CATHOLIC RADIO UPDATE #273, March 22, 2004
FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK
At my age, one has to remind oneself frequently that not everyone was around when everything happened. I recall one day telling a bunch of teenagers, “You remember that, don’t you? That was when President Kennedy was shot.” “Mr. Dorner!” exclaimed one of the girls, “we weren’t even born yet!”
So it is with my headline two weeks ago calling the Indianapolis group Inter Mirifica “Hoosier Hot Shots.” Now, that is an expression that means something to me. It may still mean something in Indiana —I do not know— but it likely means nothing to anyone in the rest of the country. The expression dates back to the 1930’s, 1940’s, and 1950’s, arising from the name of an Indiana jazz group appropriately named the Hoosier Hot Shots. They played a “rural Midwestern jazz,” starring on clear-channel giants WOWO Fort Wayne and later WLS 890 AM Chicago, “the Prairie Farmer station.” See their website at www.hoosierhotshots.com
Eventually they got their own weekly program on the newfangled Mutual Broadcasting System, and they had a national following, too, who bought their records issued, that I recall, on RCA Victor label. My parents had one of their records, an old 78 rpm 10-inch disc. RCA Victor labels were as black as the disc themselves, and the printing on them was silver. Atop the label was “Nipper,” the trademarked dog listening to “His Master’s Voice” on an old-fashioned “Victrola,” the kind with the horn. Victrola was the trademarked name of the Victor Talking Machine Company’s phonographs. Back in those days, many of the early sound reproducing machines had “-ola” in them. “Victrola” is not a word one hears anymore, although a cousin of mine still referred to phonographs as “Victrolas” well into the 1960’s. Come to think of it, “phonograph” is not a word anyone hears anymore, either. Compact-disc players did not make it obsolete; it was obsolete long before their appearance. “Record player” had pretty much replaced “phonograph,” particularly among the young.
To return to the subject at hand. The early phonographs, or “Victrolas” if you will, were acoustic devices. That is, there were no electronics because reliable vacuum tubes were still in the early stage of development. A needle —shaped like a headless small nail— was screwed into the bottom of the tone arm assembly. Then the needle was gently lowered onto the record and one wound up the spring mechanism to playback the record at 78 rpm, more or less. The grooves were thick and visible, and the vibrations of the needle were conveyed by stable wires to a diaphragm inside the tone arm head just above the needle. The diaphragm vibrated with the vibrations of the needle, and if one placed one’s head close to the tone arm assembly, one could hear the sound faintly. These vibrations were conveyed up a hollow, pivoted tone arm down into a beautifully crafted, hollow wooden cabinet that amplified the sound. Other phonographs used a big flower-shaped horn that had the same effect.
The whole assembly was wonderfully made in fine wood, not wood veneer, and not plasticized wood that afflicts modern civilization. My great aunt had a console Victrola. One raised the handsomely crafted wooden lid (it was not a slab) and a lock assembly held it up. One inserted the handle into the windup mechanism and started the turntable moving. It was a large, chrome plated, heavy turntable measuring 12 inches in diameter, covered with green felt. The tone arm assembly was also chrome-plated. It pivoted in an arc from its wide base that fed directly into the sound chamber of the cabinetry. The tone arm was of several sections, and the head assembly at rest swiveled vertically up and back and rested on the second section when the machine was not being played. Other phonographs used a small cradle on which to rest the tone arm when it was not in use.
On the deck that held the turntable, there was a sunken silver cup for used needles; the more expensive machines had two small cups, one on either side front of the turntable. These needles wore out quickly and were not good for more than seven to ten plays. You bought them in small envelopes at Woolworth’s, Kresge’s, or any record store. The needles were polished steel, not diamond; the latter would come with the appearance of microgroove records in the late 1940’s.
Originally the 78 rpm records were made of carnauba wax, which comes from a South American palm tree. The discs had a pleasant smell about them, particularly when they were a little warm from room temperature. The carnauba wax records had a high melting temperature, but nevertheless you learned not to expose them to heaters, radiators, or put them in direct sunlight for very long. I can still see our family collection, the discs spinning at what today seems to be an inordinate speed, the grooves of the record changing sheen and even slight color gradations if the sunlight coming through the window fell across the spinning disc. Let a disc get a little warped, and it did not take much to warp these old carnauba wax records, and the tone arm rose and fell in gentle undulations over a record whose sheen changed second to second.
By the mid-1930’s, phonographs became electronic, using the new vacuum tubes that glowed red hot and were the size of small pears; some had handsome shapes and were capped at the top. The acoustic tone arm was replaced with a cast metal one (it was still heavy). At the head end a needle was inserted into a small piezoelectric cartridge made of certain metallic salts. The needle vibrations caused minute electric currents to be produced by the salts; these minute currents were fed by two wires into a system of tubes that gradually amplified the sound until it was strong enough to operate a loudspeaker. In the early days, the speakers had their own DC voltage.
All this is gone with the wind. Now even the crop of record players that I knew in my teens, the ones that played microgroove 45’s and 33-1/3 rpm records, are fast disappearing. My wife still uses one in teaching dance, and she is amused at the bewildered look she gets from kids when she tells them to go over and “put the needle on the record.” All they know are CD’s. Those receding 45’s and 33’s were made of vinyl, which had been introduced after World War II for 78’s, advertised then as “unbreakable.” While they were not unbreakable, they were a lot tougher than the brittle carnauba wax and shellac discs of the 1920’s and 1930’s. London Records in particular was able to achieve remarkable high fidelity effect with those new vinyl 78 rpm records, but their days were numbered after Columbia Records (CBS) engineers invented the 33-1/3 long-play record and RCA Victor engineers invented the doughnut-hole 45 rpms, for decades the vehicle for single hit records. By the mid-1950s the 78 rpm record had pretty well disappeared.
Today, one comes across old 78’s in flea markets and antique shops. Most of these records are in sad shape. Many have cracks or “bites” taken out of the edges by a dropped tone arm, or an inadvertent hand pressed down on a stack of records. Many are on labels that have vanished with the relatives and friends who have cherished these recordings (Brunswick, Okeh, Standard, Diamond, Kapp, Majestic). The big bands have a following to this day that continues to grow in size and appreciation, and many of these old 78’s have been remastered digitally and released on compact disc. But many popular singers and other orchestras of those long-gone years have receded into the cobwebbed past and are known only to a few collectors and people like me who are still around. Artists like the Hoosier Hot Shots, Spike Jones and His City Slickers, Bing Crosby, the Andrews Sisters, the Dining Sisters, the Ink Spots, Dinah Shore, Doris Day, Frankie Laine, Vaughn Monroe.
By today’s standards, it was a primitive technology. But back then, it was extraordinary, another one of the revolutionary inventions that had forever changed home entertainment. To think that one could hear on one’s hearth the popular singers and orchestras of the day! Coupled with the growth of radio in the 1920’s and 1930’s, the Victrola became an indispensable appliance in every home. Radio and records then and now were made for each other.
How sad is the passing of time. Those old 78’s belong to the age of vaudeville, network radio, a superb national network of passenger trains, Model T’s, Packards, Lafayettes, trolley cars, popular books with real hardboard covers, pipe smoking, and clothing styles that reflected a personal sense of dignity. The many new inventions such as refrigerators, washing machines, radios, and Victrolas represented real achievements gained by the hard work of millions of Americans who worked 48-hour weeks. Ahead lay a terrible second world war, an interminable cold war, the sexual revolution, the hippie movement, the accelerating collapse of the values and morals that held this country together, the age of self-absorption, a flood of myopic experts who know only their fields, a cynical media, and several generations of youth who see no real purpose in life other than immersion in hedonism.
In attics, in basements, in closets, in the ubiquitous flea markets of America, stacks of old 78’s sit forgotten, forgotten like the people who made them, bought them, played them. We have become digitized.
—Michael Dorner
Subject: Re: Catholic Radio Update #273 and the Victrola
Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2004 09:49:40 +0800
From: Danny Villanueva
To: MikeD509@aol.com
CC: Pearl Quinene
Dear Mike,
Thank you Mike for the interesting CRU issue #273. Besides, news on Radio Horeb, I was really fascinated reading your FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK on the Victrola phonograph. Well, it immediately brought back sweet and happy memories in my childhood. I am forwarding your article to Pearl, my dear sister in San Jose, CA, who will, I am sure, be interested to read it.
Actually, we have a cabinet type Victrola talking machine with the dog facing the horn. It was my parent's beautiful piece of furniture in our sala at home in Tondo, Manila in those days ... from 1950 to 1970. Though we had the electic phonograph already during the 50's to listen to Ricky Nelson's Poor Little Fool, Paul Anka's Diana, and the likes, we kids would every now and then play old records of music and speeches on big black record discs. Sounds were really scratchy... because of the worn out surface, done by the very abrasive needle like-headless nails. Never the less, we were fascinated playing it... as we would not stop to be awed by the big jump of technology from the old Victrola to the hi-fi sound machine. In the mid 70's, the family possessed another cabinet type Victrola from a departed uncle in Manila. That made it 2 Victrolas adorning our sala. And they remained interesting talking pieces among friends and visitors coming to our home.
Crazy me, one time in the 70's, I converted one of the Victrolas to run stereophonic. With the delicate old sound mechanism inside it, I installed an 8-track stereo tape player, complete with stereo speakers that were well crafted inside the cabinet. In a jippy, it played Rey Charles songs and rock and roll music. Oh, my sister Pearl loves the Victrola up to this time. Being in the US, and the owner of the 2 Victrolas, she would ask my sister Daisy and her family (who reside in our old home in Manila) to take care of them, as they are now collectors' items. They are wonderful treasures, indeed.
Thank you, Mike for such a beautiful, reminiscing article on Victrola. It was always around me at home in Manila for 41 years, more than half of my life. The next time I would visit home in Manila, I should touch it with so much love and remembrance.... and do it for my dear sister Pearl, too, who loves them most. God bless...
Best regards,
Danny
