The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

What Diamond Discs do you collect? Any favorites? Do you collect one artist, genre etc.?

I collect mostly popular band tunes (Sousa etc.), some early Collins & Harlan),
mostly some good fox trots from the early 20's and some popular hits from the later 20's. My collection is currently at about 100 records, enough for me right now.

For me, it's interesting popular songs; classical and semi-classical instrumentals; good band music; ragtime and jazz (my favorite); some opera as well.

Bill

My tastes are along the lines of Bill's, with less emphasis on classical and opera where my focus is pretty narrow and skews towards non-Edison shellac for those. I tend to favor entertaining popular songs, Jones and Hare, Billy Murray, Vaughn de Leath, and dance orchestras (BA Rolfe, Duke Yellman, etc.) with emphasis on the mid to late 20s.

I collect it all. It is all music history. It is true some is not so good but some is grate. When I listen to a disc I feel a conection to those artists of so long ago.

Hawaiian records. [no, not really]

I particularly like early country artists like Vernon Dalhart and Epps. Ragtime,jazz,blues and novelty songs are always fun too.I mainly collect Edison cylinders and DD, but have acquired many other brands of records on the way.I would suggest checking out "lazy bones" by Anna chandler. Its one of my favorite dd I own.

Like NE-VICTOR-MAN I find them all interesting glimpses of time gone by, but given the realties of how many titles are out there and that storage space is limited, lately I have narrowed my collecting mostly to the electrically recorded discs. Just for pure enjoyment, I especially like the dance tunes from the 20s.

Clay

I have musically broad taste, so anything can go.

Out 'in the wild' I'm most delighted to come across paper label (and especially) electrically recorded ones. I find more etched label though, Sodero's Band and the kind of stuff that I don't really want.

Like:
- Dance & Jazz from late teens through to the end
- Country, Folk, Dalhart, Stoneman etcetera
- Classical & Operatic
- Marches, Band Music
- Popular, Billy Murray, Collins & Harlan etc.
- Pretty much everything except;

Dislike, (or Unlike)
- Hawaiian
- Xylophone

While I have varied tastes in pre-1930 popular music, I collect mostly '20s dance band on Edison diamond discs. Discs in the 52000 series are usually priced beyond what I'm willing to spend; however, there's a lot of reasonably priced good dance band recordings in the 51000 series.


Rocky