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Was playing through a new (to me) batch of Diamond Discs yesterday and came across No. 82541, Ai Nostri Monti from Il Trovatore. What was odd about it is that there were grooves on the opposite side, but no label. When I played it, it turned out to be a narrative giving the plot outline of the opera, where this particular song occurs along that plot line, and a bit about the two singers.

Was this something Edison often did with opera recordings?

Clay

This was fairly common on some Edison "serious" music discs. The only "rarity" factor is that Edison did not sell a large volume of operatic and symphonic music.

Many of the more expensive opera and classical discs (mostly in the 82500 and 83000 series) had an "explanatory talk" on one side, usually if not always by Harry Humphrey. On the etched labels like yours, there is no label for the talk, just the grooves. The paper labels do say "Explanatory Talk".

It's also worth noting that for a short time, some of these discs were issued with absolutely nothing on the other side. These one-sided discs are rarely seen. I've only seen 2 in the last year, and one of those was unplayable due to lamination cracks.

Edison did quite a few operatic selections like yours. Harry E. Humphrey was the speaker, he was Edison's staff elocutionist & did things like "Santa Claus Hides In Your Phonograph" with the same matter of fact tone. His talks are usually rather dull, but he generally says a little about the performer- which is good because Edison often left such details as the singer's name off of the label!

I picked up ~140 early DDs with an A250 some time back. Mostly operatic, many "frosty" labels, one sided with explanatory talk, only about a half dozen paper labels in the whole bunch. Almost all of them were in excellent condition with one problem... ~%80 percent of them had delamination cracks on one or both sides of the record...

Valecnik wrote:I picked up ~140 early DDs with an A250 some time back. Mostly operatic, many "frosty" labels, one sided with explanatory talk, only about a half dozen paper labels in the whole bunch. Almost all of them were in excellent condition with one problem... ~%80 percent of them had delamination cracks on one or both sides of the record...

Oh, nasty. I am wondering if they hadn't been exposed to a damp environment.

Clay

FloridaClay wrote:Was playing through a new (to me) batch of Diamond Discs yesterday and came across No. 82541, Ai Nostri Monti from Il Trovatore. What was odd about it is that there were grooves on the opposite side, but no label. When I played it, it turned out to be a narrative giving the plot outline of the opera, where this particular song occurs along that plot line, and a bit about the two singers.

Was this something Edison often did with opera recordings?

Clay

I've come across the same thing on UK issued Aeolian Vocalion opera discs.

I have the Skylark record like this by Ellen Beach Yaw. I think these are fairly early. Am I right in saying that to me 1912-1914 Edison Diamond discs have very quiet surfaces and a very rich sound, and then records from 1915-1919 are very noisy and even the square shield records from 1920 those seem to be noisier than the white label records. starting in 1921.