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...
I've been asked this question now and then and to be perfectly honest, the 78 RPM speed is still with us. Mostly for collectors items and not as general releases. But it does occasionally surface.
But as general releases, 78 RPM was largely passe in America by 1957. In 1957, sales of 78 RPM records accounted for 4,500,000 units in 1957. In 1958, it plummeted to less than 500,000, less than 5% of overall sales and the writing was on the wall.
But it still had a visible, if fading market for children's records (mostly because kids inherited hand-me-down phonographs from their parents and many kids phonographs also still had that speed.)
Phonola Record Player, 1950s -60s Note the case is pure Vanity Fair/Imperial Party Time, but the tone arm is a plastic gramophone reproducer that used steel needles. These players (which also sold under Woolworth's house brand, Audition) had two speeds, 45 and 78 (which were the speeds of most kids records available at that time, 45 by the 1970s, but many 78s from the '50s and '60s. still existed.) These players were sold well into the early 1970s. Image: Etsyspot
But what I'm going to focus on here is what were the last general release singles worldwide at 78 RPM.
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While 78 RPM was all but abandoned in America, (save for certain budget, independent, promo releases and oddities (The "Just Like Gene Autry; A Foxtrot" track on Moby Grape's Wow album is one example.) In South America, 78 RPM was still in use until the early '70s for certain pop releases.
But by this time also, 4 and 3 speed record changers were in twilight and practically non-existent outside a very select range of high-end turntables in the '80s and '90s.
"You're The One For Me, Fatty" Morrissey (1992, UK) Image: Discogs. Morrissey was the former lead singer of the British pop group The Smiths, best known for their 1984 alternative rock mega hit "How Soon Is Now". In 1992, he released a few 78s with selections from his solo album Your Arsenal.
"Millennium" Robbie Williams (2000, UK) Limited Edition of 999 numbered copies issued to commemorate the opening of the new HMV store in Oxford Street, London. Image: Discogs
The speed reemerged in the 2000s on some newer Crosley type junk players for playing old 78s. But some better quality turntables also began including it as the vinyl renaissance swept the country and anything with grooves fascinated Millennial hipsters. But most turntables still offer only the standard 33/45 speeds.
So to sum up, the last official general release new Western pop single on 78 that isn't a reissue, novelty, oddity, collector's item or promo is one that may never truly be known, even among collectors and they're still searching. The 1973 Brazilian Latimore 78 mentioned above is the most recent I've seen yet. I have heard of others that extend into the disco era, but I've never seen any as of this writing.
"Terraplane Blues" Robert Johnson (2019 Record Store Day reissue) Image: Discogs
The 1921 Kurtzmann Glass Phonograph was the hipster audio freak's must-have long before Bang & Olufsen. It played vertical cut discs of the Edison/Pathe variety. But could be modified to play lateral cut gramophone records with the use of an attachment to the tone arm.
And they're still very classy looking.
And in the days before electrical recording, vertical cut discs were sonically best for acoustic recording than conventional lateral cut gramophone records. A suddenly loud passage could cut through the wall of a lateral cut groove, so the singer had to stand back from the recording horn or the horn had to be muffled to protect the groove wall of the record being recorded. On a vertical cut groove, it only makes a deeper groove.
The teak horn inside was perfect for acoustically recorded records, Not brassy or tinnier than it had to be with conventional gramophone horns. Or boxy like Victrolas.
These are very rare today, Magnavox Drum Consoles were designed to blend in as an end table as well as match the popular octagon shaped living room furniture of that time.
In the early 1930s, in the worst throes of The Great Depression, industry everywhere suffered. But perhaps not nearly as bad as the recording industry. In the previous decade, record sales were at an all time peak. But then came the stock market crash of 1929 and suddenly, people were having to make choices not on what they want, but what they need. For just survival.
And making it worse for the record sales was radio. There was really no point in buying the latest hit songs with what little money you had when you could hear them ad nauseum on the radio. And most people didn't.
However this meant the recording industry had to come up with brand new gimmicks. Daring ones.
The Columbia Royal Blue Record wasn't the first "coloured vinyl" (actually, shellac.) That goes way back to cylinder records.
And early Vocalion Records were reddish brown. But shellac colours were extremely rare on disc records. They were virtually all black.
And if you were a Columbia phonograph dealer struggling to stay alive in late 1932 (In those days, your phonograph dealer was usually also your record store.), you had a serious problem. No one is buying the records. And the radio stations were killing you.
So Columbia unveiled their Royal Blue records. With this record, which described the basic terms for the dealer.
They sounded amazingly good for a 78 and if you play them today with a 3.5mil diamond stylus and a magnetic cartridge, there is VERY little surface noise.
In the late 1950s, somebody at Roulette Records got an idea. And Roulette Records had lots of ideas. Being mobster founded and funded and all. If you know what I mean (nudge-wink).
This was also a surprisingly well known secret, even in the scandal-ridden 1950s. But everybody was getting too worked up over phantom communists in Hollywood to bother to notice the corruption going on amongst the mobsters in New York. But if there was a one-up to Roulette, they were remarkably cutting edge for their time. They gave their artists total creative freedom in their sessions. But there was a price to pay for that. The Mob isn't 100% benevolent, you know....Just a little off the top. (In the case of Tommy James & The Shondells, it was $30,000,000 off a $40,000,000 career.)
They released this awesome series of 15 vinyl LPs in 1957. Each features the named actor reading one part in a two-character scene, and includes a script with both parts so that the listener can play the scene opposite the star. A terrific novelty item, probably more fun now than it was originally.
Some of the actors were superstars, others were stars who have begun to fade. And even a few of Roulette's own recording artists (who weren't necessarily actors in their own right, such as Jimmie Rodgers and Pearl Bailey.) After all, when you're working for a record company owned by The Mob, who you gonna say no to?
It must have been popular with young boomers, because Roulette Records reissued the entire series in 1977 on it's 20th anniversary. Sadly, it never got a further reissue to CD.
The Fernando Lamas record is close as I can come to a complete package. Here's a Here's a link to the MP3s. But unfortunately. I could not find a script for any of these titles with matching MP3 dialogue life of me. But maybe there's a brand new way of doing this: Create YOUR OWN responses to the dialogue. By the way, Fernando Lamas is the father of eternal chick magnet, Lorenzo Lamas.
Here are a few of the stars you'll be "acting" with.....(You'll ALWAYS sound better than that screechy drama chick in high school drama class you knew, TRUST ME.)
(CLICK ON PHOTO) This is an example of the stock back cover Roulette used for these records. Only the performer and session information are changed from each album.
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.
