The Jazz Age 10" folio with some new old friends.

AzArtist · **Joined:** Sun Dec 12, 2010 4:24 pm **Posts:** 89

Here's my Christmas present to myself (the 10" folio) with some newly acquired 78 rpm albums and a 1921 Victrola. I got the Victrola at a antique(?) shop with about 75 records for a very reasonable price. I've always wanted one since I was a kid. Like Bryan and some others on the forum I grew up loving old jazz as well as rock and roll. For me it came by way of 6am Saturday morning cartoon shows. Betty Boop and Popeye were my favorites.
Little did I know as a kid how grown up the Fleischer Brothers Studio really were. Anyway it instilled a love of Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong and other that exists to this day. Listening to them on the original Victrola is amazing. First off it's loud. You can't believe how a hand cranked disc with a steel needle could fill a big room with music but it does. The assorted albums I've acquired through selective bargains on Ebay. Some can get quite pricey, Billie Holiday can be from $100 to $400. An interesting side note to all of this the last issued 78's were Beatle records. It was for the Indian market where there still wasn't electricity but people still wanted to rock out. You can watch and hear them being spun on YouTube. I think the last auction of Help went for $8,000. It is some of the most rare of the Beatles Memorabilia. They stopped issuing in '66 or '67 so there's no Roxy 78's out there. Too bad Virginia Plain would have been great.
And I won't be playing The Jazz Age on it. It's all 45 rpm.

DCJ · **Joined:** Thu Jun 18, 2009 9:58 pm **Posts:** 1031

Very cool post AzArtist!

Now you've got me thinking about yet more things to buy on eBay! Sigh.

Back in the 70s I assembled a nice collection of Charlie Parker albums at a time when a huge amount of material was being released in the 33 rpm format. Your post got me thinking about how cool it would be to have a 78 of one of Parker's original pressings on Dial Records from 1946-47.