78s Aren't Vinyl: Tragedies of Forgetting that the Old Isn't Like the New ･ﾟ✧

March 12, 2024. "78 rpm records aren't albums. Older records aren't vinyl, they're shellac." This is my catchphrase. Well, it would be if I didn't say "butts" in the middle of awkward silences.

78 rpm records aren't albums. Older records aren't vinyl, they're shellac.

I find myself repeating these phrases once per month, minimum. I don't intend to be pedantic or fall to pet peeves (though I'll admit the latter tempts me!). My goal is to ensure preservation for future generations.

I don't expect people to know the ins-and-outs of one hundred year old technology. However, I do want to encourage people to seek and learn rather than assume. When someone assumes that 78s are analogous to modern vinyl albums, then that hundred year old technology gets broken, permanently.

And while many consider 78s "worthless" because there aren't masses chasing after them, and while 78s are easy to find in the flea market, not every disc is omnipresent, nor do I think we should treat old material flippantly. That's how we lose media, permanently.

I love video game preservation projects. Emulators, ROMs, old games websites, this is the triumphant work of demigods. These people understand the dwindling circulation and accessibility of games that are only thirty, twenty, ten years old. Once the consoles get outdated, once computers get upgraded beyond a certain point, this piece of human expression disappears from public access. We're at grave risk of losing much of the growing years of a new art form.

There's a point at which "worthless old garbage" becomes "preservation of human history." There's a point at which "grandma's old records" become a sentimental familial heirloom. These records were meant to be played, but they won't be played if you assume you can treat them like your 1970s Pink Floyd albums or 2020s whatever-people-are-getting. You do not store 78s the same way; you do not play 78s the same way; you do not clean 78s the same way; you do not ship 78s the same way. And before you treat anything that's decades old as you would something newer, I hope we can get in the habit of checking before we damage it.

Vinyl albums are often shipped in thin cardboard mailers. If you put a 78 in one of those, it will break. It will break. Would you ship a dinner plate in a mailer? No. It would break.

Two records came in the mail this week. Both were pressed in the 1920s. Both I've hunted for years.

Lem Fowler arrived in perfect packaging: it was sandwiched between two cardboard sheets, which were taped together, then rubber-banded together. This provides extra stability so the record can't snap. Sometimes that sandwich is wrapped in bubbles Lem Fowler had the bubble layer. Then, that's placed in a larger cardboard box filled with packing peanuts or wadded up newspaper stuffing. This floats the record in a sea of absorbable material so that, if a drunk gorilla handles the box, the record doesn't smash and break. But you also put a large "FRAGILE" label on the package, too, to try to dissuade gorillas.

This is the standard and prescribed method of shipping 78s, which all 78s sellers do, and which they vocally advertise as knowing how to do at their online storefronts. These are the sellers to shop from. Lem Fowler was sold by one of the most well-known, trusted, and respected 78 sellers. So Lem Fowler was an exciting unboxing experience.

Burnett & Rutherford, not so much. The B&R record arrived yesterday in questionable packaging. The box was slightly thicker than a vinyl mailer, but not by much, and when I opened it up, the inside packing was sketchy. A few tiny wads of tissue paper were tossed into the box, not enough to even encase the record. The record was at least flanked by cardboard and wrapped in bubble wrap - usually not enough - but this saved it. I was shocked and relieved to see that this, too, was an undamaged disc.

This week's stories have been happy stories. And usually my stories are happy. One time, one of my records even came in a box with a two inch wide indent in it. But, floating in its sea of peanuts, the record was untouched.

Sadly, I've been the victim of sellers who've treated shellacs like vinyl. I've received three 78s in the mail from inexperienced sellers who shipped with thin cardboard mailers. Two of them came in pieces. One of them came newly fractured.

The frustrating thing is that two of them are rare Carl Sauceman records, Carl Sauceman records I've never seen for sale again. There are NO Carl Sauceman shellacs I've seen for sale again, in fact! And the extra frustrating thing is I had reached out to the sellers beforehand saying, "DO YOU KNOW HOW TO SHIP 78S? TALK TO ME BEFORE YOU SHIP" and then they didn't talk to me until we had to discuss refund money.

They weren't rude or negligent. I hold no malice. They just assumed, "Oh, I can ship a record in a record mailer," because a record is a record is a record, right?

This is why I repeat, 78 👏 rpm 👏 records 👏 aren't 👏 albums. 👏 Older 👏 records 👏 aren't 👏 vinyl, 👏 they're 👏 shellac.

That's why I'll repeat it forever. I'd rather not (pun time) be a broken record. But more than that, I don't want to be mean. I don't want to hurt the feelings of a seller who shipped something to me inadequately, announcing they broke their own wares and will lose money on it, instructing them how to prevent this. I don't want to be on the receiving end of another damaged disc. I don't want to see record stores chucking 78s into wood bins where breaks are waiting to happen. We need to understand old equipment isn't new equipment, period. This isn't just records! This is a mental framework. We need to check what anything is before we inadvertently destroy it - physical, mental, intellectual.

The 1948 Carl Sauceman record is/was extra special to me. It was recorded in 1948 before even Flatt & Scruggs made it into the studio, and Flatt & Scruggs were arguably the second bluegrass band to exist (them leaving Bill Monroe's band changed bluegrass from "Bill's personal sound" to "spreading a sound trend that could become a genre"). This is bluegrass at its earliest. This is bluegrass at its best. I adore both songs and played them on repeat (YouTube) before the record was scheduled to arrive.

That record has "Please Don't Make Me Cry" on the B side. Somehow I premonitionally knew this would happen, based on the song's title. I did not cry, but it sure makes a collector want to. Instead, I am haunted. I am haunted and cursed by Carl Sauceman, one of my favorite bluegrass musicians ever, and I am going to go insane if I can't get another "Please Don't Make Me Cry" in the next 30 years. I will hunt across the ends of the earth to get this replaced. I need to rectify the situation so I can set aside my sadness and guilt and listen to the songs with the innocent joy I once did. [cough] Anyway.

I glued each Carl Sauceman record back 'together'. The one in four pieces was a lost cause. "Handy Man" - another ironic title, eh? Shellac collectors say it's impossible to repair a broken disc. But for sentimental reasons, because Carlie boy's band is one of the bestest bluegrass boys ever, I restored some sense of wholeness.

The extra tragic thing is "Please Don't Make Me Cry" was close to being playable after my gluing. I employed herculean effort to save it. Its grooves are sliiiiiiightly off so that it skips. With different tracking weights, the grooves respond ever-so-slightly differently. It's close to being right. If I were braver, I'd separate the glued segments and try again. (I suspect I'd make things worse and feel worse, so we are not trying again.) It holds together under the motion of the stylus, its sound quality would've been marvelous, but... it doesn't play the music as was.

I try not to say I'm backhandedly responsible for their breaks by buying them, thus initiating their shippage. (If I didn't buy them, someone else would've; and the seller's actions are their own actions.) I focus on this: I couldn't give them a good life, but I can give them an honored afterlife. My heart sinks whenever I look at them, but I give them the same love I give everything in my collection.

The fractured record was Bob Wills's Sugar Moon and Brain Cloudy Blues, a record sold everywhere. I'm not sad. It plays fine with the fracture, and I can get a new copy, too, for less than $15.

I have a second fractured record not caused by shipping. That was a nightmare come to life. I'm extraordinarily cautious when photographing my records, but to take an overhead shot, I have to hold my camera above the record. Well, my hand slipped, I bobbled the camera midair, knocking it into a worse and harder momentum, and it flew down and smashed into my record with its sharp corner. It hit one of the weakest places a record could be hit. Everything bad that could happen with something falling happened. My record received a radial fracture. It was a glossy, well-preserved *Rich-R-Tone*. The Rich-R-Tone label, as in... a notoriously rare and treasured local hillbilly label.

Now, radial fractures are playable with cautious, proper upkeep. I did two rounds of careful gluing, trying to balance coating enough glue to stabilize the record, with minimizing glue visibility that'd mar the record's looks. One side has glue scuffing (blugh); the other side looks almost imperceptibly damaged.

In the midst of these sad stories, though, the music sang out again: I sat down tonight, baited breath. Finger poised at the turntable. And tested the Rich-R-Tone.

A country band leapt from the speakers. Stoney Cooper's voice took life. Apart from unobjectionable clicking as the stylus passed over the fracture, the audio quality was fantastic.

This record's voice isn't silenced. This record still has life to give us, the beautiful ghosts of people now gone, a slice of six minutes raw from the 1940s.

With care, we can still access and connect to the voices of the past. And the people of the past, and the people in the present, and hopefully the people of the future, become one.