Joseph C Smith Anyone?

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phonogfp
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Re: Joseph C Smith Anyone?

Post by phonogfp »

You guys are right on the beam. Fifty years ago I was listening to Joseph Smith and Paul Whiteman (and other common bands) on a Victrola XI I found at a yard sale for $15. There was a special magic in those far-off, uninformed experiences.

Despite lots of study and many wonderful acquisitions over the past half-century, nothing has felt quite the same. I envy newbies that experience.

George P.

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Wolfe
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Re: Joseph C Smith Anyone?

Post by Wolfe »

A perennial favorite of mine is the Smith band doing W.C. Handy's Yellow Dog Blues, featuring the 'laughing trombone' of Harry Raderman. https://youtu.be/L0DiU69NFVA

The Songs Of The Night Archeophone disc looks worth buying. The 78 transfers are good.

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gramophone-georg
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Re: Joseph C Smith Anyone?

Post by gramophone-georg »

phonogfp wrote:You guys are right on the beam. Fifty years ago I was listening to Joseph Smith and Paul Whiteman (and other common bands) on a Victrola XI I found at a yard sale for $15. There was a special magic in those far-off, uninformed experiences.

Despite lots of study and many wonderful acquisitions over the past half-century, nothing has felt quite the same. I envy newbies that experience.

George P.
Well, it was quite a different time, too. We didn't have the Internet which was a huge leap forward both in knowledge and access to records, yet takes most of the magic of discovery away.

I remember as a kid riding my bike in search of records- antique stores looked down on them and thrifts seemed to be a better place to find them. Being ignorant, I thought 1930s records labeled as "Victor" rather than "RCA Victor" were the REALLY old ones.

One day I discovered a 12" record with a SCROLL label that said... wow... Victor Talking Machine Co. on it. Then later I found my first Batwing- Lambert Murphy's "Tell Me". First Columbia Flags- "Titina" by Ben Selvin and "Anybody Here Want To Try My Cabbage" by Maggie Jones.... and on and on. There was always something new to discover, it seemed.

Then, one day, I discovered some records recorded on one side only... WOW! Life just kept getting better and better. I remember finding a really thick Edison record one day. The thick ones are the REALLY old ones, right? I lugged it home and played it on my Columbia Kilosphere hi- fi, but it sounded really faint and far away. Well, it WAS, after all, really OLD so even that faint sound must have been quite something at the time, right? And, it was SO old, the artist was listed as "Band"! :lol:

I remember deciding that, with absolutely no basis for doing so, that Scroll records must have started in 1920, and all records were close to whatever patent date might show on the labels. :lol:

Funny thing was I was sure I was the only geek who even cared about any of this stuff. Everyone else seemed to be eager to get RID of these records, and neither knew nor cared about any of the history behind them- they were just recently outdated junk.

I've learned more about these things since about 1997 than I knew in the first 30 years I collected.

Oh, and my first JCS records were "A Young Man's Fancy" and "That Naughty Waltz", I think. I must have been around 10 or 11.
"He who dies with the most shellac wins"- some nutty record geek

I got PTSD from Peter F's avatar

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Wolfe
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Re: Joseph C Smith Anyone?

Post by Wolfe »

Coming off his late 'teens period of high popularity, Smith's recording career seemed to nosedive fairly quickly. His last Victor records were in 1922 and Wikipedia says he last recorded in 1925.

I've never come across any of his Brunswick sides.

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