Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Transcription Mystery Disc #65

This comes to me with no information at all. It has no date, no authorship, and no city of origin. I recognize immediately the very common green Voice-O-Graph label that dates it vaguely to the 1940s or 1950s. I bought it from a stack of mixed but identical unlabeled Voice-O-Graph discs. They could have traveled any distance to get into that stack. Or perhaps were recorded on that very block. There is no way to know now. It does remind me that today the MP3s that are publicly posted will become the same vague, unattributed media in the next century. So people, please fill in your ID3 tags!

The recording spins at 78 rpm and starts on the outside edge as expected. the disc was filthy but cleaned up fairly well with a slightly damp paper towel. I don't always recommend that but at the very least, mud must be removed. It features an anonymous female vocalist. the song is "I Only Have Eyes For You." It was composed by Harry Warren and lyricist Al Dubin in 1934 for the film Dames. In the film it was performed by Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler. It was a #2 hit on Billboard  for Ben Selvin the same year. But that is not the version she is singing. It strongly resembles the Doris Day version. That version was recorded in 1950 for the film Tea For Two.  That's not definitive with the hundreds of recorded versions, but it's the only guess I have at present.

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