The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I found this un-labelled 78 in my collection this afternoon. I forgot I had it.

Unlabelled, flexible vinyl - I guess it dates to the early 50s but my question is "Why?"

Were these available as private orders through special men's magazines? It's pretty tame by today's standards, but listener/viewer beware - there's plenty of innuendo on this disk.

Enjoy? Regards, Glenn.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfM-R-0FRbE[/youtube]

What a cute record. It sounds Australian to me, so I'm guessing it was either pressed by AWA or ARC.
Does it have a matrix number in the dead wax?
All my ARC's have a hand written matrix starting with "MX", & the AWA's have a hand written matrix starting with "AW", but they also carry a machine printed "A" somewhere in the dead wax.
All my EMI associated labels have a machine typed matrix.
Apart from those 3, I don't know of any other company who was pressing in vinyl in the late 40's & 50's.
I'm not sure these would have been sold in a mens magazine etc though. Ruth Wallis was threatened with arrest & her records confiscates when she arrived here, so I'm pretty sure this recording would have been classed as illegal. Probably why the label is blank. It may not even have a matrix number or start with the MX/AW prefix to avoid company identification. I doubt many would have been pressed or survive.

It's pretty tame compared to one I put on youtube. It's on the American Stag label, and the female singer doesn't hold back on letting the F's & C's fly.
I won't post the link here, but if you go to youtube and type XXX gramophone in the search bar it'll come up. The song is called "Tootlin' Gal", and it's pretty crude even by todays standards.

I heard these were called party records. I have several of them. One thing I noticed on them, the plainer the record, the raunchier it gets. The printed label that says Play Time or Party Time,etc, are tame compared to labels drawn in ink. These records were ordered from Men's magazine. The sound quality is so-so, but they sure are funny. I think I'll play a couple on my open horned Victor "Pornograph"
Harvey Kravitz

There was a big market for these. Liberty Music Shop had quite a number in their catalogue in the mid thirties featuring Bruz Fletcher and Ray Bourbon both very gay. Bourbon especially wears very well and the material is just silly enough to be really funny. Dwight Fiske's uber-droll musical monologues with his own piano accompaniment have never appealed to me although he was very popular in New York as a lounge artist in the 30's and 40's. He was issued on the Fiskiana label ( processed by Victor, I believe. ) Charlie Drew( " singing songs your grandmother never knew") appeared on the Gala label. I am amazed at the number I've turned up over the years here in staid old Toronto. His Caviar Comes From Virgin Sturgeon was a big hit from the number I've found in the piles of 78's.

Jim

Shane, your video is hilarious - I had never imagined anything like that would have existed on 78! My un-labelled 78 is tame compared to that...I thought it was Australian until on side two the 'lady' asks for twenty dollars - and I'm sure this record is not post-decimalization (1966)...the only marking is "URI".

I found Dwight Fiske on the Internet Archive : http://www.archive.org/details/DwightFiske-78Collection

how sad that my 100th post [above] on "TMF" was about slightly pornographic records!

I was thinking that no label on a record such as this would draw a lot of attention to itself if it had been intercepted in the post...they would possibly have been ignored if they had some fake label on them pretending that the music thereon was something obscure - perhaps "Andante in B flat, played on the world's oldest organ"... sometimes I make myself laugh.

Interesting, kind of tedious.

I don't know about "guys in smoking jackets" sitting around listening to this. Rather a bunch of middle aged Archie Bunkers in someone's basement, playing poker and chuckling over this record newly acquired by one of them, just before they all run home to give their wives a sound rogering.

My personal favorite is Larry Vincent- he was good at keeping his songs just on the side of decency while still being fun.

http://lyrics-az.com/the-kanaka-song-by ... WGbOt.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_luhzvhur5E "The Freckle Song"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBhRgiuw ... re=related "Barnyard Boogie"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJmIrtWG ... re=related "She's got a crush on the Fuller Brush Man"

there was a big market for these records from the beginning of sound recording. After all Sophie Tucker and others made a fortune recording songs that had quite seemingly innocent lyrics but oh, the way they sang them!
In Holland we had one singer who made dozens of 'dirty' records, starting in the early 10s of last century. When censorship came in in the middle to late twenties (probably triggered by the advent of radio) they had to go underground and sell them under the counter. I've seen quite a few of 'party' records and they're very collectible.

Highly recommended!

http://www.archeophone.com/product_info ... ucts_id=90

Just as video-tape pornography drove sales of VCR's in the 1970's and 1980's, early recorded pornography helped drive the growth of coin-operated phonographs and contributed to the rise of the entertainment portion of the industry as opposed to the office dictation portion.