Each time I see this kind of music in the record store, I’m thinking ah, well, I can find that stuff on Spotify, right? No need to pay hard earned euros to get a record I can find in the same quality on streaming. An argument used by many more people I suppose. But… I it is not easy to find the right songs, and if you do, to make a good collection of them. So it is nice to hear this after all. In monaural, for sure.
Of course these are all re-releases, taken from the 78s that were the contemporary medium. So depending on the quality of the copy used, you’ll hear scratches and other surface noise. That leads me to the question: are there no original masters of these?
You would think that recording practices at the time prohibited archiving. I mean, small studios in the middle of nowhere, a simple cutting machine to make the field recording, coupled with small batches for each release: it all seems rather incompatible with the recording giants of today, right? Well, many of these field recordings were actually done on the orders of Decca, Columbia, Victor/RCA and the like. Names that are known even today, and are now all of them part of the Universal Music Group. So where are the masters?
Tape was invented in 1928. So before that, the original cut was all there was. However, the cutting took place in wax, which is a very sensitive and temporary material. So to make it more durable, a five part process with negative positive prints was used to make sure the original could be used over many copies. It might be these are still kept somewhere, but I kind of doubt it.