Interview with Rare Blues Collector John Tefteller, who bought a $37,100 record

Paramount Records was actually based in Port Washington, Wisconsin as a subsidiary of the Wisconsin Chair Co., to make the “software” to play on their phonographs in cabinets. When they went out of business in the 1930s, they sold off their metal masters for scrap, and employees allegedly threw the other masters and remaining 78s in the Milwaukee River. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramount_Records
Tommy Johnson is the musician alleged to have sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads, a legend later attributed to Robert Johnson. Tommy was also fictionalized as a character in “Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Johnson_(musician)

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Lovely song.
I’m a content over form guy though,
collecting, I really don’t get that.

Well, I guess an exception for me would be paintings.
Looking at a painting is an unpronounceable experience.

So you’re the one who’s been grabbing them all around here!!!

(shakes fist in anger)

I see these all the time.

The majority of 16rpm records are spoken word, turntables mainly had the speed because there was a service for the blind whereby they would get books and magazines on 16rpm records or flexi-discs.

Paramount Records figures heavily into this story, which is an excellent interactive feature:

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