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ARSCLIST  January 2011

ARSCLIST January 2011

Subject:

Re: How many 78s to the Matrix

From:

George Brock-Nannestad <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 15:48:21 +0100

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (332 lines)

From: Patent Tactics, George Brock-Nannestad


Hi Tom and Ted,

many years ago I called up an old journalist who had expressed himself 
according to similar lines that you take: that it is unimaginable that a 
particular commercially sold recording can just disappear. I tried to educate 
him about the social differences in 1930s-50s shellac record consumption that 
became apparent in the second-hand market in the 1980s (and in Denmark, at 
that). It was quite obvious that certain short-lived pop tunes (including 
certain local "music hall" records with a documented sale of less than 200) 
invariably turned up in very worn condition, whereas classical records (in 
particular 12" records) were frequently in good condition. There seemed to be 
a basis for considering that the pop tunes had been played to death when they 
were bought, because that was the only record they had until they could buy 
another in a week or a month. The classical records were from better-off 
homes where you could afford to buy a good selection of records and did not 
have to wear them out for entertainment until you could afford some more. The 
difference in use pattern was also apparent from the record covers. That 
would not be the case anymore, because no more primary collections come on 
the second-hand (junk shop) market. When 78s are found in junk shop nowadays 
they are from more or less accomplished collectors, and the covers are 
definitely second or third hand and not the ones in which they were 
distributed. This is a Scandinavian experience; in the US things may be 
different.

Needless to say, he did not believe one word of what I had told him.

Kind regards,


George





> Hi Ted:
> 
> I have no doubts about obscure tiny-label records being lost. But then
> again, it amazes me how many 
> regional soul songs from the 60's and 70's are turning up on CD's nowadays,
> oftentimes as dubs from 
> vinyl since the master tapes are gone. That makes my point that if something
> is in commercial 
> release, it's pretty hard for it to just disappear without a trace. Regional
> releases are easier to 
> disappear because they are regional and probably not too many hundred were
> ever out in the field. 
> But in the case of Paramount, even though it was a small record company,
> they went to the trouble of 
> booking sessions, of hunting down these blues guys, of getting the blues
> guys to a studio where the 
> blues guys had to travel (either to Grafton or to Gennett's studio, etc).
> And they had an organized 
> studio with organized studio logs. So these weren't demos or band-financed
> one-offs like many of the 
> obscure soul singles from more recent times. And Paramount had a sales and
> distribution network. So 
> again I say, for no copies of a record to exist I have my doubts the record
> was ever for actual 
> retail transaction.
> 
> -- Tom Fine
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Ted Kendall" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Monday, January 24, 2011 8:26 AM
> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] How many 78s to the Matrix
> 
> 
> > Granted, the Paramount case is a perfect storm, but I think there was also
> a minor American label 
> > issue of "Stormy Weather" from about 1952 which has similarly vanished -
> Peter Copeland gave 
> > details in his book "Sound Recordings."
> >
> >
> >
> > ----- Original Message ----- 
> > From: "Tom Fine" <[log in to unmask]>
> > To: <[log in to unmask]>
> > Sent: Monday, January 24, 2011 11:45 AM
> > Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] How many 78s to the Matrix
> >
> >
> >> Thanks Roger, and Ted. This is interesting reading. I still can't believe
> that if a record was 
> >> actually sold at retail and made it "out into the wild" that it just
> disappeared without a trace, 
> >> no copies exist anywhere and none ever existed to be dubbed to another
> medium. So I'm wondering 
> >> if these lost Willie Brown sides were never put into the retail
> distribution system, and died in 
> >> that Chair Factory #2 pile?
> >>
> >> -- Tom Fine
> >>
> >> ----- Original Message ----- 
> >> From: "Roger Kulp" <[log in to unmask]>
> >> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> >> Sent: Sunday, January 23, 2011 6:18 PM
> >> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] How many 78s to the Matrix
> >>
> >>
> >>>From the article on the Mainspring Press site:
> >> The metal
> >> masters, thousands of records, record sleeves, and recording ledgers
> >> laid dormant in Chair Factory # 2 for almost a decade, until the summer
> >> of 1942. The United States had declared war on Japan after the Pearl
> >> Harbor attack in December 1941. Now, with shellac, metal, copper, and
> >> paper drives being organized by the war department, WCC president Otto
> >> Moeser realized there was some money to be made.Brian Wilburn, June
> 2002:
> >> "When
> >> we were kids, Chair Factory # 2 was closed and all they used  it for
> >> was storage. Of course we found our way into it. Kids were going in and
> >> out all the time, we werenīt supposed to be, but we were. Empty
> >> buildings are a magnet for kids. There was no security at all. In those
> >> days Port Washington had a police force of three cops. Nobody knew the
> >> meaning of the word security in those days. We were in that plant all
> >> the time and I probably destroyed two to three thousand records. We
> made
> >> frisbees out of them, we sailed them off the roof. And when we got a
> >> little older we used a shotgun. You could get away with it, using a
> >> shotgun in city limits. The building was right next to the railroad
> >> tracks. There was nothing around it so it was not dangerous." [Close
> to
> >> the Chair Factory # 2 there was a small garage-like building next to
> the
> >> railroad tracks that was used to store records, and these were shipped
> >> from this building after orders came in. In the 1960s collector Dennis
> >> Klopp saw a wood eagle-on-a-globe on top of this building which
> >> resembled the Paramount logo. It was one foot high and orange in color.
> >> Klopp took it off the building and still owns it.]"They
> >> had all the masters, the castings, the bronze and brass, stuff to
> >> produce records, stored in Plant # 2 on the west side. It was all in
> one
> >> great big room. After the war started they started scrap metal drives,
> >> find bronze and brass, that kind of stuff, for the war. They suddenly
> >> realized they had a load of that stuff they didnīt need. So it all
> got
> >> loaded in a couple of freight cars [and was] shipped off. I am sure it
> >> got sold to some scrap dealer. That was the end of that. This was
> during
> >> the summer of 1942.
> >> http://www.mainspringpress.com/nyrl.html
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> --- On Sun, 1/23/11, Ted Kendall <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >>
> >> From: Ted Kendall <[log in to unmask]>
> >> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] How many 78s to the Matrix
> >> To: [log in to unmask]
> >> Date: Sunday, January 23, 2011, 3:54 PM
> >>
> >> In the specific case of Paramount, the reasons are not too far to seek.
> The company was a small 
> >> scale operation, selling to very local, poor audiences, hence small
> sales, especially after the 
> >> crash. The change to electrical recording had already devastated
> Paramount's finances to the 
> >> extent that its hitherto fine pressing materials were abandoned in favour
> of something that looks 
> >> and plays like a cinder track. The repertoire was Gebrauchsmusik, and
> ephemeral Gebrauchsmusik at 
> >> that, played with brads or thrice-turned needles (economic pressure
> again), so the survival rate 
> >> is depressingly low from the original market. When the company collapsed,
> its repertoire did not 
> >> pass to one of the majors, and most of the remaining stock got Frisbeed
> over a marshalling yard 
> >> one boring summer. Collectors have dug, combed and cajoled for nigh on
> fifty years to find some 
> >> of this stuff, with an intensity which frightens me. Although one should
> never say "never", I 
> >> wonder
> >> whether some of the rarer Paramounts will ever surface. The Charlie
> Patten canon is still 
> >> incomplete, too, I believe...
> >>
> >>
> >> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tom Fine"
> <[log in to unmask]>
> >> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> >> Sent: Sunday, January 23, 2011 4:35 PM
> >> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] How many 78s to the Matrix
> >>
> >>
> >>> Sorry if this post has been received in other forms, I hadn't received
> it yet so I assumed it 
> >>> was killed off by the ARSC server for some reason.
> >>>
> >>> I have a question along these lines.
> >>>
> >>> There was a recent article in Goldmine magazine about Willie Brown blues
> 78's on Paramount that 
> >>> no
> >>> copies exist anymore:
> >>> http://www.goldminemag.com/features/willie-brown-where-are-you
> >>>
> >>> How is this possible? How many copies of these records were pressed?
> Were they only sold in a 
> >>> small
> >>> region? And no one saved any of them, not in attics or old general
> stores or old jukeboxes? If 
> >>> so
> >>> few were pressed, how was that commercially viable? It seems to me like
> once you make a stamper 
> >>> you
> >>> just as soon press more copies than you expect to sell and then hope you
> get lucky. The business
> >>> model I always understood for records is that extra copies are cheap,
> what's expensive is the
> >>> recording, mastering, plating, etc.
> >>>
> >>> -- Tom Fine
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Andrew Hamilton"
> <[log in to unmask]>
> >>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> >>> Sent: Sunday, January 23, 2011 10:02 AM
> >>> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] How many 78s to the Matrix
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> Excellent question. Why not photo-admittance? Well, they don't call it
> that, but they do use 
> >>>> it, too...
> >>>> Wiki has a page on CD glass mastering and explains that there are two
> kinds of photoresist 
> >>>> (positive or negative) that can be washed away, after laser developing,
> but there is also
> >>>> NPR (non-photoresist) glass mastering, which uses an organic polymer
> dye as the laser-beam 
> >>>> target layer. This dye layer is deeper than a pit, much the same as the
> lacquer layer, on a 
> >>>> blank destined for vertical or stereo cutting, is deeper than the most
> deep, intentional 
> >>>> embossing (gouge?). The pitch on a CompuDisk or Zuma is set to avoid
> hitting the bedrock of the 
> >>>> supporting layer, whereas I believe that the photoresist layer, in the
> former-mentioned CD 
> >>>> glass mastering method, is washed away clean down to the substrate -
> unlike a well-cut lacquer. 
> >>>> Fortunately, the CD player is only trying to make a variable strobe
> light display, rather than 
> >>>> musical wiggles... at that point in the chain.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Andrew
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On Jan 23, 2011, at 7:49 AM, George Brock-Nannestad wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> From: Patent Tactics, George Brock-Nannestad
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>> ----- are they not etched into the glass afterwards? What is the
> photoresist
> >>>>> resistant against?
> >>>>>
> >>>>> George
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> Regarding CDs, the pits are in a thin photoresist layer that is spun
> onto
> >>>>>> the glass substrate.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Jerry
> >>>>>> Media Sciences, Inc.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>> -----Original Message-----
> >>>>>>> From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List
> >>>>>>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of George Brock-
> Nannestad
> >>>>>>> Sent: Saturday, January 22, 2011 6:09 PM
> >>>>>>> To: [log in to unmask]
> >>>>>>> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] How many 78s to the Matrix
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> From: Patent Tactics, George Brock-Nannestad
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Hello,
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Stewart Goodeman wrote [quote]:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> I know in 1943, when they recorded the Rodgers and Hart
> >>>>>>>> revival of "A Connecticut Yankee" they actually used glass.
> >>>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> ----- just to avert any confusion: glass means that the disc that
> >>>>>>> supported
> >>>>>>> the layer that the cut was made in was made of glass. The layer
> could
> >>>>>> have
> >>>>>>> been lacquer, or it could have been wax, both were used. It has
> been
> >>>>>>> thought
> >>>>>>> that glass was a cheap substitute for aluminum that was the most
> used
> >>>>>>> material for lacquer mastering discs, due to other uses for
> aluminum
> >>>>>>> during
> >>>>>>> the war. But in fact, the quality of the cut in glass-based discs
> was
> >>>>>>> better
> >>>>>>> than for aluminum, because the surface of glass was much smoother.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> This is very different from the use of glass in the manufacture of
> CDs;
> >>>>>>> here
> >>>>>>> the pits are really represented in the glass as a stage of
> manufacture.
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> Kind regards,
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> George
> >>>>
> > 

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