I have been thinking all night about what to call this blog. I wanted to be “cute” to attract attention but not too cute that it would be overdone. I kept thinking, “what it this going to be about”? It is going to be about posting digital recordings that we are in the never ending process of making from 78 RPM records, most of which are in our basement, although there are others in the attic, the music room…….. well, already one can see my dilemma. My husband is a collector of THINGS, including records. He is a diverse collector and doesn’t limit himself to one media. The record collecting is just the less offensive. Nothing in our house is thrown away without his inspection first to see if he can use it for something. He keeps plastic juice bottles which he cuts the tops off and makes special shelves to put them on for storage of screws, nuts, bolts, etc. Cardboard boxes, wire, string, metal cans, the list is endless and these are the smaller items. There is usually at least one out of service car in the yard that he is pulling parts off of before it goes to the junkyard, if ever. He is a mechanic along with having been a metallurgist, computer programmer, and theatre property manager. So as you can see, each career enables him to have a collection of something to go along with it.
My husband comes from an era when people didn’t have much money so consequently they didn’t have the luxuries that we have now. Being the analytical genius that he is, he grew up utilizing whatever was discarded or put out of service and built what he needed---soapbox racers, toys, tools. As he grew older and his interest in music developed, he designed his own recording area, what would be comparable to today’s DJ stations. This is when he started to collect recordings. He would get records from his aunts and uncles after they were done with them and play them, of course keeping them. When reel-to-reel tape came out, he bought a reel-to-reel tape recorder/player and started a new phase of his recording collecting. His taste in music is quite diverse covering classical, ballet, instrumental, Broadway, religious, and even theatre pipe organ. Over the years, he has collected a huge amount of 78 RPMs. Either people give them to him when they move or have a tag sale or someone in the family dies and the family does not want them, so we inherit them.
We met in the 70s, a time when I was into disco, of course. I have also always loved music but at first, my taste was in Elvis, groups from the 50s and 60s and Broadway. I had already started a collection of 33 1/3 RPMs, 8 tracks and cassettes which have been added to my husband’s collection. My husband opened up the world of music to me. I had played some classics on the piano, but he exposed me to more of the classical composers such as Beethoven, Debussy, Prokofiev, Cherney, to name a few. In the 80s, we both got involved in saving a local art deco theatre from destruction and then running it as a community theatre. This is when our love of Broadway musicals flourished.
I guess what I am getting at in my ramblings is that between the two of us, we have quite a collection of music from various mediums. But, what we will first concentrate on is the collection of 78 RPMs that we will be transferring to digital and then posting for your listening pleasure and comments.
