Thursday 22 July 2010

What to do with a warped 10" 78rpm blues record?

This record's cooking!

Last week I bought a marvelous classic jazz-blues 78 , "My Daddy Rocks Me" by Trixie Smith, at the local open-air market. It was in excellent condition. Unfortunately I left it on top of my little Fidelity record-player (which I'd bought for twelve pounds at the same market about ten years earlier), and forgot to switch it off overnight. The valves got very hot, and by next morning the 78 was warped and unplayable. What to do? I looked up various possible solutions on the internet, but none of them seemed satisfactory or likely to succeed (the recommended method involved two sheets of glass, and a hot day or an oven at its lowest heat). I didn't have two sheets of glass, but I did discover I had a frying pan with a diameter of exactly 10 inches at the base. Then I discovered a pyrex dish with a 10 inch diameter at the outer edge.
If I turned it upside down, it fitted exactly over the 10 inch record's circumference-edge and snugly into the frying pan. Eureka! After a few trial runs with oven temperatures from 150 to 200 degrees (for only a few minutes, with the oven door open), and a little extra pressure on the pyrex dish once the record had softened, it seemed to do the trick. I let the record cool outside the oven, and found an almost perfectly flat 78!













I'm not making any recommendations, as this method may be dangerous and may not work for others or for all types of record (certainly not for vinyl LPs), but I thought I'd relate the story. I can now enjoy Trixie Smith singing "My Daddy Rocks Me". I'm tempted to see it as one of the first rock 'n' roll records!

My Daddy Rocks Me

My man rocks me with one steady roll.
Ain’t no slipping when once he takes hold.
Well I looked at the clock, the clock struck one,
I said, “now daddy, ain’t we got fun,”
And he kept rocking with one steady roll.
That’s right-
My daddy rocks me with one steady roll.
It makes no difference if he’s hot or cold.
I looked at the clock, the clock struck three
I said, “Now daddy, you’re killing me”
And he kept rocking with one steady roll.
I said,
My daddy rocks me, with one steady roll.
Ain’t no slipping when once he takes hold.
I looked at the clock, the clock struck six.
I said, “Daddy you know a lot of tricks,”
And he kept rocking with one steady roll.
That’s right- My man rocks me,
With one steady roll.
It makes no difference, if he’s hot or cold.
I looked at the clock, the clock struck ten.
I said, “Now daddy, lets go again.”
And he kept rocking with one steady roll.
That’s right- My man rocks me with one steady roll

Here's a damn good cover of Trixie's "Freight Train Blues" (also successfully flattened out by my patent process!)

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