

Oh does “Santa Claus Hides In The Phonograph” count?

I'd say it does. The Diamond Disc version is especially creepy!

Sean

[melvind]

The weirdest record I own is the OKeh Crying record. Disturbing and just plain strange.

https://youtu.be/FOtH8bFfb5k

[bfinan11]

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.

Quite the Rube Goldberg machine. I can see how it became a footnote in history despite its solid purpose.

[Uncle Vanya]

Probably the four minute home recording
of "Uncle Josh and Aunt Nancy visit Plato's Retreat", recorded in 1980 in the Ansonia Hotel.

[Wolfe]

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.

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.


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.

[epigramophone]

Another weird record I have is a Japanese Columbia 78 of "Buttons and Bows" sung in Japanese.

[52089]

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.

You may want to check out this earlier thread. The records described there sound very much like what you are describing:

http://forum.talkingmachine.info/viewto ... tory+three

[drh]

Another weird record I have is a Japanese Columbia 78 of "Buttons and Bows" sung in Japanese.

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.

[drh]

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.

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."

Or, when you get down to it, Alma Gluck singing "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" isn't exactly conventional, either.

[bfinan11]

Maybe even more peculiar is Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus in Iroquois.

I had no idea there was even an Iroquoian-speaking recording industry. How did that one come about? And why Mozart?