History's Dumpster = GLORIOUS trash! Kitsch, music, fashion, food, history, ephemera, and other memorable and forgotten, famous and infamous pop culture junk and oddities of yesterday and today. Saved from the landfill of time...
Uh-oh, we now see the shameful side of Seattle's otherwise awesome culinary history.
It's hard to believe a place with a name like The Coon Chicken Inn would ever have existed in polite, politically correct Seattle. But in the pre-Civil Rights era, such things were not uncommon anywhere. Including Portland, OR and Salt Lake City, UT, when The Coon Chicken Inn had other locations.
They opened in 1925 and within a few years, drew the wrath of the Seattle NAACP, who threatened to sue for defamation and libel. It's mascot was a grotesque, ugly caricature of a black porter (and perhaps the first ever mascot used by a restaurant chain, paving the way for Ronald McDonald four decades later.) And like Ronald McDonald at McDonalds, the porter mascot was everywhere at this place.
They actually made hand fans for kids (with menus on the back) in derogatory caricatures of African-Americans.
The porter caricature appeared on everything inside and out of the place. Including matchbooks, the dinnerware, silverware and even soap bars. They even made spare tire covers with the caricature on them.
Coast to Coast?....Er, no. They wish. But this chain never grew beyond a few locations in the Western half of the US.
From "AW HELL NO!!" to "W.....T......F???!!!" This was their actual Seattle location, circa 1939...
Now look behind the labour union protesters (another problem with The Coon Chicken Inn.), behind that car to the caricature's mouth. Yes, this was the actual entryway. Every location had a similar entryway.
The Seattle and Portland locations closed in 1949, due to changing tastes and a shrinking customer base (one should hope so!) The Salt Lake City location carried on until 1957.
Video disc players of some kind have been around as far back as 1898.
The Spiral Motion Picture Camera (1898)
The Spirograph (1907) Similar to The Spiral (above)
The Phono-Vision (1964) used video recorded on vinyl LPs, a technology that would come into commercial use as the Selectavision CED player (below)
MCA DiscoVision - The unfortunately named, very first practical consumer video disc was invented by the Pioneer Corporation of Japan and first licensed and marketed by American record conglomerate MCA Records, the owners of Universal Studios (MCA Records is known today as Universal Music Group) beginning in 1978. It was the very first laser based consumer medium, predating the CD by four years. These discs were two sided and the video quality was not much better than the best video tapes of that time.
They were also ridiculously expensive. In spite of stereo sound (on some discs) and their cool look, there was no way it could compete with the video tape. Video tapes could be home recorded. Video discs could not.
And then there was that name.
You couldn't sell something with "disco" anything in it in America in the early '80s without creating PTSD flashbacks of mirrored balls, white three piece suits and Bee Gees music. We were a nation still in recovery then and sales began to seriously tank.
They tried renaming it the Video LP (VLP), even CD Video before MCA finally gave up on the format.
Pioneer renamed it the Laserdisc and enjoyed some modest success in the early 1990s. They were still outrageously expensive. But there were many technical improvements. But the VHS video tape still dominated. The final blow came with the introduction of the DVD in 1996. Which also successfully killed off the VHS tape format by 2004 with the introduction of the recordable DVD-R and later by, YouTube, Netflix and cloud sharing.
RCA Selectavision - Also known as the CED video disc. Introduced in 1982. what made these different was instead of a laser, they used a stylus, similar to a vinyl LP record. Which is why you inserted the CED disc into the player through it's case and it is removed with the case to play each side.
However, even with the sturdy plastic case, they were not immune to the same problems that plagued vinyl LPs. Including dust (from inside the machine) minor scratches and if you had a smart toddler, they can physically remove the disc from the case by pressing the tabs on the upper corners of the case. And out falls the actual disc. (I knew one guy who had his entire CED disc collection ruined by his girlfriend's mischievous four year old son one horrifying Saturday morning.) The stylus like any vinyl format also had to be changed. By a professional. Often. Or else, the discs would wear out and skip like any other record. And they were not pleasant to look at.
They were discontinued in 1986.
CD-ROM - Most CD's are pretty much CD-ROMs. Meaning they could only be read and not re-recorded. With the CD-RW, they could. However in the mid '90s, computer software and video games was only available on CD-ROMs including your operating system. So all computers of that time had them. And some low quality music videos began appearing on standard music CDs, meaning you could play this disc in your CD-ROM equipped home computer and watch the video on your monitor. There were also instructional videos on CD-ROM. Remember these commercials?
"Try my product?......"
DVD - The DVD format went on sale in Japan on November 1, 1996, in the United States
on March 1, 1997, in Europe on October 1, 1998 and in Australia on
February 1, 1999. The DVD became the dominant form of home video
distribution in Japan when it first went on sale in 1996, but did not
become the dominant form of home video distribution in the United States
until June 15, 2003, when weekly DVD rentals
began outnumbering weekly VHS cassette rentals. The very first movie ever released on DVD was Twister (1996) The DVD could store 4.7 GB of data per disc.
Blu-Ray - is a format designed to supersede the DVD format, in that it is capable of storing high-definition video resolution (1080p). The Blu-Ray disc could store 25 GB of data.
HD-DVD - HD-DVD was a format designed to compete with the Blu-Ray. But the format failed to get a foothold.
As you can hear, the only other known copy of this record has lots of wear and is barely audible through the record wear and surface noise. The copy sold on eBay is reportedly in pristine condition and the buyer plans to digitally restore the recording.
If there is one person who can rightfully claim to be the TRUE pioneer of rock n' roll, it's Bessie Smith.
She had attitude, she had an opinion and she had one hell of a voice. Her blues recordings are not only legendary, they've set the standard for all great blues singers to come. And her influence has spread far beyond the blues. Janis Joplin idolized her. So have contemporary stars like Melissa Etheridge, Bonnie Raitt and Susan Tedeschi. And for good reason - she opened the door for all strong, independent people in blues, pop, country R&B and rock music to come. And her influence reverberates to this day
But tragically, Bessie Smith never got the appreciation she really deserved in her life. In fact, in 1937 when she was in a horrific auto accident that claimed her life, her right arm was nearly severed and needed to be amputated. She died from blood loss. Bessie Smith's Wikipedia entry claims she did not die as a result of not being able to find a "coloured" hospital in time. I have a hard time believing that personally, as time was of the essence in such a life threatening injury. A closer "white" hospital could have saved her (and contrary to the "separate but equal" rule of Jim Crow, black hospitals were also grossly underfunded, under equipped and understaffed compared to the white hospitals - especially in the South.)
And to add to this injustice, she was buried in an unmarked grave and forgotten for decades until Janis Joplin personally bought a proper headstone.
Whilst on a visit to my friend's house, he had something in his yard he (and no one else) could identify. Only that it looked like a "typewriter with no keyboard" But what was it?
It was an Ediphone (or what remained of it.)
The Ediphone was an early dictation machine like the Dictaphone that used wax cylinders (cylinder records were considered obsolete by 1912. But Edison made commercial music cylinder records up until 1929.) But beyond that into the '30s and even as far as the early '50s. The wax cylinder was used for office dictation before it was replaced by belt machines and a few years later, tape - even The Edison Company eventually got into tape.
..........until the 2000s when digital took over.
The Ediphone was electrically powered, but strangely recorded acoustically.
Candy cigarettes were a kids version of the things Mom and Dad had hanging out of their mouths from the '30s to the '80s......
And their boxes looked exactly like their grown up counterparts
Cigarette companies back then (like modern corporations) liked synergy. Synergy is basically a simple modern word to describe using as many elements as possible to work towards one mutual goal - $$$ (i.e. "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours"). And in both cases, it worked. Cigarette brands had the extra promotion and the future smoker potential and the candy companies had a ready made pre-pubescent consumer who wanted to look like Mom and Dad.
And all was well....Until the first warning studies against tobacco use began appearing in the '50s and '60s.
But at this time, the health dangers of cigarette smoking were still largely ignored. After all, up to this time, DOCTORS recommended it for decades. How could they go wrong?
1910s
1950s
But the writing was on the wall. And on the sides of cigarette packs beginning in 1966. And cigarette ads were banned from TV and radio in 1970. Courtesy ash trays, once ubiquitous everywhere from grocery stores to beauty salons began disappearing.
By the '80s the scale between smokers and non-smokers began to tip. And candy manufacturers began discontinuing or rebranding candy cigarettes.
However, some candy cigarettes are still being manufactured as novelty/gag items. And others are rebranded as simply "candy sticks".
When audio recording began, there was only one sound source (monaural or "mono"). The horn of a cylinder or gramophone record player. And all was well. For most people.
For others, something was missing.
You see, the epitome of a perfect recording is not just an incredibly good performance artistically, but also how lifelike it sounds.
The first is actually easier to achieve than the latter. The most lifelike sounding and the very best artistic recording rarely come together. Even today.
The very first experiments in binaural reproduction (an early form of stereo) go back as early as 1881 (no joke!) At a theater in Paris. The sound was transmitted through two telephone wires to special headsets that received the audio. This was used in hotel rooms and by special subscription service. But it didn't garner much attention, simply because the tinny headsets and 19th century telephone line quality audio was so bad.
An early two-channel playback system,
developed and sold in the early 1900s, used a two-channel
phonograph cylinder and two mechanical pickups and horns. But it really didn't sound good and the early recordings themselves have been lost to time. To make stereo sound acceptable on a commercial scale, vast improvements in monaural audio fidelity would have to be achieved.
Here's another early attempt at stereo, it's mono, but used a delay effect.
Enter radio.
There were experiments in stereo broadcasting going back to the early '20s. They utilized two radio station frequencies, two radio receivers (VERY rare in most homes of that time) and a special headset that connected into the outputs of both radios and at a time when most earliest commercial radio stations were very competitive, very hard for stations themselves to negotiate (the earliest duopolies of stations didn't happen until the late 1920s.) But again, this was early 1920's AM radio fidelity, while still an enormous leap from the telephone lines of 1881, still had it's own problems. including skywave interference from distant stations, hetrodyne squeal, harmonics from nearby stations and electrical interference.
However, recording had moved from acoustic recording horns to electrical microphones and reproducers. With the dramatic improvements in recording fidelity, the idea of stereo recording was again revisited. In the early 1930s, Bell Labs and RCA Victor made experiments in hi-fi and stereo recording, independent of each other.
Here's an early RCA Victor Mono Hi-Fi recording session with The Paul Whitman Orchestra in 1933.
Here's a VERY early experimental single groove stereo recording made by Bell Labs in 1934
Magnetic tape was also being developed. The first magnetic recordings were made in 1898 on steel wire and the first magnetic tape was invented in 1928. For the most part, they were merely experimental, first because the lengths of wire or tape needed to make reasonable quality recordings were astronomically long. Second, the tapes were made of steel or paper backed magnetic tape, making them prone to breakage. It wasn't until the mid 1930s when German scientists developed the first successful hi-fi tape recordings and it was initially used for Nazi radio broadcasts.
The very first Stereo system offered to consumers was reel to reel tape in the mid 1950s. But they found limited acceptance. Reel tape was awkward, bulky and expensive. Most records however remained monaural - except for a few made by Cook Laboratories. These records were binaural. as mentioned earlier and used headphones instead of speakers for the best reproduction.
They also used two grooves with two cartridges and pickups
Single groove full stereo records were finally perfected by 1957 and were sold by 1958. They were an instant sensation. But there were still millions of monaural record players and the heavier tone arms would ruin a stereo record. So record companies made records in both Stereo and Monaural (aka "Mono") versions until 1968.
Stereo radio was also being developed. First using a revival of the AM/AM experiment of the 1920s. When FM was established in the 1950s, AM/FM radio combos experimented with using FM for the left channel and AM for the right.
Yes, there were actually tuner components that allowed you to hear FM on the left channel and AM on the right. This crude form of stereo radio was obsolete by 1961 when multiplex FM Stereo was invented.....
Stereo sound is great. And when it's recorded with care, it can be breathtaking in it's own sense of realism. But you're still only getting what's coming from the front of you. Not the ambiance from the rear as you would in an actual live performance. In the early days of stereo recording, most of the early stereo recordings tried to emphasize the stereo ping-pong, left to right, right to left sound, which is fine if you weren't particular with the realism of sound, just the physical effect of stereo sound. Something to show off your fancy new stereo and what it can basically do to your friends.
Many early stereo studio recordings (especially those early stereo records from the late '50s and early '60s) were deliberately mixed to highlight these effects. But most pop/rock recordings were originally mixed in mono and later run through a gamut of fake stereo enhancements (echo chamber, reverb, vocals on one channel, instrumentation on the other) instead of going back to the original multitrack studio tapes - if available, and creating a true stereo mix. If it couldn't be done, and in most cases regardless in my opinion, it should have been left alone. It wasn't until the mid '60s when true stereo mixes of pop/rock albums became the norm. The technology and science of stereo recording was improving
And then came Quadraphonic.
Quadraphonic was first used as far back as 1953 (using 4 track tape) in Europe and introduced to the American market by the Vanguard Recording Society in June 1969. Then RCA followed with a Quadraphonic 8-Track tape
In the early 1970s the very first Quadraphonic LPs came out. But there was a problem. There was no uniformly compatible system for making Quad LPs. There were three incompatible systems SQ (developed by CBS Records), CD-4 (developed by RCA, no relation to Compact Discs, which wouldn't be invented for another 10 years) and QS (developed by Sansui).
This created a lot of confusion. And the government wasn't willing to step in and saw this solely as a civil matter beyond their authority (which would be repeated for AM Stereo in the '80s. But what made AM Stereo different was it was a form of radio transmission and that usually automatically falls under government jurisdiction.)
But it was the consumer that suffered the most. Because most labels allied with one system of Quad or the other. For example, if you liked Santana and had an SQ Quad system, you were in luck. Santana was a Columbia artist then and Columbia used SQ exclusively. However, if you also liked The Doors, you were toast. Elektra used the CD-4 Quad system and while those records will play on an SQ system, you won't get Quad sound (and the basic stereo separation of a CD-4 Quad record was not very good on an SQ Quad system. Or even a basic stereo.
Click to enlarge and read
There was no true winning system in the Quad war. But it seemed like SQ had far more advantages than CD-4. SQ used creative phasing, while CD-4 Quad records required a special stylus and since the system was encoded using something very similar to how FM Stereo radio is encoded at a very high inaudible frequency. So there was a serious record wear problem. If the portion of the groove where the frequency was encoded was worn, the Quad separation of the CD-4 Quad record was gone as well.
And what about Sansui's QS system? I don't have any personal experience with QS, but I have heard it said the QS system was very similar to SQ.
And like the early stereo recordings, studio engineers of the time were eager to utilize all four channels sonically in every way possible. Including putting each instrument on it's own channel. They had to. You see, most recording studios are acoustically dead places, so there was no way to capture the ambiance of a live recording. They could add artificial reverb and echo to the rear channels (as with the early fake stereo records), but it would sound AWFUL if played on a conventional stereo. So most didn't. I say most because I have heard some REAL atrocities in Quad.
Usually the very best sounding Quad albums were the classical albums recorded specifically in Quad.. They captured the sense of depth and space far better than most pop or rock albums.
Click to enlarge and read
The Quad fad had pretty much died out by 1978. Mostly out of consumer exasperation with the competing systems. But also the extra baggage of two extra speakers. But multiple-channel sound was revived by Dolby for use in movie theaters in the late 1980s
Today, the children of Quad, the DTS and Dolby Surround systems are used in home theater setups and even as a limited edition CD/DVD series - AGAIN with competing and incompatible systems, SACD and DVD Audio. They were introduced in the early 2000s. But like the Quad LPs of the '70s, they too have largely vanished due to consumer frustration as well as indifference.
