Here is another of my father’s 78 rpm records he listened to as a child in the 1920s or 1930s on my father’s Victor Talking Machine Victrola, model VV-405. I recorded this record playing on the same Victrola with my Sony PCM-D50 digital recorder. The microphone was placed inside the the horn opening of the Victrola over one of the wooden slats. Both recordings were made into 128 kilobits per second monophonic mp3 files.
Direct mp3 download or play: Zampa Rag
Zampa Rag – Guido Deiro
Direct mp3 download or play: Blue Diamonds
Blue Diamonds – Guido Deiro
Guido Deiro
I can remember as a young boy liking this record a lot, especially “Zampa Rag,” probably because it’s such a snappy tune. You’ll notice that side of the record is much more worn. I was so dumb that I would gleefully change the title to “Dampa Bag” just for fun. That of course was referring to a wet brown paper shopping bag from Sid’s Supermarket on Solano Avenue in Berkeley, California, which was only a little more than a block from my house. I imagined how funny it would be for the music to represent a wet brown paper grocery bag!
For more on Guido Deiro and the style of playing kwown as “Vaudeville Accordion” click here
4 users commented on " Zampa Rag and Blue Diamonds "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackWhen you write “same Victrola,” do you mean the actual Victrola your father (or his parents) had or just the same model?
Also, did you do any declicking to the recording? Because if you didn’t…damn!
Hi, J.D. Mack! The Victrola VV-405 that I have here in Seattle is in fact the same unit that my father had as a child in Berkeley, California. The only processing done to the recording from the D50, was applying envelope amplification in places to make the sound a little more uniform in level. Also, as in most of my digital recordings, I try to make the peaks around -.33db to -.35db. I read a help file from Adobe Audition (or online) that indicated if CDs were to be made, some players have trouble with audio up to 0db. I just adopted that idea without much thought.
By the way, the 78 is cracked as well. I’m not sure if you meant how bad it sounds (the sound is quite poor) or not. There is some sort of resonance in the acoustic diaphragm near the needle, which adds even more distortion. I hope this answers your questions.
If the label on the “Zampa Rag” side is more worn, that tends to indicate that it’s the song on the OTHER SIDE that was getting more play, because putting the record with the “Blue Diamonds” side UP means the “Zampa Rag” side was facing down, getting the abuse from the spindle as the record was placed onto the turntable. Or, perhaps, after listening to “Zampa Rag” a lot, and getting tired and physically exhausted from dancing, flipping the record to the other side was a less-precise move… Either way, thanks! God bless The Weatherman.