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I bought a Bix Beiderbecke record on ebay. Rhythm King-Somebody Stole my Gal are the titles and it has not been delivered. What I wanted to find out is something about the Brunswick reissue records. They are priced reasonably, but are they inferior to the original records? I will find out in a few days, but I wanted to get opinions from the collector community. Are they electrically recorded? Thanks.

audiophile102 wrote:I bought a Bix Beiderbecke record on ebay. Rhythm King-Somebody Stole my Gal are the titles and it has not been delivered. What I wanted to find out is something about the Brunswick reissue records. They are priced reasonably, but are they inferior to the original records? I will find out in a few days, but I wanted to get opinions from the collector community. Are they electrically recorded? Thanks.

If they are like the other Bruswick sets I've heard the recordings are dubs- good ones but dubs.

They're not all dubs.

I don't know about this particular recording, but I got the impression somewhere that many reissues done in the same format as the original were done using original masters. (What percentage I have no idea.) Even where that is the case, though, original pressings seem to be more valued by collectors.

Clay

The reissues / pressings that started coming out in the early 40's used to be fairly undervalued compared to originals, but I believe that is changing somewhat as the supply of good originals is getting scarcer. If you're talking about reissues pressed from original parts and not dubs, which are still regarded as basically trash.

One of the prime movers behind the first large scale reissue campaign at Columbia in the early 1940's - one Mr. George Avakian - is still alive. He's a welter of stories about the old days. You can find his name inside those old Columbia 78 albums.

I have had the record for a few days now and I'm really glad I bought it. It's really loud, even more than my VE records. I would buy another if the price was right. I paid $10 which included the shipping.

Next time, instead of just buying one record, buy the whole album. these sets came out in albums of four records each and you can usually buy the whole album for about $5 to $10. I own many of these sets on Brunswick, Columbia, and Victor records with artists like Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Cab Calloway, McKinney's Cotton Pickers, Duke Ellington, etc. The albums also come with a flyer with good information on the music.

marcapra wrote:Next time, instead of just buying one record, buy the whole album. these sets came out in albums of four records each and you can usually buy the whole album for about $5 to $10. I own many of these sets on Brunswick, Columbia, and Victor records with artists like Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Cab Calloway, McKinney's Cotton Pickers, Duke Ellington, etc. The albums also come with a flyer with good information on the music.

Yes, I have seen the sets before for sale. Now that I know how great they sound I will try and snag a few. I understand why collectors would value the original pressings, because the re-issues seem a bit like re-mastered CDs. I'm not so much a purest and I do like a bargain. Like my heroine, Florence Foster Jenkins, music is my life! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6ubiUIxbWE

audiophile102 wrote: Like my hero, Florence Foster Jenkins, music is my life! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6ubiUIxbWE

Well, grammatically speaking, it's "Like my heroine," but gender references are out of fashion at the moment. The Pride of Wilkes-Barre lives!

Not all of them are remastered or dubbed. I think Victor sets tend to be more remastered than the Columbia and Brunswick sets. Some of them, such as the Columbia sets, appear to be actual re-pressings from the original masters. I know because I compared the original Columbia Viva Tonal of a Ted Lewis record, and the the Columbia re-issue had the identical grooves and markings as the original record.