LUST
&
78 RECORDS
Sex is just a sublimation of Man’s basic urge to collect rare 78s.
attributed to James McKune
(quoted in 78 Quarterly magazine)
The Golden Mystics of Old Time Music were avid fans of 78 Quarterly magazine, and a few Golden Mystics were known to have shed real tears upon realizing it had ceased publication.
Because the magazine had a somewhat erratic publishing schedule, for some Golden Mystics a decade elapsed before they realized it was gone. Sadly, a few are still waiting hopefully today for the postman.
78 Quarterly magazine was a unique publication devoted to the obsessive, off-kilter world of collecting 78 rpm records, and—shall we say it?—the “lust” experienced by 78 record collectors in acquiring records, along with the romance of the shellac.
What are 78 records? The stuff that dreams are made of.
78 Quarterly never conformed to anyone’s definition of a slick publication. Of course, that’s what made it so great. Its writers were, for the most part, non-professionals. Its layouts would make a professional layout artist despair. As for its publication schedule, sometimes years could elapse between issues. Having “quarterly” as part of its name was accurate only if an alternative definition means “whenever”.
78 Quarterly magazine was always both obsessive and irreverent.
It focused on blues, jazz, and dance band music of the 1920s and 1930s (with a a bit of music from the earlier ragtime and pre-ragtime eras thrown in), and gave us articles on defunct record labels, long-dead and forgotten recording artists, and those 78 collectors, living and deceased, who helped preserve wonderful American music that otherwise would have vanished into the ether long ago.
Speaking of “obsessive and irreverent”, cartoonist and 78 record collector Robert Crumb designed its swirling, pulsating title.
Perhaps it was not a magazine for everyone. At least one observer noted that some articles were “objectively insane”. Of course, that was always a plus for a Golden Mystic.
78 Quarterly magazine was the brainchild of Pete Whelan, a collector of 78 records since childhood. In the 1960s he reissued his 78 shellac records onto vinyl LP compilations, as part of the booming interest in old time music. Then in 1967, Whelan—with the help of fellow 78 collecting enthusiasts—published his first issue of 78 Quarterly magazine, followed by a second issue in 1968.
Then he took a twenty-five year break.
When 78 Quarterly magazine resumed publication, Whelan republished the original two issues into a new combined Volume 1. All told there would be twelve issues before it ceased publication in 2005.
Or did it really cease publication?
There are some Golden Mystics who today predict its return, speculating that 78 Quarterly is simply on another twenty-five year break.
We must mark our calendars for 2030.
In the meantime …
One subtle undercurrent flowing throughout 78 Quarterly’s history was in the evocation of the sweaty link between lust and 78 collecting; between obsession and desire.
Perhaps the magazine’s most overt, as well as successful, attempt to make that link was in Volume 6, page 28:
From 78 Quarterly
The Golden Mystics always believed that as insightful as this piece was, something remained missing. What was it? As if to prove the maxim that “Great minds and Golden Mystics think alike!” the answer came to each of them at the same time: pictures!
As an homage to 78 Quarterly magazine and to further extoll upon the concept—or need we say, the virtues—of “Lust and 78 Collecting” the Golden Mystics of Old Time Music have prepared this primer, with pictures, for both the collector and non-collector alike.
Click the side arrows to turn pages
78 Quarterly may be gone, but it’s not forgotten. In fact, it still lives on in “The Rarest 78s” features.
From 78 Quarterly
Every issue of 78 Quarterly featured its popular “The Rarest 78s” section in which longtime 78 collectors would try to determine which 78s were the rarest—“Mirror, mirror on the wall, which are the rarest of them all?”—as well as how many copies still existed of each.
Picking the rarest blues and jazz 78s from the 1920s and 1930s was not all that difficult, but calculating how many copies remained in existence was somewhat akin to figuring out how many angels can dance on the point of a 78 needle. Needless to say, many a collector has spent an exorbitant sum for a 78 after “The Rarest 78s” advised there were only two copies in existence, only to sadly see five more copies pop up on eBay within the next month!
From 78 Quarterly
Today, the rarity of a 78 is often linked by record dealers to its inclusion in “The Rarest 78s” articles from thirty years ago. It’s simply the modern dealers’ way of romancing the shellac.
More importantly, this reminds us that although 78 Quarterly magazine is gone, the music of the golden past plays on.
Note: in the article, all photographs, postcards, 78 Quarterly magazines, and the 78 Quarterly advertising flyer, are from the Bowman collection. Pages and text from 78 Quarterly are noted. In the booklet, “Romancing the Shellac”, all images of photographs and postcards are taken from originals, and not from the pages of 78 Quarterly. All 78 labels from the Bowman collection, except the Black Patti, Herwin, Savoy, and Superior labels are from the collection of Dan Moss.
Bibliography
