Twenty-five thousand songs recorded onto 78RPM discs in the early 20th century have been released online, for free.
They are the first batch of an estimate 400,000-piece virtual record collection to be made available by the Internet Archive, from gospel by the Tuskegee Institute Sings, to opera recorded in Italy, to novelty tunes by Spike Jones, to hot — though obscure — jazz.
The task of digitizing all of those old records is happening in Chestnut Hill.
In a little storefront building on Germantown Avenue in Philadelphia’s Chestnut Hill neighborhood, George Blood Audio LP, an audio preservation company, has been quietly preserving America’s musical heritage, one 78 at a time.
Listen to the George Blood digitized collection
78 is an old format that spun at 78 rotations per minute, with grooves cut into brittle shellac. Many companies manufactured them — one of the largest was Victor Records of Camden, New Jersey — but between them there was no industry standard.
It’s nearly impossible to know what the music was intended to sound like a century ago. Each company recorded their 78 records at a slightly different speed, and cut grooves that could be fatter or skinnier. Playback turntables were often proprietary to the manufacturers of the records they played.
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