What is the weirdest recording you own?

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Viva-voce
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Re: What is the weirdest recording you own?

Post by Viva-voce »

How about anything by the great diva Madame Florence Foster Jenkins, anyone?

Steven

marco
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Re: What is the weirdest recording you own?

Post by marco »

OrthoSean wrote:I agree, so many to choose from, but I recently picked up the 78 issue of Leona Anderson's "Fish". I can certainly think of others, but this one is pretty weird.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8ftH2OXnag[/youtube]

Sean
You wonder how some people "heard" themselves when they made a recording. That being said-now I want a copy.

gramophone78
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Re: What is the weirdest recording you own?

Post by gramophone78 »

Kind of a "weird" title for a song...
You Can't Kiss A Frigidaire by Eddie DeLange and His Eight Screwballs.JPG

marco
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Re: What is the weirdest recording you own?

Post by marco »

Curt A wrote:Another strange record I have is titled: Der Fuehrer's Face by Spike Jones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWF8iRCan7I
You can never go wrong with Spike Jones. That song was one of the theme songs of WW2.

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Re: What is the weirdest recording you own?

Post by marco »

gramophone78 wrote:Kind of a "weird" title for a song...
You Can't Kiss A Frigidaire by Eddie DeLange and His Eight Screwballs.JPG
Is there a posting of this on YouTube? I would love to hear this song. Thanks! Mark

bfinan11
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Re: What is the weirdest recording you own?

Post by bfinan11 »

This is hard with 15000 to choose from, and a tendency to buy any oddity I see if it's strange enough...

Weirdest content (acoustic era)
The Conundrum / Nightmare in the Desert -- I kind of think of this one as a mini-Vaudeville, with five completely different selections from 1911 England: Grizzly Bear Rag, Because, a Sullivanesque aria, and a music-hall song about Caruso on the puzzle record side, and a narrated, orchestrated story with sound effects.

Wallace's Reducing Records -- the first popular exercise program, and a mid-1920s version of Jazzercise, so to speak. The musical content is inane at best, but there's a trainer (Wallace himself?) counting off reps, and the whole thing comes in an envelope with cards explaining the exercises.

Weirdest content (early electric)
Lucille Bogan - Shave Me Dry -- just some dirty blues you stillcouldn't play on the radio even in 2018.

Weirdest content (post-war)
The (in my experience) surprisingly common Parakeet Training Records. The Hartz Mountain one is decent, but there are a few rarer ones that emulate the bird by being recorded partially at 33 rpm. Any time the "real parakeet speaks", flip the speed switch, and it's the same man who was narrating all along...

Chiquita Banana: The Opera -- a radio transcription or aircheck, I'm not sure which, of a 5-minute commercial from 1946 in which Alec Templeton turns the Chiquita Banana jingle into an operatic production.

Weirdest content (late 78s)
Buchanan and Goodman's Flying Saucer -- a "break-in record" where a story is told in narration and clips from (other people's) hit songs of the time (1957 or so)

The Peasle Tree -- despite the written material presenting it as an actual sermon given on the Eastern Shore of Maryland or Virginia, actually just one long racist joke about an illiterate preacher.


Weirdest content (33 rpm era)
Mozart for Masons -- a two-LP set from the Indiana Grand Lodge, of music Mozart wrote for the Freemasons, with a pamphlet explaining how to use it for ceremonial purposes

Take It From Here -- a corporate musical Xerox commissioned for the release of a copier in the late 60s

Floppy ROM -- an attempt to distribute BASIC computer programs in a magazine, by recording them in the Kansas City Standard (what computers with tape drives used at the time) on flexi-discs. Which, in 1981, was a cost-effective alternative to disks!

Weirdest formats
Sizes -- 3½ inch Imperial advertising record (thanks @kirtley2012) and 16 inch World Music Service transcription disc
Holes -- an Aretino record with a spindle hole so large there's barely room to fit the song title and number on the label
Speeds -- a copy of the Playmates' "Beep Beep" that plays at 40 RPM (instead of 45) to be in key with the CD version (and even other copies of the 45 on youtube). Also a number of later "45s" with one side playing at 45 and one side at 33.
Labels -- a 78 made by two companies at once, with two labels and two numbers. "Get A Pin-Up Girl" by Johnny Bothwell, on Signature, and "Pin-Up Polka" on Dana.

Errors -- a World transcription disc with a serious pitch problem. I'm assuming it's supposed to be 33 rpm but the outside is around 25 and the inside is around 50? The recording drops an entire octave from start to finish.
A Beatles bootleg with one side recorded backwards (groove runs outside to inside, but the tape was reversed so it's mastered at -33 rpm)

Weirdest Home Recordings ("78" rpm era)
The "Sunshine Sisters" -- two caches of clearly related recordings on 6½ inch Philco discs recorded at an unusual 60 RPM, that I found in different cities a few months apart. Most of the sides are two girls, a soprano and an alto, practicing their way through "You Are My Sunshine" and occasionally other country hits of 1941. A few other sides were recorded off the radio and in a college speech class, giving clear clues to time and place, the University of Rochester in the weeks before World War II.

A Dixie Queen pie pan with a spindle hole and spiral grooves, which I've had trouble coercing any sound out of, but I'm convinced someone tried to record on sometime in the 30s

Weirdest Home(?) Recording (33 rpm era)
An 8 inch flexi-disc with no label whatsoever. One side contains a bunch of animal sound effects and a clip of British light music. The other side was recorded off the radio at 6:41-45am on some unknown day and has a performance of "Out to the Ball Game, Take Me", with the words two beats off from the music, a commercial for 1957 Plymouths, and what could only be described as the axe-murder of a grand piano.

Post-2000 Weirdness[/p]
78s recorded in 2013 - Record Store Day specials put out by Tompkins Square. I thought they were the last new 78s ever made, and maybe they were when I bought them.
the RRRecord - a disc consisting entirely of single looped grooves, 4 beats to the rotation, choose your own speed.
Gogol Bordello's "60 Revolutions", on a 10 inch, 60 RPM single
Sufjan Stevens - a 13 inch LP, and a blue star-shaped 45.

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Orchorsol
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Re: What is the weirdest recording you own?

Post by Orchorsol »

bfinan11 wrote: Errors -- a World transcription disc with a serious pitch problem. I'm assuming it's supposed to be 33 rpm but the outside is around 25 and the inside is around 50? The recording drops an entire octave from start to finish.
That was intentional and correct! World Records supplied a separate accessory governor that graduated the speed as the record played, giving more or less constant groove velocity (and pitch) and much longer playing time. The records tend to be expensive when they come up for sale here in the UK, and occasionally a governor surfaces - ditto.
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Re: What is the weirdest recording you own?

Post by epigramophone »

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.
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gramophone78
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Re: What is the weirdest recording you own?

Post by gramophone78 »

marco wrote:
gramophone78 wrote:Kind of a "weird" title for a song...
You Can't Kiss A Frigidaire by Eddie DeLange and His Eight Screwballs.JPG
Is there a posting of this on YouTube? I would love to hear this song. Thanks! Mark
Sure, I have it on YouTube.
https://youtu.be/sEiu-PWPA3k

AmberolaAndy
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Re: What is the weirdest recording you own?

Post by AmberolaAndy »

Most of the “weird” recordings I have are on acetate discs. One of the strangest was a duodisc record I found in a bing crosby christmas album that contained some risqué skits. One side about marines in Honolulu.. The other side I guess I would call a dirty version of “Cohen On The Telephone.” (nothing too explicit just stupid double entendres.) Another one I have is a gathering of some people around the late 1940s or early 1950s (presumably drunk) singing “My Wild Irish Rose” And “Hail Hail The Gangs All Here” On the other side, the same people drunk (probably at the end of a party) and trying to get their messages in. I’ll probably post a video of that record later.

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

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