UNEXPECTED VOICES FROM THE PAST Found: family recordings on antique discs

By Ellen Donker

A few weeks ago, my mother got an unexpected package in the mail. My cousin Lorraine was cleaning out her mother’s apartment and thought my mother might want some photos and homemade record discs from her youth.

The photos were mostly duplicates of ones my mother already had, but the records were another story. They are home recordings that her Uncle Herb had made in the 1940s. She had mentioned the recordings to me over the years but thought they had been thrown out. This is when you appreciate your aunt’s hoarding tendencies.

My daughter Madeline and I were eager to play the records, but I hadn’t owned a turntable in decades. It was a perfect reason to reach out to our neighbors via our community Google Group. Typically, we’ll email the neighborhood for a recommendation for a reliable plumber, to offer items we no longer need or report a problem with rowdy raccoons. Within minutes after asking the group for a turntable to borrow I had several offers. An hour later, my neighbors Bill and Kitty came to the door with a portable turntable.

The disc Madeline and I wanted to hear first was labeled “Marilyn & Her Mother, 2-7-42.” We placed what felt like a piece of cardboard on the turntable and, amid the crackle, heard my mother as a 9-year-old in 1942 introduce herself and sing a silly camp song. Madeline instantly teared up because it was the same song she had learned at the summer camp of her youth. True, the quality was so poor that my hearing impaired mother couldn’t decipher it. But it made for a memorable time capsule of her youth. Madeline recorded it on her phone and sent it around to our immediate family.

When we listened to the other records I heard my grandmother singing hymns. I was reminded of the voice of a well-trained soprano I had known as a child. There were also recordings of various sibling trios and quartets as well as a disc that featured greetings from family members living in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, the recording of my grandfather and his friend doing improvisational skits about their Norwegian family were unintelligible. But a disc devoted to recording my mother and her cousin laughing uncontrollably survived.

I became curious about how Uncle Herb had cut these records. We have about 20 discs in all – none were in protective sleeves – of various sizes and materials. The earliest is a 6.5-inch Wilcox-Gay fibre-core disc. After researching that label, I believe he probably had a Wilcox-Gay Recordio machine. From 1910- 1963, the company manufactured and distributed radios, dictation machines, blank recording discs and the Recordio line of home recording machines. I can imagine Uncle Herb brought this novel machine to family gatherings as a way to preserve the wonderful sounds his siblings made. They were a large bunch who loved music, with most living in Chicago. Many sang together in musical groups at church and on the radio. I doubt Uncle Herb imagined anyone would be listening to these records 80 years later.

I’m not sure what I’ll do with these discs. I returned the portable turntable to Kitty and Bill. But then my neighbor Olivia ended up passing her turntable on to me for keeps. Now I have a permanent way to listen to records. I could digitize the discs, but there is something special about placing a disc on the turntable and waiting to hear something you missed from the last time. The discs don’t take up much room, so maybe years from now when someone is cleaning out my stuff they’ll find them. I’ll place a copy of our family tree with the discs so they can have a piece of their heritage both to touch and to hear.