House of the Rising Sun. As interpreted by Josh White, advisor and confidant to F.D.R. Priceless ;)<p><a href="https://archive.org/details/78_house-of-the-rising-sun_josh-white-and-his-guitar_gbia0001628b" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/78_house-of-the-rising-sun_josh-...</a><p>I find myself on Internet Archive a lot during these dog days of summer. Delving into classic texts like Edgar Rice Burroughs A Princess of Mars or Aldous Huxley's The Perennial Philosophy. Discovering a forgotten H. P. Lovecraft story in the Weird Tales archive. Mining old time radio shows like Suspense for story inspiration. And using the Internet Arcade for screen grabs that can be used in retro-style game texture art. It makes me think I should do a better job of preserving my own output. You never know what future generations may find useful!
Fun to read some of these reviews, apparentl from random internet folk, like on jungle boogie - <a href="https://archive.org/details/78_jungle-boogie_the-bobby-true-trio-brodsky-handman-tepper-trio_gbia0001554b" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/78_jungle-boogie_the-bobby-true-...</a><p>Some guy just wanted to tell everyone some neat little facts about this thing he apparently knows a lot about. I find it fascinated how much people care to know about things like this.<p>EDIT: whoever this "arc-alison" character is, they're prolific - I'm finding their informational reviews all over this archive.
The records I clicked on have this notice<p><i>Digitized from a shellac record, at 78 revolutions per minute. Four stylii were used to transfer this record. They are 3.8mm truncated conical, 2.3mm truncated conical, 2.8mm truncated conical, 3.3mm truncated conical. These were recorded flat and then also equalized with NAB.<p>The preferred version suggested by an audio engineer at George Blood, L.P. is the equalized version recorded with the 2.3mm truncated conical stylus, and has been copied to have the more friendly filename.</i><p>I'm trying to guess but can't imagine what the reasoning for this is. I've tried A/B/C/D testing a few tracks on some crappy speakers and can't discern any difference.<p>While it's certainly admirable to try and digitize it as thoroughly as possible, I just can't see how a difference of 0.5mm in the stylus width is worth increasing your work load 4x times over (having to record each record 4 times rather than just once).
And India has gone ahead and banned them!<p><a href="https://www.medianama.com/2017/08/223-india-blocks-access-internet-archive-wayback-machine/" rel="nofollow">https://www.medianama.com/2017/08/223-india-blocks-access-in...</a>
Lots more info here for the curious: <a href="http://great78.archive.org" rel="nofollow">http://great78.archive.org</a><p>You can see a picture of one of the four-armed turntables here: <a href="http://great78.archive.org/preservation/" rel="nofollow">http://great78.archive.org/preservation/</a>
They had me make a Twitter bot that's tweeting out all of the 78s (with preview audio) as well:<p><a href="https://twitter.com/old_78s" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/old_78s</a>
The "Bibliothèque nationale de France" (national library of France) did the same kind of thing with hundreds of thousands vinyl records from their archive, including international ones published in France: <a href="http://www.bnfcollectionsonore.fr/" rel="nofollow">http://www.bnfcollectionsonore.fr/</a>
If I didn't care <a href="https://archive.org/details/78_if-i-didnt-care_ink-spots-jack-lawrence_gbia0013893a" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/78_if-i-didnt-care_ink-spots-jac...</a><p>Andy Dufrense
I have no experience with this stuff, but I wonder if they could use a laser record player to capture the record, and then replay it with different simulated stylus sizes. Not exactly kosher probably, but could be an interesting experiment. Plus scanning time could be greatly reduced I imagine.
Certainly a bit of everything on there... :)<p><a href="https://archive.org/details/78_rambling-wreck-from-georgia-tech_dick-powell-and-the-foursome-harry-sosnik-rev.-mic_gbia0013872/08+-+Rambling+Wreck+From+Georgia+-+Dick+Powell+And+The+Foursome.flac" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/78_rambling-wreck-from-georgia-t...</a>
Any sound restoration software would greatly improve these recordings.<p>For example this one from 1902: <a href="https://archive.org/details/78_medley-of-emmetts-yodles_yodle-song_gbia0000726a/Medley+of+Emmett's+Yodles+-+Yodle+Song.flac" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/78_medley-of-emmetts-yodles_yodl...</a><p>I'm sure Izotope would give the RX license for free in exchange for a blog post (or any other audio software company).
Looks like there are some recordings by Sergei Rachmaninoff himself [1]<p>[1] <a href="https://archive.org/details/georgeblood?sort=&and[]=subject%3A%22Classical%22&and[]=subject%3A%2278rpm%22&and[]=Rachmaninoff" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/georgeblood?sort=&and[]=subject%...</a>
Imagine after World War 3, the aliens sift through the remnants of humanity, find this archive of digitized 78rpm records, and turn into mustachioed corduroy-wearing hipsters.
This is just great!
Listening to these songs instantly sets me back to a relaxed inner state.
Together with that sizzling noise of the gramophone record in the background, so calm and chilled.<p>I currently listen to "A Duke Ellington Panorama", just nice!<p>Thanks for that and keep up the awesome work!
Very cool that they offer 24bit flac downloads. I'm sure this sentiment is shared here, but I am always impressed by the efforts of this organization
How would one go about removing the pops and clicks from recorded audio programmatically?<p>I really like some of the audio here but it needs some post processing. The only thing I can find to do it is audacity and it doesn't look very friendly to scripting.
Too bad it doesn't seem to be easily searched by label--from a historical perspective, it would be cool to be able to search for say, Paramount or Gennet or Okeh.
Some <i>very very good stuff in here</i>. I've gotten pretty into 20s thru 50s music over the past couple of years. I usually buy compilations on LP, though, so it's a treat to find these straight off the 78s. A big portion of the stuff never even makes it to digital.<p>Just at a glance, I'm seeing The Light Crust Doughboys[1], basically a string band supergroup. Multiple members would go on to found famous western swing bands (Bob Wills, Milton Brown). Very proto-rock-and-roll -- listen to that electric guitar -- Elvis would cover some Western Swing numbers[2] in his early days[3].<p>Also seeing some older stuff, including a few recordings by the (arguable) best banjo player of all time, Vess L. Ossman[4] (from 1907). Pretty cool to listen to these march numbers and then hear them evolve into jazz/ragtime only a couple years later[5] (this is a recording by Fred Van Eps, the <i>second</i> best banjo player of all time, from 1914).<p>EDITS: seeing some other personal favorites:<p>Hank Penny, a favorite western swing singer of mine[6]. He usually does it hot/upbeat/fun.<p>Blind Blake, a guitarist who could play the fretboard like a ragtime piano[7]!<p>Oh, and here's the WWII-era Bob Wills I was waiting for[8]. Got that classic Leon McAuliffe pedal steel playing. No Tommy Duncan vocals, unfortunately.<p>Neat! An old solo Art Tatum[9]! Widely considered the best pianist of all time... And another, a whole album[10]!<p>Really classic early electric guitar playing on a jump blues number by T-Bone Walker[11]. I actually believe he's one of the first to use the electric guitar in blues.<p>Great steel guitar playing on this Gene Autry cowboy number[12].<p>Looks like there's a lot of Django for all you gypsy jazz fans[13]. Never heard this take on Avalon before, I dig it.<p>Lot more to dig through and lot of obscure stuff I'd like to give a shot, but I'm out of time for now...<p>1: <a href="https://archive.org/details/78_pretty-little-dear_light-crust-doughboys-ramon-de-arman-crumit_gbia0008766a" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/78_pretty-little-dear_light-crus...</a><p>2: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wGCTFWhoqQ" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wGCTFWhoqQ</a><p>3: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bSVEA0ZAVw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bSVEA0ZAVw</a><p>4: <a href="https://archive.org/details/78_policy-king-march_vess-l.-ossman-d.-brown_gbia0009599a" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/78_policy-king-march_vess-l.-oss...</a><p>5: <a href="https://archive.org/details/78_notoriety-rag_van-eps-trio-kathryn-l.-widner_gbia0005729b" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/78_notoriety-rag_van-eps-trio-ka...</a><p>6: <a href="https://archive.org/details/78_get-yourself-a-red-head_hank-penny-penny-duncan_gbia0007440b" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/78_get-yourself-a-red-head_hank-...</a><p>7: <a href="https://archive.org/details/78_tampa-bound_blind-blake_gbia0001322b" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/78_tampa-bound_blind-blake_gbia0...</a><p>8: <a href="https://archive.org/details/78_texas-playboy-rag_wills-bob-wills-and-his-texas-playboys_gbia0000257a" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/78_texas-playboy-rag_wills-bob-w...</a><p>9: <a href="https://archive.org/details/78_deep-purple_art-tatum-mitchell-parish-peter-de-rose_gbia0000999a" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/78_deep-purple_art-tatum-mitchel...</a><p>10: <a href="https://archive.org/details/78_art-tatum_art-tatum-james-swift-tatum_gbia0005678" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/78_art-tatum_art-tatum-james-swi...</a><p>11: <a href="https://archive.org/details/78_t-bone-blues_les-hite-and-his-orchestra-hite-walker-t-bone-walker-frank-pasley_gbia0001424a" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/78_t-bone-blues_les-hite-and-his...</a><p>12: <a href="https://archive.org/details/78_silver-haired-daddy-of-mine_gene-autry-jimmy-long_gbia0000335a" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/78_silver-haired-daddy-of-mine_g...</a><p>13: <a href="https://archive.org/details/78_the-quintet-of-the-hot-club-of-france_the-quintet-of-the-hot-club-of-france-django_gbia0003366" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/78_the-quintet-of-the-hot-club-o...</a>
Be careful what you wish for<p><a href="https://archive.org/details/78_i-want-a-hippopotamus-for-christmas_vicki-dale-the-peter-pan-orchestra_gbia0000281a" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/78_i-want-a-hippopotamus-for-chr...</a>
Thanks for the link, lot's good stuff there!<p>* <a href="https://archive.org/details/78_dance-a-little-tanz-a-bissel_rose-gross-maurice-spector_gbia0000577b" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/78_dance-a-little-tanz-a-bissel_...</a><p>* <a href="https://archive.org/details/HotAYidAVaybele_201706" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/HotAYidAVaybele_201706</a>
A lot more here: <a href="https://archive.org/details/78rpm" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/78rpm</a>
I don't know about everybody here, but i am listening to so much new things to me on this archive that i'll definitely donate to the archive team today, congratulations for this fantastic job!
Wow, this is great! I've been a serious record collector for 20 years, but never got into 78s.<p>My eventual life goal is to do something similar with my Brazilian record collection... have the skeleton of such catalog at: <a href="https://www.novedos.com/collection" rel="nofollow">https://www.novedos.com/collection</a>.
This is the crowning gem from the Internet Archive (from the 78 RPMs and Cylinder Recordings collection).<p>Cab Calloway, The Man from Harlem<p><a href="https://archive.org/details/Harlem" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/Harlem</a>
So the obvious win here besides archiving art is that this is out of copyright sample fodder*<p>*IANAL and this may not be the case for all the material but I'm sure that there is mountains of inspiration to be mined.
I'm curious about something and I can't find the answer on the web site -- Why were these recordings played and digitized in stereo when the records were mono?