The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

Came across someone locally selling 100 Blue Amberols on Craigslist at a little over $2 each. All I asked was that they weren’t all Hawaiian music... brought them home tonight and started going through. Several fox trots, a lot of Billy Murray and some good ones I didn’t have before, Lindbergh (The Eagle of the U.S.A.)
The older lady I bought them from said her German grandfather learned to speak English from them, figured it was embellished a bit but there are probably a dozen or so German cylinders in there. Very fun, I have never come across anywhere near that many cylinders locally here and bought without going through so opening them up was like opening up 100 Christmas presents.
Would be interested if the rest of you commonly run in to finds like this with cylinders or if it is as uncommon for you as it is in TX

Commonly, no, especially a lot of that size. I think the biggest local haul I got was when I bought a cylinder cabinet that had 140 Blue Amberols in it. I've bought 50-ish at once maybe twice. This is all within the last 10 years.

I have a huge amount of cylinders and it's only about 80% Hawaiian music. I wonder why Hawaiian music was so popular then? Maybe because it was new and for them very exotic? Maybe they put up Hawaiian travel posters in their living rooms when they listened to it? Some of the Hawaiian music is highly desirable, for example, the Mid-Pacific Islanders group that sing authentic Hawaiian folk songs on Edison electric DDs.

A local antique store I go to has hundreds of them, but I’ve not encountered much outside that store. I’ve seen them listed on Craigslist a time or two but my lack of transportation keeps me from getting to them. I’ve found more Diamond Discs in other places locally than any cylinders.

edison phonographs wrote:Several fox trots, a lot of Billy Murray and some good ones I didn’t have before, Lindbergh (The Eagle of the U.S.A.)

Nice haul! List a few more of the good ones.

marcapra wrote:I wonder why Hawaiian music was so popular then?

Here's a quick read...
http://theappendix.net/issues/2014/10/t ... n-invasion

James.

Not commonly. I see the scraggly few cylinders at the antique store once in awhile. But I haven't been to any antique stores in awhile.

There was one place I stopped into that had a whole bunch of BA's and a few wax cylinders for sale. Maybe 50 in all. I bought a Cortina Language cylinder there. But that was 4-5 years ago.

Roaring20s wrote:

edison phonographs wrote:Several fox trots, a lot of Billy Murray and some good ones I didn’t have before, Lindbergh (The Eagle of the U.S.A.)

Nice haul! List a few more of the good ones.

My favorite so far is "A Red Headed Widow Was The Cause of It All"
That is some early county music if I've ever heard country music

That's a nice selection of records.

James.