I stumbled across a post on facebook while browsing from nearly a year ago from a lady who said she had a collection of cylinder records, no way to play them and was looking to sell them, the chances were slim, but I decided to message and see if she still had them, she did! I went over to look at them today as she lived just a 10 minute walk from me and was very pleased with what I saw!
The story goes that she knew a man who had recently passed away at 84 with no children and she was involved in liquidating the estate, from what I heard, the place sounded like a living museum.
The house was built in 1890 and the man's grandfather bought the house when it was only partly built and had been in the same family for 130 years until last year when the man passed, by how it sounded, the family had a bit of money and they were interested in the latest and the best, I was told of a beautiful piano that had succumbed to woodworm, fabulous furniture and other relics of a time gone by, which included these cylinders.
The family had obviously chosen cylinder as the favored format as there were signs of every cylinder age, including wax amberol, blue amberol, 2 minute wax...
Some of the 2 minutes have some mould, mainly some of the Pathé ones, but most of them should be very playable, there are a few interesting ones in there.
But the family had been in that house since 1890, so included in the lot were these...
7 Gorgeous 1890's brown wax cylinder's, including 3 by Russell Hunting, two of those as his character Michael Casey, 6 of the cylinders are wonderful, the couple I've played so far play loud and clear and wonderfully, one of the cylinders (3rd from the left) has unfortunately had much of its grooves worn away so the sound on it has been much erased, I shan't be shaving it though, theres still snippets of something there, which creates a bit of a mystery.
I NEVER find cylinders where I live, not even blue amberols, so this was an unheard of find for me and I feel very fortunate to have found them.
Here is a video of one of the Russell Hunting brown wax cylinders entitled "A Good Horse But Thin", it is very clear, it is possible to understand almost every word.
(Double-click the video above or click this link to go to the video on YouTube.)