Vintage Self-Recorded 78s! (1940's-50's)

 

Something very unique today!

I struggled with what to call this small collection of records that I've acquired in recent years.  "Amateur 78s" wasn't right, because it makes it sounds like these are song demos.  "Home-made Recordings" wasn't right either, because I believe one of these was made in a professional setting.  I couldn't even say "Cardboard Records," because one of them isn't!  So, I settled for the awkward "Self-Recorded 78s." It'll have to do.

It's hard to believe, but it was much easier to make a record in your own home in the early 1950's than it is today, because of the portable machines that made it possible.  Of course, they sounded terrible, due to several reasons.  One was crappy, built-in microphones, one was the media itself (which was usually coated cardboard), and one was the weighty steel needles of record players of the time, which destroyed them.

But, still, you could make a record!  If I would've been there back then, it would've been my life's mission at the time to make it happen as often as possible.  

Here was one way:  the Wilcox-Gay Recordio company was one of the most successful producers of cardboard records and portable recorders, which weren't much bigger than the average suitcase players of the day.  They ingeniously invented a vending machine [seen here at this site] where, for the princely sum of FIVE CENTS, you could speak into a telephone receiver and make a one-minute recording on a 6.5-inch disc, which then supplied you with an envelope to drop it right into the mail.  And this is the first type of record we will look at today.

1) Coin Recordio-Gram (dated 1948); unknown It's also the worst record we will look at today.  I've cleaned it, opened grooves with a magnifying lens, scrubbed it with software, run it through AI, and it still sounds terrible. In fact, the thing was so warped, I had to devise a method to even get it to play smoothly, so I resorted to a disc of corkboard and thumbtacks! That part worked.

I believe that this is a woman recording her little boy, presumably for his dad, who may be away, possibly in the U.S. Navy (about 2/3 of the way in, you can hear him say "Hello, all you land-lubbers!"), but that's just me presuming a lot.  If anyone has any other insight as to what's being said, I'm all ears. Otherwise, it's an onslaught of noise, and a good example of how these records aged.  You can see how crazed and cracked it was in the scan.  (Also, it doesn't ever appear to have been mailed, hmmm...)

2) Presto Recording Disc (1954); Janette Bryniarski 

Don't worry though, it's about to get much more audible.  These are two sides recorded a couple months apart in 1954, where the young lady named above reads a paragraph about her grandfather, then speaks about her job at a glass company. As many times as I've listened to this recording, it only recently dawned on me what's going on here.  

At the end of the first side, she says that she finally decided to do something about her accent and soft-spokeness, to help her in her job...and I realized that she was undergoing some sort of elocution lessons by a professional.  In fact, I had never noticed before how much more confident she sounded on the second side, weeks later.

Besides being recorded in someone's office, this recording benefits from being made on a Presto disc, which was an 8-inch piece of aluminum coated with lacquer, and thus has survived in much better quality than its cardboard cousins.

I even found some info about the speaker on an ancestry website.  She lived from 1923-1998 and was from the Detroit Wayne area of Michigan.  And I certainly hope that the confidence she acquired through these exercises helped her in her job and her life, which we've gotten to hear a small part of.

3) Recordio Disc (no date); Uncle Norwood & the Lavender Family  

This last disc was made at home to show off the recording machine to a visiting family member.  This is an 8-inch, two-sided recording disc, that is also coated cardboard.  It was obviously stored in decent conditions over the years (probably forgotten about).  On the first side, Uncle Norwood is allowed to bloviate about anything he sees, as well as revert back to his former job as a salesman of freezer cases, until time runs out.  What's interesting about these machines was, if you stopped the recording at any time, it automatically created a locked groove.  It causes some unnatural and entertaining samples.

The second side is called "Daddy & I," which is a young lady (the "I," I take it) singing a song I couldn't identify (perhaps original), and then she and her father doing a responsive reading from a Psalm.  

Really, these are all little glimpses into peoples' lives, and I'll bet they'd all be stunned to find out that these records survived, and that people are hearing and preserving them decades later.  You do want to hear them, don't you? Of course you do! And now you can:

LINK: Self-Recorded 78s