Rosenbush Cafe

Peter Churchmouse: An Early Favorite

WARNING: Language and themes will be offensive and inappropriate for some readers and gratuitous for all others! Special thanks to Paul DaliHouse Dorsey

By Henry B. Rosenbush

I have been a collector the vinyl long playing records since the 1950s, a passion that began when my father played Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade on a set of 7-inch 45s. It would be the early sixties before I learned Шехерезада was actually a symphonic suite in four movements rather than a collection of shorter works; such was the limitations of the 45 format.

Over the years I was fortunate enough to explore every new technology from Victrola to Hi-Fi for Small Fry, as they called record players for children, and then stereo. When stereo first arrived, much like the transition from black and white television to color in 1964, Beta to VHS or the most recent change from analog to high definition, there were few true examples of stereo recordings. One could play a stereo on a Hi-Fi record player but without the ability to have two channels or multiple speakers it was difficult to enjoy on the intended level.

Our first stereo system was a huge clunky affair; a long enclosed set up with record player, AM-FM radio and two moderately sized speakers. Naturally, you could play Hi-Fi recordings, 45s, 78s (many children’s records were 78s as well as jazz recordings) 33 1/3rd the standard 12-inch discs and 16, which could be practical in school for slide shows and film strips but less practical at home unless you had instructional manuals to investigate.

It would be the combined work – separately – of three men that led to the disc records that dominated the music industry until compact discs appeared in the 1980s effectively ending the gramophone record. French inventor Edouard-Leon Scott, would design in 1857, the phonautograph, which basically allowed a depiction of the visual characteristics of sound but not for playback purposes until Thomas Edison developed the phonograph in 1877, which could play back recordings but was primarily used for dictation and further developed by Edward Guilliard, who would spend the next quarter of century fighting for credit since Edison incorporated Guilliard’s innovations into his own patent.

The phonograph cylinder dominated the market starting in 1880 but as lateral-cut discs, created by Emile Berliner in 1888, began to appear musical recording began to change. Edison produced his own version, the Blue Amberol Record, in 1912, to compete with the Berliner Gramaphone label offering recordings as long as 4 minutes! By 1918, patents for lateral-cut discs expired and the market was open to countless manufacturers and by the twenties, the Amberol cylinders became merely a memory.

Our Victrola was a right-sized hand cranked device which used steel needles and there were two small doors on the front that by opening and closing ‘controlled’ volume, pitch, treble and bass! Naturally, there was no such thing as control: you cranked the cylinder beneath the platter for speed, which was generally enough for one side of a record before it s l o w e d d o w n and s t o p p e d…

The needles were designed to be used once - I had to special order stainless steel needles from New York in the 1980s because record store employees, usually college-aged students, had no idea what the hell a Victrola was never mind “steel needles!” Imagine sitting on your front porch in 1926 listening to Mario Lanza or Al Jolson for the first time. We take for granted today not only the experience but sheer volume of availability of product. In the beginning, the earth was unformed and so was the music industry.

Thanks to dad, I was more aware of Glenn Miller, the Dorsey Brothers (Tommy & Jimmy), Benny Goodman, the Ink Spots, Mills Brothers and classical music before I was introduced to Elvis Pressley! My aunt Virginia took me to see the Swan Lake Ballet and the opera, La Traviata, in the late 1950s so even Tchaikovsky and Verdi preceded my knowledge of rock ‘n roll (1954-63).

My First Purchase: Around the World in 80 Days (1956)

Like most children, I had albums and 78s by The Flintstones, Quickdraw McGraw - and sidekick Baba Looey, Peter Churchmouse (I only have one of the two LPs left and no cover - sigh), The Gingerbread Man and my first acquisition, the original soundtrack recording of the first motion picture I ever saw, at age three, Michael Todd’s Around the World in 80 Days (1956). Boy did I grow up with a crush on redheads thanks to Shirley McLaine! Purchased in 1961 at a yardsale of a woman who lived next to my aunt and grandmother, Rosa, in Homewood, Alabama, it was the beginning of a collection that would eventually climb into the thousands!

When Southern humorist Brother Dave Gardner played the University of Alabama in 1963 I was fortunate that one of our tenants at The Henry Apartments left behind the album of his concert and my collecting days began in earnest as I began searching for his other recordings and even got to see him in a Birmingham nightclub in 1971…that’s another story for another time, however.

By 1967, when I bought The Bee Gees “First,” their great ballad-driven album, which was acquired thanks to Virginia: “What do you want for your birthday?”

“The Bee Gees first album.”

She gave me the necessary $7.98 and I went to the record store and now knew the experience of wanting a particular record; I mainly wanted it for the song, Turn of the Century, but soon learned every song was worthwhile.
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