Old jazz magazines - record ads [2]

After my initial post displaying several record advertisements from old jazz magazines, Michael Steinman commented very appropriately in his Jazz Lives blog (nice title for a post: "Swing Archaeology") about the old 78 rpm discs as a very different way of having access and listening to our beloved jazz music:

“(...) If you don’t know the music represented here, these ads might seem charmingly archaic but no more meaningful than drawings of old-time detergent boxes or tubes of toothpaste.

But if you do know what it must have meant to buy the new Art Hodes session on Signature, these ads are tender artifacts of a time when “a record” was a two-sided 78 rpm disk, highly breakable, costing anywhere from thirty-five cents to a dollar, and it was something to treasure. We who collect jazz now and are able to buy every record Fats Waller made (for example) on twenty-four compact discs, should stop a minute and recall such pleasures, even if they had vanished before we were born (...)”.

For his (and I hope others') delight, here’s a new batch of record ads, extracted from Jazz Session magazine and published from May 1945 to July 1946. All single 10" or 12" 78 rpm discs and albums with three 78 rpm discs are represented here, labels being Asch, Blue Note, Disc, Jazz Information, Session, Keynote, Capitol and H.R.S.

Old jazz magazines - record ads [1]

Old magazines are always an invaluable source for any kind of jazz research. Club listings, reviews, interviews, articles, ads, listings of new releases... You can obtain that precious piece of information you've been looking for years in any of those worn pages.

But they can also be highly regarded treasures by themselves, kind of a mysterious jewel you can enjoy in your nightly jazz temple at home...

I have always been fascinated by those old black and white records ads, with their somehow naive hyperboles ("get the sensational new Henry Red Allen record on RCA Victor", "the best in hot jazz", "the real New Orleans Music"...). Here's a good sample, extracted from several issues of the H.R.S. Society Rag (1938-1941).

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Las revistas antiguas de jazz son siempre una valiosa fuente de información en cualquier investigación jazzística. Listados de clubs y conciertos, reseñas, entrevistas, artículos de fondo, anuncios, listados de nuevas ediciones... Puede que tengas suerte y encuentres esa preciada información que llevas años buscando ahí mismo, en cualquiera de esas arrugadas páginas.

Pero esas revistas también pueden constituir un valioso tesoro en sí mismas, una especie de misteriosa joya que disfrutas en tu templo nocturno de jazz en casa...

Siempre me han encantado esos viejos anuncios que acompañaban las ediciones de discos de jazz, con sus ingenuas hipérboles ("compre el sensacional nuevo disco de Henry Red Allen en RCA Victor", "lo mejor en el hot jazz", "la auténtica música de Nueva Orleans"). Esta una selección de esos anuncios, que fueron publicados en la revista H.R.S. Society Rag entre 1938 y 1941.