*** Navigation ***
 About Morton
 Socials
 Collection
 Guestbook
*** MIDI Jukebox ***
!!! JAVASCRIPT REQUIRED !!!
The MIDI Jukebox needs JavaScript to work.
Without it, you'll have to hum the tunes yourself.
* Doo dee doo doo doo... *
BUT WAIT -- you're hearing La Mattchiche right now!!
That's the background MIDI, baby!!
Fun fact: The average MIDI file is 30KB.
The average JavaScript framework is 300KB.
This page uses <BGSOUND> -- a tag so deprecated,
MDN has a skull emoji next to it. And yet... it plays.
You chose wisely.
|
*** Current Time ***
Time: ASK YOUR SUNDIAL
(JavaScript handles the clock. You're on your own.)
*** Yahoo! Weather ***
Your Location, Earth
*
??°C / ??°F
Forecast: 100% chance of shellac
Wind: favorable for gramophones
Humidity: irrelevant (keep your 78s dry!!)
Powered by sticking your head out the window
*** Horoscope ***
*** ALL SIGNS ***
The stars say: you will find a rare 78 today!!
(This prediction is always accurate. No JavaScript needed.)
*** Quote of the Day ***
"Any application that can be written in JavaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript."
-- Jeff Atwood (2007)
...except THIS page. Take THAT, Atwood!!
*** Shoutbox ***
SHOUT INTO THE VOID
The Shoutbox requires JavaScript.
But you can still shout at your monitor.
Go ahead. We won't judge.
(Your shout will be delivered via <MARQUEE>.
All communication was <MARQUEE> in 1998.
Email? <MARQUEE>. Chat? <MARQUEE>.
Love letters? <BLINK><MARQUEE>.)
|
*** Site Poll ***
What's your fave 78rpm genre?
# Jazz -- always a classic
# Folk (World, Blues, Country etc.) -- Morton's pick!
# Classical -- for the refined ear
# Military -- march on!!
# Novelty -- for the weirdos (respect!!)
Voting requires JavaScript. Your opinion has been noted (it hasn't).
*** Web Rings ***
|
78rpm Collectors Web Ring
|
*** Y2K Countdown ***
TIME UNTIL Y2K BUG:
~26 years, give or take.
(Precise counting requires JavaScript.
We survived Y2K with nothing but <TABLE> layouts,
<FONT FACE="Comic Sans">, and pure willpower.
We'll survive this page without JS too!!)
*** Badges ***
78 RPM
OR BUST! |
100%
SHELLAC |
TURNTABLE
GANG |
FREE SPEECH
ONLINE |
NO JS
ZONE !! |
MADE WITH
NOTEPAD.EXE |
| GEOCITIES FOREVER |
*** Cool Links!! ***
 Ad Rem 78rpm
Phonopassion.de
Excavated Shellac
Internet Archive 78s
UCSB DAHR
TrueSound Transfers
UCSB Cylinders
Discogs
78rpm Labels
Jazz 78s Page!!
Shellac.org
78rpm.co.uk
TrueSound Online
Gramophone Page!
78rpm Community
Mainspring Press
CHARM
Juneberry 78s
Billo's GeoCities
Wirz Music Encyclopedias
Mayrent Yiddish Recordings
Canary Records
John's Old Time Radio Show
GeoCities
Angelfire
Tripod
AltaVista
Lycos
Excite
Ask Jeeves
HotBot
WebCrawler
Dogpile
ICQ
AIM
Napster!!
Winamp
RealPlayer
Kazaa
Audiogalaxy
CDnow
Tower Records
Hamster Dance!!
ZOMBO.COM
Newgrounds
eBaums World
Netscape
DMOZ
Encarta
Pets.com
Million $ Homepage
Space Jam!!
Cameron's World
GifCities
mIRC
Badger Badger Badger!!
Get Netscape Navigator!!
TheOldNet
RetroCampus BBS
OldWeb.today
Your resolution: YES
Your browser: EXCELLENT TASTE
JavaScript: DISABLED (GOOD!!)
Layout engine: <TABLE> (SUPERIOR)
Colors via: <FONT COLOR> (TIMELESS)
CSS needed: ZERO BYTES
|
About Morton
~* The Story *~
OK so here's the deal. It all started with ONE single
record back in 2020. The weight of it. That mysterious label. And then the needle hit the groove and
a voice from another CENTURY
filled the room -- and that was it!! Game over!! Total obsession from day one. And guess what?? It
has NEVER faded.
Morton's collection grew out of that obsession: a deep, personal
journey through the amazing world of
shellac records spanning every corner of the
78 RPM era -- no single genre, no single decade,
just pure musical curiosity without borders!! If
it's on shellac and it's got soul, Morton wants it!!!
~* The Collection *~
Every single record in this collection has been
HAND-PICKED -- no filler, no fluff,
every disc a highlight!!
Morton looks for pressings that still carry the life of the performance: strong grooves, honest labels,
discs that have survived the years with dignity. If a record doesn't make you go
"WOW" it
doesn't make the cut. Simple as that.
At the heart of it all is a HUGE love for
folk music from around the world
-- especially:
Italian,
Hawaiian,
Eastern European,
Yiddish (Ashkenazi),
Roma,
South American
music!!
But wait -- there's MORE!! Also in heavy rotation:
Personality Records ~
Jazz from the '20s & early '30s
~
Dance Music from the early '20s
~ highlights from the
Acoustic Era (marches,
laughing records,
Ländler) ~
yodeling records
~ plus a healthy dose of
Pre-War Blues and
Country!!
From super rare and sought-after sides to hidden gems that TOTALLY deserve a wider audience --
spanning artists, labels, and genres across the
golden age of the gramophone.
~* The Philosophy *~
These records are NOT just objects!! They are
first-hand witnesses to musical history -- recorded in the
studios where the music was made, carrying the sound
EXACTLY as it was captured. No remastering. No filters. No
algorithms. Just a needle, a groove, and a
direct connection to the past. How cool is THAT??
Morton Harley's 78rpm Manor exists to
keep that connection alive.
Whether you are a seasoned collector or someone who has just discovered the
mAgIc of 78s
for the very first time --
WELCOME!! This is a place for people
who believe that music sounds best when it has a story to tell.
~* Get in Touch!! *~
Morton Harley is ALWAYS happy to talk records!! Whether you want to give
him records for free, want to propose a trade, or just want to swap stories about the
golden age of shellac -- don't be a
stranger!! Hit him up!!
|
|
Links & Socials
* Click any button to visit Morton's pages on the Information Superhighway!!
|
*** VIDEOS SECTION ***
YouTube embeds require JavaScript (and about 47 tracking cookies).
In 1998 we had <EMBED SRC="video.avi"> and it was FINE.
Instead, here's a text-based video experience:
[>>> PLAY >>>]
* *crackle* * *hiss* * *POP* *
A ghostly voice from 1905 fills the room...
* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *
[<<< STOP <<<]
See? Who needs <video> tags when you have <BGSOUND>
and IMAGINATION??
|
Collection Highlights
A Jiddische Mamme / Awrumale Melamed
* Marion Koegel & Werner Seelig-Baß
c. 1930 | Lukraphon
| *** ULTRA RARE ALERT!!! *** |
OK people, sit DOWN for this one. This is a
LUKRAPHON pressing from
pre-war Berlin featuring
Marion Koegel AND
Werner Seelig-Baß on
THE SAME DISC!!!
If you don't know Lukraphon, it was a tiny label that specialized in
Jewish and Yiddish music in 1930s Berlin -- most of their
pressings were destroyed or lost during the Holocaust, making
survivors ridiculously scarce. Werner Seelig-Baß was a classically trained pianist who accompanied
some of Berlin's finest Yiddish performers -- his piano work here is
GORGEOUS,
sensitive and powerful at the same time, weaving between accompaniment and full-on lead. Marion
Koegel was a Yiddish singer with a voice that could make
STONE CRY -- side A is
"A Jiddische Mamme",
the CLASSIC Yiddish tearjerker (originally a
Sophie Tucker hit from 1925), and she delivers it with such raw
emotion that it HURTS. Side B is
"Awrumale Melamed",
a humorous Yiddish folk song about a village teacher -- completely different mood, full of
warmth and wit.
And here's what makes this disc truly
heartbreaking:
these were Jewish artists performing in
BERLIN
in the early 1930s. Within just a few years, everything they knew would be shattered --
the systematic persecution of Jewish people in Nazi Germany
DESTROYED an entire cultural world, performers were forced to
flee or face the horrors of the Holocaust, and labels like Lukraphon were wiped off the map entirely.
Koegel and Seelig-Baß both managed to flee Berlin
-- they survived, but the world they knew was gone forever. This disc isn't just rare --
it's a voice from a world that was about to be annihilated,
pressed into shellac just before the darkness fell. The fact that it even
EXISTS in 2026 is basically a miracle!!!
If you collect pre-war Jewish 78s, you KNOW how insane
this find is. 11/10, would
trade kidney for a second copy!!! [GEM]
|
Germaine / Native Trinidad Kalenda
* Lionel Belasco / Jules Sims
c. 1914 | Victor
HOLY SMOKES, do I even need to
explain this one?!?! Lionel Belasco = the
GODFATHER of
calypso piano,
born 1881 in Maracaibo to a Sephardic Jewish father and an
Afro-Caribbean mother, raised in Port of Spain, Trinidad. This man was
leading his own band --
Belasco's Renowned String Band
-- by 1902, playing at elite society events all over Trinidad,
AND running the
London Electric Theater,
the FIRST movie theatre in Port of Spain!! In 1914,
Victor Talking Machine Company sent a
field recording unit to Trinidad -- one of the first times a
major label went TO the Caribbean to record. Belasco was
right there with his piano, and these sessions produced some of the
earliest Caribbean music EVER committed to shellac!!!
Then in August 1915, Belasco sailed to New York and laid down
TWELVE piano solos for Victor in a
SINGLE DAY (August 27, 1915!!). The man went on to make over
278 recordings between 1914 and
1945, more than any other Caribbean bandleader of the era. His style blended
Dixieland jazz, Venezuelan folk,
ragtime, and
European classical music into something entirely
NEW -- they called him the
"SCOTT JOPLIN OF CALYPSO"
and that's no exaggeration!!! Side A has
"Germaine" with those rolling, syncopated piano
figures that basically INVENTED the calypso sound, and Side
B... oh man... "Native Trinidad Kalenda" by
Jules Sims is pure rhythmic
FIRE. The
Kalenda (or Calinda) is an ancient stick-fighting dance
tradition from Trinidad -- raw, powerful, the beating heart of Carnival culture pressed into
shellac. This is a Victor pressing from those legendary early
sessions -- Caribbean music at its absolute
GENESIS. If you don't get
goosebumps playing this, CHECK YOUR PULSE!!! [PALM]
|
Orientalische Motive
* Oscar Zehngut (als Josef Solinski)
c. 1907 | Favorite
| *** MYSTERY RECORD OF THE MONTH *** |
OK here's the deal: Oscar Zehngut was a
Jewish Austro-Hungarian violinist who worked at the
Yiddish theatre Gimpel in
Lemberg (Lviv) and recorded under the pseudonym
"Josef Solinski" on the legendary
FAVORITE label out of Hannover. Why
the fake name?? Nobody really knows for sure!!! But
HERE'S what makes this disc truly
EXTRAORDINARY: this is one of the
EARLIEST KLEZMER RECORDINGS IN EXISTENCE.
We're talking c. 1907 -- years before
Belf's Romanian Orchestra cut their legendary Warsaw sessions for
Syrena (1911-14), years before the American klezmer boom. This
is the OLD WORLD sound captured at the absolute dawn of
recorded music!!!
"Orientalische Motive" (Oriental Motifs) -- the
title itself is a classic early-disc euphemism for Jewish music -- features these absolutely
HAUNTING klezmer violin
melodies that sound like they're drifting in from another dimension. Zehngut plays with that
unmistakable Eastern European Jewish ornamentation: the
krekhts (that sobbing, crying inflection), the
dreydlekh (ornamental turns), all the embellishments that make
klezmer fiddle playing one of the most
EMOTIONALLY devastating instrumental traditions on the
planet. Favorite Records (est. ~1904) was one of those early
German labels that was pumping out 78s before most people even owned a gramophone. We're talking
1900s recording technology here
people -- acoustic horn, no microphones, no overdubs, just pure
RAW talent captured in wax. And the Favorite label
pressings have that distinctive thick shellac and deep groove that just
SINGS on a good
gramophone. This is THE definition of a deep-cut collector piece
-- early klezmer, a pseudonym no one can explain, and the sound of
vanished Lemberg pressed into shellac over a
CENTURY ago. If you know, you
KNOW!!! [STAR]
|
Too Tight / Stonewall Street Blues
* Blind Blake
c. 1929 | Paramount
| !!! ATTENTION ALL GUITAR NERDS !!! |
This is BLIND BLAKE on
PARAMOUNT. I repeat:
BLIND BLAKE.
ON PARAMOUNT.
Arthur Blake (1896-1934), a.k.a.
"The King of Ragtime Guitar",
recorded roughly 80 tracks for
Paramount between 1926 and 1932, and every single one is a masterclass in
fingerpicking wizardry.
What made Blake SUPERNATURAL was
his right hand: his thumb kept up a ROCK-STEADY alternating
bass pattern while his fingers picked out these insanely syncopated melodies on top -- completely
independent, like two musicians playing at once.
This "thumb independence" is STILL considered
one of the hardest techniques in acoustic guitar and modern players spend
YEARS trying to get even
CLOSE to what Blake did naturally. His ragtime picking was so
fluid, so rhythmically complex, that notes fell
BETWEEN the beats in ways that have confounded
transcribers for nearly a century. Reverend Gary Davis said Blake could
"pick so fluently everything stood out separately."
Big Bill Broonzy put it even simpler: Blake
"made it sound like every instrument in the band -- saxophone, trombone, clarinets, bass
fiddles, pianos -- everything."
ON ONE GUITAR. WITH HIS FINGERS.
"Too Tight" is Blake at his funkiest -- this
bouncy, swinging groove that NOBODY has ever quite
replicated -- and "Stonewall Street Blues" is
pure Piedmont blues perfection. And here's the thing
about Paramount pressings -- they used
garbage-tier shellac mixed with cheap filler, the masters were
literally DUMPED IN THE MILWAUKEE RIVER when the label went
bust in 1932, and surviving copies are like gold dust. This
disc is nearly 100 years old and STILL plays fantastic.
INSANE!!! [FIRE]
|
Yamshtchik, Nie Goni Loshadei / Zapriagoo Ya Troikoo Borzych
* N. Nazaroff
1928 | Columbia
| >> RUSSIAN ROMANCE ALERT << |
[puts on headphones] OK so
N. Nazaroff (the N. probably stands for Nick) was
NOT your ordinary recording artist -- this man was a
WHISTLER. Yes, you read that
right. A PROFESSIONAL WHISTLER. And not just any whistler,
we're talking about a guy who could whistle with such purity, such
SOUL,
that it'll make your jaw hit the floor. He recorded this double-sided 78 for
Columbia in 1928, and it is an absolute
GUT PUNCH of nostalgia.
Side A is "Yamshchik, Nie Goni Loshadei"
(Coachman, Don't Drive the Horses So Fast!)
-- one of the most BELOVED Russian romance songs
ever written (by Nikolai von Ritter, c. 1905). It's about a
coachman driving a troika through
the snow and the passenger begging him to slow down because the journey will end too soon... just like
life itself. [sobbing] Nazaroff sings this one straight, pure
vocal, aching and beautiful.
BUT THEN!! Flip the disc to Side B
-- "Zapriagoo Ya Troikoo Borzych"
(I'll Harness My Swift Troika)
-- and THAT'S where the whistling comes
in!!!
Nazaroff whistles entire passages of this troika classic and
it is absolutely
MESMERIZING.
The melody just floats out of the gramophone horn like a
ghost from old St. Petersburg,
crystal clear, hanging in the air like snow!! These were recorded for the
MASSIVE Russian diaspora in America after the Revolution,
and you can HEAR the longing in every note. Side B alone is
worth the price of admission -- forget singers, forget instrumentalists, this man did it with his
LIPS and some AIR!!!
MAGNIFICENT doesn't even begin to cover it!!!
[MUSIC]
|
It's Only A Paper Moon / Night Owl
* Cliff Edwards (Ukulele Ike)
1933 | Brunswick
OMG OMG OMG it's
UKULELE IKE
himself!!! If that name doesn't ring a bell, maybe
THIS will:
Cliff Edwards (1895-1971) was
THE voice of
JIMINY CRICKET in
Disney's Pinocchio.
Yes, THAT Jiminy Cricket. "When You Wish Upon a
Star"?? THAT'S HIM!!!
But before he was a cartoon cricket, Edwards was
THE
biggest ukulele star of the 1920s -- he basically singlehandedly caused a nationwide
ukulele craze,
sold MILLIONS of instruments, and
Tin Pan Alley started putting uke chords on all their sheet music
because of this guy.
And HERE'S the thing that makes him truly one-of-a-kind:
Edwards invented his own vocal style called
"IFFING" -- a
form of proto-scat singing where he'd replace lyrics with
rhythmic nonsense syllables, basically freestyling over the melody like a
human jazz instrument.
He was doing this in 1922,
YEARS before scat singing became a mainstream thing!!!
"Paper Moon" (written by
Harold Arlen & Yip Harburg,
1933) is a timeless standard that Ella,
Nat King Cole, and Frank Sinatra all
covered later, but this Brunswick pressing is the Cliff Edwards
ORIGINAL from 1933 and it has that warm, velvety pre-war
sound that just wraps around you like a blanket. A piece of
Jazz Age AND
Disney history on one slab of shellac!!!
10/10 guaranteed to make
you smile!!! [MUSIC]
|
Bolgarskiy Zhok / Moldavanskoe Ange
* Belf's Roumanian Orchestra
c. 1912 | Syrena
| *** FROM THE VAULT: KLEZMER AT THE EDGE OF HISTORY *** |
OK buckle up because this one is a DEEP CUT in every sense of
the word. Belf's Roumanian Orchestra was a small
klezmer ensemble recorded in
Warsaw between 1911 and 1914 for
the legendary SYRENA REKORD label
-- the very first Polish record company, founded 1904/1908, named after the
Syrenka,
the MERMAID OF WARSAW herself. And here's the
crazy part:
NOBODY KNOWS WHO BELF WAS.
Researchers have only ever identified a mysterious
"V. Belf" (which anglicizes to "Wolff")
as the bandleader. That's IT. No first name, no biography, no photograph -- just these
INCREDIBLE recordings left behind like
messages in a bottle.
Despite the name "Roumanian Orchestra", this was
JEWISH MUSIC through and through --
"Romanian" was basically a euphemism for "Jewish" at the time. Most scholars
believe the ensemble came from southwestern Ukraine, possibly
Podolia, and the music is pure klezmer: a
clarinet wailing the lead,
a violin loosely following the melody, piano and second violin playing chords. The style is
WILDLY different from the American klezmer recordings you
might know --
richly ornamented, florid, dripping with old-world soul!!!
Side A is "Bolgarskiy Zhok" (Bulgarian Dance)
-- a zhok being the Yiddish/Russian word for the Romanian
circle dance "joc." It's a
Bulgar-style dance tune,
one of the most important genres in the klezmer tradition, rooted in the
Bessarabian borderlands. Side B is
"Moldavanskoe Ange" -- a
Moldavian Hanga,
another dance form. These were ALL recorded in a single
take on acoustic horns -- no microphones, no electricity, just musicians gathered around a giant
metal cone in a Warsaw studio while wax spun beneath the needle.
Syrena was pressing up to
15,000
SHELLAC DISCS PER DAY by 1912 and shipping these south to
Jewish communities in Ukraine and Bessarabia by the
THOUSANDS. Then
WWI hit in August 1914 and
DESTROYED everything -- the label's owners were
imprisoned in Germany, the factory on Chmielna Street was
zeppelin-bombed, shellac supplies were confiscated for the war effort. The Belf ensemble
never recorded again.
The matrices? Most likely GONE -- lost through two
World Wars, a revolution, and the Holocaust that erased an
entire civilization. But the DISCS survived. Copies were
still circulating in the 1970s when klezmer revivalists rediscovered them, and they've since
appeared on legendary reissue compilations (Folklyric 1983,
Rounder Records 1993, Trikont 1995).
There's even a website called
BELFOLOGY.COM dedicated entirely to transcribing these ~40
tunes!!!
This is not just a record -- it's a
piece of a vanished world,
pressed into shellac by people whose names are mostly lost to history, playing music that somehow
REFUSED TO DIE. If this
doesn't give you chills, NOTHING WILL!!!
[GEM][MUSIC]
|
|
*** Morton's Guestbook ***
*** GUESTBOOK ***
The guestbook requires JavaScript to load entries and submit new ones.
Without JS, your heartfelt message about how much you love Morton's site
will have to remain trapped inside your head forever.
SIMULATED GUESTBOOK ENTRY:
xX_CoolDude_Xx from Springfield, USA wrote:
"cool site dude!! the <MARQUEE> and <BLINK> are AWESOME!
reminds me of my geocities page from 1998!!"
~*ShellacQueen*~ from Wien wrote:
"OMG that Lukraphon disc!! Also I love that the whole
layout is <TABLE>s. Nested <TABLE>s. As God intended."
WebMaster_2000 from Cyberspace wrote:
"47 <FONT> tags and not a single line of CSS.
This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. HERO."
( these are fake obviously. enable JS for the real thing )
|
|
|