Spirit of 78

Victrola Favorites: Artifacts of Bygone Days (Dust to Digital, 2008)

Giving the gift of music is a righteous thing to do, but it’s not nearly as awesome as receiving the gift of music—especially when the music you’re given is unexpected and superb. And by this I don’t mean the time my Mom gave me a tape of Air Supply’s Lost in Love for Valentine’s Day (I remember desperately (and futilely) fast-forwarding through this pungent pop turd looking for anything that rocked). No, a true example of a great gift of music is something like Victrola Favorites: Artifacts from Bygone Days, which a close friend so generously gave me for Christmas.

Victrola Favorites is a two-CD collection sandwiched in a gorgeously designed clothbound hardback book, and was released some months back on the excellent Dust to Digital label. If you haven’t feasted your eyes and ears on this fantastic anthology, do so—it’s well worth your time and money (even if I didn't actually pay for mine). Victrola Favorites dusts off the faraway sounds (both in proximity and in age) that were etched into old shellac 78 RPM disks, some 40 years of international music reaching back to the infancy of recorded sound and culminating with final scratchy years of the 78.

This superb collection was culled from the vast record collections of Robert Millis and Jeffery Taylor, the passionate souls behind an elusive and noisy combo called the Climax Golden Twins and the most excellent Seattle record store Wall of Sound. Both Millis and Taylor have searched the world—physically, mind you, not virtually via the Internets—in their quest to uncover (and conserve) exotic and obscure sounds—be it a field recording of African tribal music, hot jazz from the '20s, a traditional Persian folk song or seminal twang from the Appalachians. Think of Millis and Taylor as modern-day Harry Smiths or younger contemporaries of Joe Bussard (the Maryland man who’s made it his life’s work to mine rare 78 gold throughout the Eastern and Southern U.S.), but with a decidedly international bent.

Victrola Favorites offers one of the most interesting and intriguing musical journeys ever committed to plastic. Over the course of two hours of music, Millis and Taylor take us through many lands and possibly hundreds of years of musical tradition. Indeed, there is much to discover: a 1930s raga from India, a sacred chant from Buddhist nuns circa 1915 (the collection’s oldest-known recording), strange yodeling from Persia, hillbilly music (witness Goebble Reeves’s amazing gargle-yodel on the “The Cowboy’s Dizzy Sweetheart”), a West Indian stomp (jazz meets calypso) courtesy of Harold Boyce and the Harlem Indians, Qawwali music from India, Blind Boy Fuller’s swingin’ blues side “Step It Up and Go” and Roy Smeck’s slide guitar wizardry on the 1928 recording of “Laughing Rag.” There are 48 cuts total—all of them excellent. Equally fascinating are the dozens of images of the records’ original artwork, vintage 78 sleeves and labels, photos, advertisements and more that color the book’s 144 pages (there’s also a finely written essay by Millis and a complete track listing).

Sure, the music of Victrola Favorites sounds antiquated and distant—the scratchy static and distortion generated by the stylus dragging across these brittle disks, as well as the rudimentary methods in which they were recorded, contribute to this. But don’t let that hinder you from entering this unusual world of sound; for once you do, you’ll find yourself returning again and again.

Do yourself a favor: treat yourself to this gift of music. You can find Victrola Favorites: Artifacts of Bygone Days at Wall of Sound here or at the Dust to Digital store.