Obscure Oldies

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not old to me

I Roy - World On Fire [Virgin LP, 1978]

Hortense Ellis - Mark My Words

Althea & Donna - Uptown Top Ranking

totp?
Susan Cadogan ~ Hurt So Good 1975

Jackie Mittoo & the Skatalites - El Bang Bang.

Jackie Mittoo - Wall Street

...I get the free Pandora, yeah, some interestingly obscure stuff will come up - But if you stay with a channel for a long time you'll tend to.hear the same songs repeated!







Here"]Anybody subscribe to http://www.pandora.com? Pandora.com serves as a music recommender service; that is it's possible to discover (or rediscover) obscure oldies through requesting the more known songs/artists.

It can be fun to listen to obscure oldies esp. when drawing parallels as to how obscure earlier styles may have evolved over the years to become incorporated into the more recent known works![/quote]

_________________
Renal kidney failure, congestive heart failure, COPD. Can't really get up from a floor position unhelped anymore:-(.
One of the walking wounded ~ SMASHED DOWN by life and age, now prevented from even expressing myself! SOB.
" Oh, no! First you have to PROVE you deserve to go away to college! " ~ My mother, 1978 (the heyday of Andy Gibb and Player). I would still like to go.
My life destroyed by Thorazine and Mellaril - and rape - and the Psychiatric/Industrial Complex. SOB:-(! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !!

АРКАДИЙ СЕВЕРНЫЙ МУРКА

Arkady Severny Аркадий Северный: кругом одни евреи

Bootsy's Rubber Band - I'd Rather Be With You (Live 1976) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSnbV1FrIhA
another great : Parliament Funkadelic - Swing Down Sweet Chariot - Mothership Connection - Houston 1976
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zEfIkuTtzQ4

Marcia Strassman was an actress known for her rules as Nurse Cutler on the TV show "M*A*S*H" , Mrs. Kotter on the TV show "Welcome Back Kotter" and the wife of the Rick Moranis character on the "Honey I Shrunk" movie series.

This song while only getting to number 105 on the national charts got to the top 5 in San Diego, San Francisco, and Vancouver markets.


I can understand this being big in San Francisco in '67, but San Diego a Navy town?

"Auto Hop" by Wick Graig and the Autochords 1960
"Sandstorm" by Johnny and the Hurricanes 1960
synthesized songs by Perrey and Kingsley (early days of electronic music)

Early days of synthesized music, that's nice--I like being able to find old NOvachord records from the 1940s sometimes.

Here are some personal old-time favorites from the earliest days of recorded music. These are some songs from my collection--I used to play them on a mixture of ancient phonographs.

It's kind of easy. You get in the rhythm of selecting your disc or cylinder, putting it on the top works of your phonograph, then setting the needle and getting ready to play it. Then comes the real work: cranking over the starting-handle to charge the mainspring. Once it's tight pull the brake lever, drop the needle down on the record, and step back as it finds its groove. The early Victor records don't have lead-in grooves so the steel needle just slides in--thud!--right into the record start. An Edison machine runs on a feed screw like a linear tracking turntable, so it grinds away at 160 rpm, belts flying and gears spinning, until it finds the start and begins to play. And a Columbia Graphophone, at least the old horn models, is a recalcitrant old dear to get running but sounds surprisingly pleasant considering the tonearm resembles a bathtub spigot!


"Snow White" by Walt Disney--(Australian Symphony Orchestra, 1937)
I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise (Paul Whiteman, 1925)
La Veeda (Art Hickman Dance Orch., 1920)
Down South, Fox-trot (B.A.Rolfe & the Palais d'Or Dance Orch., 1929)
Taxi! One-Step (Joseph C. Smith & His Orchestra, 1920)
Infanta March (Banjo Solo, Fred Van Eps, 1912)
Nobody (Arthur Collins, baritone, 1909)
Put On Your Slippers & Fill Up Your Pipe (Miss Ada Jones, 19-?)
The Horse Trot (Natl. Promenade Band, 1913)
My Lady of the Telephone (Sam Ash & Quintet, 1915)
Lindbergh--The Eagle of the U.S.A. (I forgot the singer but it was in 1927)
Hallelujah! Fox Trot from "Hit the Deck" (Nat Shilkret Dance Orch., 1927)
Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, (Arthur Pryor's Concert Band, 1921)
Rhapsody In Blue (George Gershwin & Paul Whiteman's Orch., 1924 and 1928)
Wreck of the Old 97 (Vernon Dalhart, 1925)

There are many others but this list right here would make for quite a pleasant evening in a Morris chair listening to the gramophone. For a more modern twist I enjoy my 1929 Atwater-Kent metal radio, try to fix my Crosley 1938 table radio, and contemplate the purchase of a little bakelite Detrola or a Wells-Gardner from the 30s or 40s.

Hi Borromeo, sounds like you have quite an interest in the old so-called talking machines. I have a couple ... an old table top RCA Victor and a Sears Silvertone stand up cabinet model. I love a lot of the musical selections you listed ... very interesting.

Hi Glider--yes, I do like the old phonographs! I've got too many of them but it's fine. Yesterday I listened to a 1939 recording of Beethoven's Sixth on my Columbia Grafonola portable.

Your "tabletop RCA Victor" probably isn't really an RCA if it's a mechanical machine. The Victor Talking Machine Company only sold out to Radio Corp. of America in 1929 after the stock market crashed. Does yours have the big horn on top for amplification? If so, it's a Victor Talking Machine (and rare & valuable.) Does it have doors on the front to open up & let the sound out? If so, then it's a Victor Victrola--not usually so rare but I'd have to see it anyway or at least see what's on the ID tag. Victrolas were built in tabletop form from 1910 to 1929 and generally sounded quite pleasant.

The Sears Silvertone machine is worth keeping. You won't make a ton selling it unless it's a very ornate cabinet. But they generally will run for years and years and sound wonderful because of their extremely good craftsmanship, almost approaching that of the Victor Talking Machines (and sometimes surpassing them!)

Have the motors been serviced recently, and are the reproducers rebuilt? They're only really good to use when all these have been tuned up. It will make your machines last longer and your records, too. Also, I hope you are changing the needle after each play. Most folks don't realize that a 78rpm disc machine uses a fresh steel needle each record. If it's a Pathe sapphire disc, it uses a jeweled ball stylus and if it's an Edison Diamond Disc it should have a diamond pointed stylus, and for Pathe and Edison discs the reproducer should be turned to the "vertical cut" position. Your Victrola won't have that option because they figured you'd be playing Victor Records anyway (lateral cut, steel needle) but Silvertone usually had options for the other discs.

I used to have the adaptor to play Pathe & Edison Records on a Silvertone but gave it to a collector friend. If I had another I'd send it to you.

Pictures?

Hi Borromeo. The tabletop one is a whitish color, no horn, and has two doors which open on the front. Both it and the Silvertone sat in a storage building for nearly 40 years without ever having played a record. They belonged to my grandparents. I got them along with a bunch of the old records. Both of them worked. I did nothing more with the tabletop one, but a lady I knew who worked with antiques refinished the cabinet to bring it back to a condition and appearance it had when it was new. We inspected the workings and were surprised at the condition of them ... very good. The machine had actually had very little use since my grandparents had generally used the tabletop machine instead. Thanks for all of the information.

Hm. The white color isn't original but it's common that they be repainted by some old-time decorators. If you like it, keep the color on there! Victor never painted them so it's cool to see them in nice custom finishes.

The Silvertone is worth keeping around, especially in that condition.

Just because they work doesn't mean they are fit to keep running--it's pretty easy to rebuild the reproducers in them. The old motors use a graphite-and-vaseline mixture for grease that is better replaced by modern lubricants.

You sound like you got a nice collection! I wish I was able to end up with some of the machines my family once owned: unfortunately, they had all been lost to time. Your collection, with provenance like that, is priceless and I'm glad you've still got the old family phonographs.

This song is dedicated to most of the top 40 and rock DJ’s of the 60s and 70s who helped keep me an undiagnosed autistic sane at time there were no support forums.



This song is notable because Darryl Hall and future members of MFSB played on it. It got into the top 20 during the fall of 1969.