Rediscovering 78s

Thanks to the Crosley Company, which has produced a three-speed record player for our time, and to the elves who delivered it, we have been rediscovering 78s.

"78s"--the term refers to records (once called "phonograph" or "gramophone" records) made to spin on a turntable at seventy-eight revolutions per minute; thus, 78 rpm.

"Turntable," "spin"--words that would have brought a blank stare from anyone under fifty until the resurgence of vinyl (records once referred to as LPs, for "long play," which turned at 33 1/3 revolutions per minute). A colleague of ours once had a program called "Spins and Needles." Later listeners would have said "Huh?"

The LP was developed for public use in 1948, but didn't really catch on until the early 1950s. Previously there had been 16-inch ETs (electrical transcriptions) that ran at 33 1/3, but these were produced only for use by radio stations. "ET" had an entirely different meaning then; there were some extraterrestrials in radio stations, but we called them disc jockeys.

Back to 78s: They were made of a hard shellac, easy to scratch, easy to break. They looked like flattened Frisbees. Most were ten inches in diameter, a few (Bunny Berigan's "I Can't Get Started," for instance) were twelve inches. This, of course, imposed time limits on recordings--a ten-inch 78 would contain only three minutes of music. The arrival of the LP opened room for extended works. Hello, Pink Floyd. But it was amazing how much Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman and Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie could achieve in three minutes.

Happily, much of the recorded work of past decades has been reproduced on compact discs; but there are still some treasures that can be found only on 78s--78s as aged as most of their collectors.

So, we have been rediscovering 78s.

Some are a little scratchy and a bit cracked.

But so are we.