Rare 1920s radio is this week’s Phantom Dancer feature artist.

The Phantom Dancer is your weekly non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV every week.

LISTEN to this week’s Phantom Dancer mix (online after 2pm AEST, Tuesday 15 March) and two years of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/

Rare 1920s radio in a simulated radio broadcast over the Warner Brothers’ radio station KFWB Los Angeles, filmed for Vitaphone Varieties in 1929, with Roy Fox and his Orchestra…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6BNFJvw-MM

LONG PLAYING DIAMOND DISCS

The rare 1920s radio from 1928, includes two extant examples of a number of recorded broadcasts that year featuring ‘The Happy Hour Boys’ and the Ray Nichols Orchestra on WAAM Newark NJ. They were aired and recorded specifically to test Edison long playing diamond discs.

The programs were a demonstration of the audio quality of the quarter inch discs. As the WAAM announcer said, concluding the 9 Sep 1928 test broadcast featuring WAAM’s ‘Happy Hour Boys’ , the show, in co-operation with Edison engineers was ‘a test of the long-distance (sic) record. We hope its success will be huge, indeed.”

The Edison Diamond Disc Record was a type of phonograph record marketed by Thomas A. Edison, Inc. on their Edison Record label from 1912 to 1929. They were named Diamond Discs because the matching Edison Disc Phonograph was fitted with a permanent conical diamond stylus for playing them. Diamond Discs were incompatible with lateral-groove disc record players, e.g. the Victor Victrola, the disposable steel needles of which would damage them while extracting hardly any sound. Uniquely, they are just under 1⁄4 in (6.0 mm; 0.235 in) thick.

In 1926, an attempt at reviving interest in Edison records was made by introducing a long-playing Diamond Disc which still rotated at 80 rpm but tripled the standard groove pitch to 450 threads per inch by using an ultra-fine groove, achieving a playing time of 24 minutes per 10-inch disc (12 on each side) and 40 minutes per 12-inch disc (these were the only 12-inch Diamond Discs ever sold to the public). A special reproducer and modified feed screw mechanism were required to play them. There were problems with skipping, groove wall breakdown, overall low volume (about 40% of that of the regular Diamond Discs), and a failure to exploit the format by releasing a limited number of discs. Only 14 different Edison Long Play discs were issued before they were discontinued.

The Lee Sisters’ sound-on-disc Vitaphone appearance in 1929…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbijMMVeaM8

RADIO SET TEST

Another rare 1920s radio braodcast on this week’s Phantom Dancer is from 4 May 1929. The Brunswick Balke Collender company, which manufactured radio sets and records, booked time on WABC New York, after its broadcast day to air the radio experiment.

The experiment was a test of the audio quality of a Brunswick radio set. The test itself was a broadcast of a commissioned musical program over WABC which was then recorded off-air as it was picked up by a Brunswick radio receiver. It was, in effect, an early ‘home recording’, but not the first. a radio enthusiast in New York had recorded morse code radio off the air onto cylinder in 1915. That recording is lost, but an airing of the the original cylinder on a 1933 radio show exists.

1927 Vitaphone clip of The Revellers…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQKRTLc0zbI

15 MARCH PLAY LIST