The other day I learned of the Great 78 Project, a collaboration between the Internet Archive (which EONI and I have been relying on for some time for dredging up what we thought might have been lost in the internet past) and the Archive of Contemporary Music.
I understand that some 50,000 recordings have been digitized from over 200,000 candidates accumulated so far. A daunting task, indeed, to try to pick out some gems from this lot. But I find that some people have taken it upon themselves to create special curated collections that make it a bit easier to approach. One such collection I have been listening to is that designated as “78rpm Records Digitized by George Blood, L.P.”. Among the jewels in this bunch are “A Jam Session at Victor” (a 1947 recording by the legendary Jack Teagarden and other jazz musicians …
… the 1939 “Echoes of Harlem” (Charlie Barnet and his orchestra) …
and a 1958 Ralph Stanley bluegrass/country take of “If That’s The Way You Feel”:
Almost left out another example, this one is a 1943 performance by Gino Bechi of an aria from the famous Catalani opera, “La Wally”:
It appears that most of these recordings are also downloadable in various formats from MP3 to 24-bit (!) FLAC.
Yep, I guess I’m hooked. I just started following the Great 78 Project’s Twitter feed. Try it!