2024, Family, home, Music, Songs, Uncategorized

33-1/3

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Today marks the anniversary of the introduction of the 33-1/3 LP album in 1948 by Columbia Records. It was so popular that 78 rpm records soon were out of production.

My parents had scads of 33’s, many of which I still have. We have loads of CD’s, but as you can see there are some 33’s that Husband and I will never want to part with. It means that we will need an actual turn table for the rest of our lives. At this point, we have three of them.

As I contemplate moving in the next year or so, I groan at the thought of moving those record albums. They will have to be moved in our minivan since it will be too hot in a moving van and we don’t want them to warp in the heat. Many of these albums have moved with me from Moorhead to Winnipeg to Columbus, Indiana to western North Dakota. We have reduced the number of LP’s by about three quarters, so we will have far fewer to pack and move. The photo shows the bulk of them. There are a few more, plus some really old 78’s, in the basement.

I don’t remember what LP album I bought first, but I imagine it was one by the Monkees or some other late 1960’s music group. I remember reading the MPR Building a Classical Record Library and getting lots of the suggested recordings. Husband has lots of classic jazz recordings that are still wonderful to listen to.

I believe there are Baboons with hundreds of albums, far more than we have. We are a musical bunch, even if our musical medium is pretty old.

What were some of your favorite 33’s growing up? How many albums do you still have and what are your plans for them? Any favorite cover art?

42 thoughts on “33-1/3”

  1. I had a set of violin music, concertos and the like. About 8 albums in all. Replicated much of that on CDs. Two S & G albums. Have all of theirs albums on CD. Had a couple Herb Alpert. His music was a mood lifter. Don’t have those CD. Some Johnny Cash. Don’t remember what else. No. Kept none of the albums or the turntable. I listen to very little music now. With my bad hearing I am afraid I will miss a phone call re Sandra. And some of the music is so tied to US that I don’t want to listen to it alone.

    Clyde

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  2. I had no LPs growing up and very few in high school. It wasn’t until college that I began accumulating records. Some of what I collected was influenced by my friends and roommates in the apartments above Savran’s bookstore on the west bank of the U of M.

    I can remember listening there to Bert Jansch, Mississippi John Hurt, Fred Neil, Doc Watson, Taj Mahal, Mike Auldridge, Pentangle, the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Koerner, Ray and Glover, Ry Cooder, and Leo Kottke. I also had albums of Hank Williams and Bob Wills. When we drove with a couple of friends to Calgary for the Stampede, I made a visit to the Bay department store to buy some Wilf Carter albums.

    Out of college, I was working downtown. There was an odd record store, Pyramid Records, north of Hennepin in the warehouse district. Pyramid offered rows and rows of semi-obscure records, some of them cut-outs, at rock bottom prices. The proprietor sat in the middle of the store in a broken-down chair and seldom spoke. He seemed reluctant to actually sell anything. Nevertheless, I bought several albums of vintage country recordings on the CMH—Country Music History—label, a German company, as well as some vintage jazz, like Bix Beiderbeck from him. Rumor has it that the proprietor and his entire stock disappeared one night.

    About the same time I had begun collecting jazz violin records- Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang, Duke Ellington’s Jazz Violin Sessions, Stephane Grapelli, etc. I had tickets to see Joe Venuti at Orchestra Hall the year he died.

    My collection of LPs went through phases. For a while I was mostly buying Celtic artists.

    As records and then tapes transitioned to CDs, I replaced some of my albums with CD versions, but some I let go. A few years ago I took about three fourths of my albums to a used record shop. I kept ones I could never duplicate, but I haven’t played them since. I have a turntable but it isn’t hooked up. The music I play now comes via bluetooth from my phone.

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  3. I am down to just a few, and I’ll have to investigate which ones made the last cut. When I left California (1974), I gave most of my albums to my sister, who was in Berkeley by then. She returned many of them once I got settled in Mpls. Right before one of our many moves, I taped all the essential ones, and I still have many of those tapes. But I kept a precious few, which are in the basement since I don’t have a turntable at this point.

    Favorites growing up – my mom and I danced around the dining room the day we got our first Stereo, to Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony et al.. Pete Fountain’s Walkin’ in New Orleans (my dad’s). There was a Montovani movie themes album from my first boyfriend…

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  4. Rise and Shine, Baboons, from JacAnon,

    I remember having albums by John Denver, Bread, Carol King, Chicago, and Blood Sweat and Tears. I played those over and over. There were others, as well, but we gave them away years ago after no longer having a turntable to play them on. During grad school (1979-1981) I went through a Jane Olivor phase of buying her records. Bette MIdler got a lot of attention from me as well, but soon after I bought those, CDs came into existance. The wasband heard Garrison Keillor play an Eastern European women’s group singing on the Morning Show. He bought that record and played it over so many times that I now hate that record, that group, and I am not fond of the wasband either.

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  5. The Rolling Stones’ Through The Past Darkly was a favorite. The octagon shaped cover was unique.

    The Association Greatest Hits was played often.

    Janice Joplin’s Pearl. Excellent.

    My Mom’s 101 Strings was played 102 times.

    I no longer have any records.

    Wes

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  6. Wow – I have 4 remaining albums – incl. a Swedish Christmas album with a song my grandma used to sing, Noel by Joan Baez, and Hungarian Folk Dances, from a workshop when I first got interested in dancing. I guess I realized that if I ever needed any of the other stuff, I could find it on the Internet, which is true – whenever an old song comes to mind, I can almost always listen to it on Youtube.

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  8. My parents had a small collection of LPs of mostly Irish popular music. The Clancy Brothers and Brendan O’Dowda were my mother’s favorite. She was especially fond of sentimental songs, but also liked humorous and boisterous songs. I knew this song by heart, long before I could understand the lyrics:

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  9. For a while I had a collection of 78 rpm records, most of which came from a friend’s grandparents house when they were clearing it out, and three crank 78 rpm players. The records included some WWI patriotic songs like “Just a Baby’s Prayer at Twilight (for Her Daddy Over There)”, “Goodbye Broadway Hello France”, and “Throw No Stones In the Well That Gives You Water”, as well as novelty songs like “I’ve Never Seen a Straight Banana” by Billy Jones and Earnest Hare (the Happiness Boys). Ultimately, I gave the entire collection to another friend who was entranced by it.

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  10. O.T. For anyone who might be interested, this Sunday, June 23rd from 1 to 4:30 PM there will be a Celebration of Life for Spider John Koerner at the Cabooze, 913 Cedar Ave, Mpls. Charlie Parr will be one the performers at the Celebration of Life.

    This will be followed by a potluck at Palmer’s Bar, 500 Cedar Ave from 5 to 7:30 PM.

    I’m sorry to miss these events, but I’m not in good enough shape to risk being in such a crowded space. I’m sure lots and lots of old folkies will be there.

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  11. My parents had a collection of old 78s – can’t remember titles and don’t know what happened to them. We had a console record player and had LPs such as Herb Alpert, Andy Williams, Montovanti, Golden Strings, etc. My own LP collection included The Beatles (but not Rolling Stones), Paul Revere and the Raiders, Carpenters, Kinks, The Who, James Taylor, Gordon Lightfoot, John Denver, Carole King, Eagles, The Doors, The Monkees, Bread, Rod Stewart, Elton John, Bonnie Raitt, and a lot of 80s bands. My favorite album title was (and still is) “You Can Tune a Piano but You Can’t Tuna Fish (REO Speedwagon). I got rid of all but one LP and switched to CDs. The one LP is The Who’s “Tommy” – but I don’t have a turntable to play it on. Favorite cover art – maybe “Sergeant Pepper’s” because it was fun trying to identify all the people in the crowd.

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  12. When I passed on my entire LP collection and turntable to tim, there was one album I didn’t give him. It’s Steve Goodman’s “Affordable Art” album, and the cover is signed by Steve. I will shipping this album off, probably sometime soon, to an Icelandic woman in Reykjavik who is an avid Steve Goodman fan.

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  13. I didn’t have a record player of my own until I was married but I did have a few albums. I mostly played my stuff when my dad wasn’t home. He didn’t like my “nasaly” music (John Denver, Bob Dylan). He also didn’t like Simon & Garfunkel or the Mamas and Papas. And once, upon hearing the Bonnie and Clyde song on the radio, he banned that from the house.

    I had the Monty Python albums before I had ever seen the television show. Of course when I was at Carleton I was part of the 4th Burton Penguin Society and I still have my little ceramic penguin that sat on top of my tv for many years.

    Like PJ, my LPs went the way of tim. I did sort out all the classical that went to my next door neighbors, the music teachers.

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  14. Joni Mitchell’s Blue, then Court & Spark. Loggins and Messina, can’t remember the title but it was a double album with a brown cover. I think it was live.

    Simon & Garfunkel’s earliest stuff, PP&M, Neil Diamond.

    Later I got into some ‘70s rock and bought some albums like some Led Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and The Wall. I also liked Kansas’ Leftoverture. I think the first rock concert I went to was Boston. I got over all of that very quickly, even though I stand by my Pink Floyd selections.

    I got into some Shawn Phillips with my college roommate at St. Olaf. (SWWFHMATSITAYKILYBBIGTHTL) She remembers me as liking Heart, but I don’t remember that at all.

    I stopped listening to popular music in the ‘80s. I listened to a lot of Grateful Dead (it was on almost constantly at the Stone House). Then a lot of Windham Hill records, especially Michael Hedges. That led to listening to a lot of various acoustic artists. I was also trying to tape all of my albums (never got it done). I made a lot of radio tapes on cassette.

    I moved to Montgomery to live with Morgan in the late ‘80s and I started listening to many of the Morning Show artists, many of the Minneapolis musicians that Bill mentioned above including Bill Hinckley and Judy Larson. I also like John Hartford, Bill Staines and Tom Paxton, Claudia Schmidt and Sally Rogers, Nancy Griffith, and others.

    I have several hundred albums. I can’t seem to part with about half of them. There’s a new record store in town now and I’ve heard that albums can fetch a nice price. Apparently nobody wants CDs now, they want records. So maybe I could part with some. Some just mean a lot to me and I can’t bring myself to do it.

    I was helping my friend Gary move his stuff out of the garage down by the river at the Stone House today. It’s flooding his garage right now.

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  15. Oh! Greg Brown! I loved Greg Brown! His music was on CDs though.

    I got John Prine’s first album in the early ‘80s. I don’t have all his albums, never tried. I have tried to learn many of his songs though.

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  17. Thinking about some of the LPs I had, I was just remembering Rio Nido- Prudence Johnson, Tim Sparks and Tom Lieberman. Among the songs I remember from their album “I Like To Riff” was a song they got from the Boswell Sisters called Crazy People. That led me YouTube and the Boswell Sisters singing the original. They’re fun to watch and listen to:

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    2. Tom Lieberman will play at the Minnesota Original Music Festival at Minnesota Square Park in St. Peter

      Performer announcement: Tom Lieberman will be appearing on the KMSU Main Stage at the 2024 Minnesota Original Music Fest! Tom Lieberman began performing his original songs at age 16 in the coffeehouses of the vibrant Minneapolis West Bank scene of the 1970s. He is a founding member of the seminal vocal jazz trio Rio
      Nido and was associated with public radio’s A Prairie Home Companion from 1976-86, where he worked variously as a performer, writer and utility infielder. Tom’s work on APHC set him on a career path as an award-winning writer, composer, producer and director for radio, television, stage and screen. His original songs have been
      heard from Sesame Street to Sweet Land, and his first recording of original songs, “Common Denominator” has been described by reviewers as, “bluesy, simmering, profoundly philosophical,” and “gentle, playful, romantic and infectious.” Tom is also the creator of the musical story world of Ukulele Alley and the voice of “everybody’s
      favorite talking ukulele,” Luke the Uke.

      See the full main stage lineup and schedule here: https://mnomf.org/kmsu/

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  19. LP’s had a distinct advantage over other recording media in that they had a lot of real estate to use for album art. I recall that Arlo Guthrie’s Hobo’s Lullaby folded out and featured an interior drawing based on Dylan’s When the Ship Comes In.

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