Re: [F_minor] Sort of OT: Collecting Classical Records

["Robert Merkin" <bobmerk@earthlink.net>]

By the time my family graduated beyond our Webcor multi-stack vinyl
(including 45s and 78s!) record changer, my brother and I had Scotch-taped
about $1.50 of US coins to the tonearm. Replacement needles were, in order
of cheapness, steel, osmium, sapphire, diamond. We were usually peeling the
vinyl from the grooves with steel.

My older brother got it for Christmas, along with the very first record
that it ever played, which was then a Smash Hit: "Rock Around The Clock" by
Bill Halley and His Comets. Yup, it was a 45, but I forget what was on the
flip side. You could buy adapters of bright-colored plastic for the the big
center hole in 45s for about 10 cents.

Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band would end all his concerts by quieting
the audience to a hush, and then would whisper one word: Webcor.

Peter Goldmark was the chief engineer/scientist for Columbia/CBS records.
One night in the early 1950s friends invited him over to their NYC
apartment to listen to a brand-new recording of a Mahler (I think)
symphony. Goldmark was mesmerized by the beautiful music, when suddenly
KA-CHUNK! WHIRR! KER-PLOP! the primitive record changer stopped everything
to drop the next 78 rpm disk onto the turntable. And did it three more
times before the symphony ended, probably with an Intermission to turn the
stack upside down.

First thing Monday morning, Goldmark gathered all his elves together and
instructed them to invent a new vinyl format, with just two "hard points":

1. It had to play symphony-length music without any damn interruption

2. The fidelity had to be a lot better than current 78s.

Within the year, CBS introduced the 33 1/3 Hi-Fi LP. Within a year or two,
they added Stereo.

Does anybody know if Goldmark and Gould knew each other? Goldmark had a
very long tenure as Top Audio Nerd/Boffin at CBS, and Gould would have
already been the label's classical young rising star, and doubtless was
already deeply interested in technical and engineering questions. Goldmark
would have been the Go-To Guy.

I own the last 78 ever manufactured, an unbelievably heavy and thick
Bakelite recording of "Keep on Truckin'" by (the underground cartoonist)
Robert Crumb. I think "Wisconsin Wiggle" is on the flip side. 

I think Monty Python's 3-Sided Record (a 33 1/3 with three sides) is also
around here somewhere.

Bob

http://VleeptronZ.blogspot.com/


> [Original Message]
> From: Brad Lehman <bpl@umich.edu>
> To: F-minor <f_minor@email.rutgers.edu>
> Date: 1/25/2007 1:05:18 PM
> Subject: Re: [F_minor] Sort of OT: Collecting Classical Records
>
> > of an overgeneralization?! Aren't there a couple of Glenn Gould records 
> > that are worth quite a bit? (OK, one of them was a special case because 
> > it was a small flexible LP found inside a magazine.)
>
> Ah, the Piano Quarterly soundsheet.  I remember listening to that thing 
> on a library's turntable, back in about 1982, and piling a couple of 
> coins onto it so it wouldn't slip....  Anyway, it's just a short excerpt 
> from the Tim Page / GG pseudo-interview about the 1981 Goldbergs, and 
> the whole thing is now available in the "A State of Wonder" CD set.
>
> Which is quite apart from any value that the original square piece of 
> plastic, the soundsheet itself, might have accrued.
>
>
> Brad Lehman



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