The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Listened to a couple of the Speak-O-Phone records expecting to hear some out of tune home singing and instead they are pretty good. They are records that were evidently made for radio station WIL St Louis. Piano music by Clinnie Dill Pavlick and various singers and a couple of sketches similar to Burns and Allen stuff. One of the larger ones says radio WIL. Only one page on the net talking about the history of this station and it mentions Clinnie.

phonogal wrote:Listened to a couple of the Speak-O-Phone records expecting to hear some out of tune home singing and instead they are pretty good. They are records that were evidently made for radio station WIL St Louis. Piano music by Clinnie Dill Pavlick and various singers and a couple of sketches similar to Burns and Allen stuff. One of the larger ones says radio WIL. Only one page on the net talking about the history of this station and it mentions Clinnie.

These are unusually early for radio recordings. Speak-O-Phone started in 1928, and while they continued making personal recordings at record booths until about 1941, were on their way out of the home recording business as early as 1932 with the introduction of RCA Victor's system, followed by Philco and Recordio's introduction of lacquered discs in 1938.

I love hearing the vintage radio stuff. Some of that audio will never be heard again except by those of us who have the "hard copy" in hand.

Any chance of sharing some of the audio with us if its not too much trouble?

travisgreyfox wrote:I love hearing the vintage radio stuff. Some of that audio will never be heard again except by those of us who have the "hard copy" in hand.

Any chance of sharing some of the audio with us if its not too much trouble?

I would be glad to share if I can find a way to play them and get the volume to record. The volume is very low with a fiber needle on the one machine I tried to play them on. I tried a turntable but the needle isn't the correct size. I have another 50's player that I can try. Anybody have more ideas? I don't want to ruin them.

You have the same problem as I do with these. I use a little cheap crosley player, but it never sounds good and is always very hard to hear. It seems we need to get a nice USB record player that accepts different size needles.