Here is a record that I had almost forgotten about. It came from a number of boxes of records that I bought quite cheaply.
The elderly man who sold them to me told me that the records had belonged to his father, a man from Winnipeg who had played trombone in big bands and who DJed at weddings, mostly Jewish weddings. The records were being sold as a lot, but the man who was selling them said that two people had been there before me, paid him for the lot, and then just took what they wanted from the boxes. So pretty much anything of any monetary value, such as the large number of Klezmer records, was gone. Mostly what was left were common Swing records by the A-List big bands and less common and less interesting Swing records by B and C List big bands. There were more Micky Katz records than I had ever seen in one place. There were enough things of interest left that I bought the boxes and carted them off.
I pulled this strange 10" white label disk out of one of these boxes. The handwritten label on one side reads:
Contest/Farting Contest. The label on the other side is blank. The record appears not to be an acetate, at least not an aluminium/lacquer one. It appears to be made of an early shellac substitute, heavier and less flexible than vinyl and with different resonant properties if you tap it with a finger nail. There are no identifying numbers or letters in the run-out area.
The labelled side seems to be what it claims to be, a farting contest with sportscaster-like commentary on volume, tone, timbre, and aroma.
The unlabelled side is a scatological/flatulent skit,
Lady Windermere's Fan (after the Oscar Wilde play), which focuses on the Lady's
wind.
The production values are quite professional, as are the voices, perhaps not those of professional actors but those of trained radio people. The dialect features of the voices are probably Canadian. Modest amounts of alcohol may have been involved in the production.
I am highly unlikely ever to discover anything certain about this record.
