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Bryan's High Quality Old-Time Radio MP3s
I personally encoded all of the shows in this section from recordings already in my cassette, vinyl LP, open reel, or audio CD collection. A few of the encodings were recorded from borrowed sources. All of these are original files; they are not re-encodings of pre-existing MP3 files. I do all my OTR encoding at 128/44 mono (same as 256/44 stereo) for best sound quality. At this bitrate, I can fit about 12 hours on one 700 MB CD-R.
Free downloads
Here are some sample MP3 programs from my collection, posted in full 128/44 quality. At this rate, most 30-minute programs take roughly 26 MB. To download, you may need to right click and select "Save target as" or if you're on a Mac (like me), hold the control button, click on the link, and select "Download linked file." I will leave these programs posted for a few weeks and then replace them with others. Be sure to check back often! Enjoy!
1929-xx-xx The Eskimo Pie Orchestra - This 1929 syndicated radio program features the Jean Goldkette Orchestra (under the direction of Harold Stokes) playing some popular songs of the day. This was taken from 3 3/4 ips open reel tape and although the quality of the source material isn't the greatest, it offers some tunes that the Goldkette band never recorded commercially. Included in the program are the following tunes: "Wedding of the Painted Doll," "Valpareiso" (?), "Moonlight March" (on which Harold Stokes sings the vocal), "Hi-Ho, Everybody, Hi-Ho," "Jericho" (with Clark Meyers singing the vocal), and "I'm Just A Vagabond Lover." This particular recording may well be the composite of several broadcasts--or else the original disc transfers were made out-of-order since the announcement before the second number indicates that it's the end of the program. Anthony Baldwin, author of the article "Le Mysterieux Monsieur Goldkette," indicates that the original recordings for these Eskimo Pie programs were made by Marsh Labs in Chicago around July 1929, and were distributed to stations on 11-inch 78 rpm discs (which would hold one song per side). Without access to any of the original discs or logs, I have no way of knowing the order in which the songs would be presented, so I have left my MP3 in the same order as the reel-to-reel tape (even though it is apparently incorrect). Baldwin reports that, in total, 16 sides were made. Three of them were released on a Fanfare LP in 1978 ("What A Day," "Junior," and "Yours Sincerely"). The Fanfare LP gives a personnel for the Eskimo Pie Orchestra recordings drawn from Brian Rust's July 27, 1929 American Dance Band Discography entry for the Jean Goldkette band. However, the folks at Fanfare failed to take into consideration that the July 27, 1929 session was composed almost entirely of members of McKinney's Cotton Pickers, who recorded under the Goldkette name that day when the actual Goldkette recording band was late to the studios because of bus trouble. Thus, I'm quite sure the Fanfare personnel is wrong. In truth, the members of Goldkette's band in the summer of 1929 remain largely unknown, but likely include Nat Natoli on trumpet, Victor Young on violin, Van Fleming on banjo, and Harold Stokes playing the accordion.
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