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If I recall correctly both Edison's 4 min cylinders and the 10" diamond discs could play for up to 4 ¾ minutes while their disc competitors max playing time was much less. Yet I've only seen a couple pieces of advertising attempting to capitalize on this. I think I have one piece advertising "two tunes for the price of one" pointing out certain diamond discs with two versions of the same song on one side. I have a couple such diamond discs.

Anybody know more about this or have some advertising they could post?

I have an ad somewhere from 1908 or 1909 touting the wax Amberol as the longest playing record on the market. The graphic was a big clock hand pointing at four minutes and thirty seconds. I'll do some digging....

Jim

Jim,

If you find it and are able to post it would be much appreciated!

Valecnik wrote:If I recall correctly both Edison's 4 min cylinders and the 10" diamond discs could play for up to 4 ¾ minutes while their disc competitors max playing time was much less. Yet I've only seen a couple pieces of advertising attempting to capitalize on this. I think I have one piece advertising "two tunes for the price of one" pointing out certain diamond discs with two versions of the same song on one side. I have a couple such diamond discs.

Anybody know more about this or have some advertising they could post?

Bruce,

I believe that you are referring to the "fox-trot and song" records that Edison introduced in 1924. These records feature approximately 2-½ minutes of dance music followed by 1-½ minutes of a vocal rendition of the same song. The earliest releases contain a full stop between the two segments, while the later ones join the two segments of the song with a musical bridge.

Based on my observations, I don't think that this format lasted for more than a year. However, Edison did record a good number of songs in this format.

In my opinion, there is a marked contrast between the two segments, as the fox-trots are often hot, while the subsequent vocal renditions sound very old-fashioned, in contrast to the hip-sounding vocal refrains on dance records of that time.



Rocky

This isn't the one I was talking about, but in the coninuing search I found this one which has great copy concerning the length of the Amberol record. I will keep looking for the " clock face ' ad. This is from the June 1909 Good Housekeeping Magazine.

Jim...and I STILL haven't got a new scanner to my shame.