I enjoy old London Records Phase 4 Stereo LP's. Some of the earliest multi-track recodings. But 60 years on they are getting rarer.
I have a collection of about 90 of them. Sometimes you find them as a UK release on Decca.
Then I discovered that folks have put a bunch up full length sampled on YouTube.
So I have spent a bunch of the weekend listening to discs I likely have a small chance of ever laying hands on in a physical form.
Two different recordings of Cantelone's 1924 publication of his gathering and scoring of traditional French regional dialect folk songs.
Chante d'Auvergne/Songs of the Auvergne.
RCA 1965 Stokowski directing American Symphony Orchestra (ie RCA compentent stidio players) with Anna Moffo as soloist.
Angel 1985 Handley directing the Royal Liverpool Philharmonci with Jill Goimez as sololist.
This west german pressing LP was still sealed, with a hole punched in the corner, ie a commercial first seller discard.
Finally got around to listneing to a three album set I bought over the summer.
Forever Fieldler
A retrospective by RCA of Arthur Fiedler's recordings on that label.
He recorded heaps of albums on this label and built the Boston Pops to a respected entity.
Pops referes to the fact they would add in arrangements based on Hollywood score, Broadway scores and American composers, inlcuding pop composers into their programs.
Alongside European classical composers.
The first recording on set this was made on a wax roll master in 1935.
Jalousie.
Which back then went on to be a million seller 78rpm shellac record recording .
The final recording he did was about 1978.
The last cut on the set is Sousa's Stars and Stripes.
His biggest performance of this was in 1976 for the US bicentenial where a crowd of 400,000 were in attendance at an outside park setting in Boston.
Quite a pleasant and educational listen.
Records were free of scratches and pops, and just needed a good Discwasher brushing.
The sleeves are all original and the set even still includes a printed insert.