Collector Podcast : The Mystery of the Green Discs
03.24.07 By Collin DavidThough it’s probably not the most informed or organized method of collecting, I do suffer from the occasional impulse to ‘buy a huge lot of things on eBay and figure out what they are later.’ Perhaps it’s the little bit of detective in me, and a little bit of the compulsive, but I’ve recently won a couple of auctions for large lots of unusual records - a set of green, flexible ones and a big box of multicolored recordings for children. While those childrens’ recordings will be addressed later, the subject of today’s inquiry is these odd green records. I just can’t assemble the clues and I need help, folks. I don’t have the miraculous powers of the Dark Knight Detective, or Ralph Dibny, or hell, even Detective Chimp - but at least I don’t have his alcoholism either. Or gamey odor.
Here’s the clues, as I understand them. We have a series of 11 records inside a Capitol Records mailer, all made of very flexible material and green, and marked with a wax pencil of some kind with the dates of recording, almost one each month from June 1961 to June 1962. Since the mailer is postmarked April 1961 (before the dates of the recordings), this leads me to believe these recordings are unrelated to Capitol Records. However, written across the front of the mailer are the words ‘records from Harrison before we taped’, which may or may not relate to the contents of the records themselves. This envelope was mailed to Radio Station WBBF in Rochester, NY, where I presume these recordings were made and stored in whatever envelope they had around. I have a few records from this era that were clearly made in radio stations by amateur voices, so such a practice is not unheard of. While WBBF was an AM rock station through the 1960s, it went through many changes, including being a gospel station, a country station, a sports station, and currently existing as a Spanish language station. Because of this, contacting the station to trace 40 years of history is fairly impossible.
Interestingly, they’re recorded at 33 RPM, and the pitch of the speaker’s voice drops as the needle continues around the record and the revolutions grow shorter.
Of course, the most important evidence is the sounds on the records themselves. I tried to listen long enough to figure out who the voice belonged to, but whoever it is, they managed to fill up 11 45-sized, double sided records with ramblings about building houses and other autobiographical sketches. All I know thus far is that this man likes building houses, is getting a divorce from his wife Vera, and is sending these records to his mother by way of letters.
Please have a listen to these recordings and tell me what you know in the comments section below! Who is Harrison? What was he doing in Rochester? Will I ever solve the Mystery of the Green Discs?
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Article Tags: , 33, Capitol Records, green, LP, records, WBBF================
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