Gennett and Klan Recordings on History Detectives

[John Svensson]

I don't know how many others saw "History Detectives" last evening but they featured a search for information about a Klan recording from 1923....."The Jolly Old Klansman", sounds kind of like Santa Klaus. Anyway, the owner of the disc couldn't really tell what it sounded like after trying it on her Brunswick Ultona, so a "78 expert" was called in to play it with a modern Numark turntable and like magic.....it was completely decipherable. The most interesting part of the story was seeing the Gennett Records building still standing in Richmond, Indiana, though quite gutted. Hopefully the faded signage on the side of the building was not a prop for the show. Perhaps some of Indiana board members have been to that site? John

[estott]

http://starrgennett.org/

[VintageTechnologies]

I saw half of that program when the darned telephone rang. Heck! Fortunately, PBS does re-runs. Check your local TV schedule. http://www.titantv.com is great for that.

I have seen a number of those records at shows, but never wanted to pay the asking price. A few have appeared on eBay, but the sellers were very circumspect about what they were selling. I would imagine eBay is much too politically correct to allow such "hate" material in the open. The same probably applies to Nazi materials, but I can personally testify that Soviet era records are no problem at all!

[JHolmesesq]

When I visited a record collector recently, he showed me an LP that was made by the Klan. I found it rather disturbing they made these records in to the LP era

[edisonphonoworks]

Are these a red label with the klan symbol, which I will not repeat. I remember a local antique shop had one with not repeatable titles, at $125.00, in the early 1980s (I was 8 years old when I saw it in the shop.

[John Svensson]

Nauck's had a fairly large collection of them up in his last auction, the listing is posted on his site 78rpm.com. I think the majority of the labels used were red and of course, they did not use the Gennett label. I don't think you can call the "song" titles particularly offensive, in the sense that offensive individual words were not used......the spirit behind them may be another matter though. If I recall from the show, the family that owned the Gennett label/facilities were in fact Italian immigrints and as such would not have been big Klan fans.....they recorded Louis Armstrong's first solo works just days after the disc in that particular show. Money makes strange bedfellows as they say. John

[VintageTechnologies]

Frankly, I think the firestorm over Klan records is a bit over hyped. I have heard a couple of the Klan records, such as "The Firey Cross", and the lyrics on those were so tame that entertainment records by Collins and Harlan or Golden and Hughes seem more offensive by comparison. I think we record collectors sometimes have a better cultural perspective of those historical times than the "experts" on TV.

[estott]

It's a little like Nazi stuff- I've had a lot of 3rd Reich military awards and badges through my hands, and from a design standpoint they are very attractive, and some of them are for things like getting three serious wounds in combat. Still, no matter what they're tainted by association.

[John Svensson]

You should have immediately dropped the $4K for that copy of "Horst Wessel Lied"! That's a sad joke from a deleted thread of about 6 months back.....sorry, not intended to ignite old fires. John