A woman made a surprising discovery after buying a jazz album for three dollars (just under three euros) at a thrift store in Minneapolis. In the shop she found two small plates from the 1950s with love messages between a man and a woman.
When it comes to love, it was not unusual – especially in the past – for letters to be written back and forth. And sometimes, as in this case, the vows of love were even recorded on records. This was made possible in part by a device called the Voice-O-Graph, which became a popular attraction in the US from the 1940s onwards.
Records were recorded into the machine
Anyone could enter such a Voice-O-Graph and make their own recordings – greeting messages or even singing. And all without the presence of a sound engineer. The end result was scratched onto a 6-inch diameter plate using a simple, direct-cut phonographic process. These documents were often sent by post.
These Voice-O-Graph records even had a label that, in addition to the company name, also contained a hazard warning that the sound carrier, which had to be played at 78 RPM (revolutions per minute, note), was “flammable”. ”.
Mann served in the Air Force in the 1950s
Angelina Palumbo found these exact recordings in the inner sleeve of the jazz record she bought. She tried to find the addresses of the couple who had sent such documents to each other in 1954. But so far she hasn’t succeeded, Palumbo says. According to the address on the envelope, the man was serving in the U.S. Air Force at the time of admission.
“I couldn’t find any contact details. I tried looking for them on Facebook, but I couldn’t find anyone to contact because I don’t know if their family still lives in Minnesota. (…) I hope this story reaches the right people,” said Palumbo.
“That’s how they communicated back then.”
“This was before voicemail and social media. That’s how they communicated (at the time). I think they might have cleared out a house and put the records in this album,” Palumbo muses. They probably just didn’t know that the couple’s deeply personal recordings had been accidentally slipped into the jazz record sleeve.
By the way: there was also such a Voice-O-Graph machine in Vienna in the late 1950s. It was located at Burggasse 60, in the seventh district.
Source: Krone
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