Ken's post about what got him started with the phonograph hobby inspired me on
to begin a thread about 'first times'. Ken and others, I would be delighted to
read your story. Here follows my own.
It was probaby 1969, 1970, I was used to catching Dark Shadows, the macabre
gothic TV soap opera, just after getting home from school. I was 15 or
16. One main line development of the plot involved a musical haunting of the
family homestead by the ghost of a long passed relative who had been walled up
to die in his room with his cylinder phonograph. In 1970, now was his time to
get even. His theme song was incessant and pervasive when he was active and
aprowl; it became a popular 45 release at the time (Quentin's Theme). His
phonograph was an Edison Home, probably a second style model A; the banner
decal was often visible to the viewer. The horn was at first a black Edison
Home model, but later on, when the show started to be broadcast in color and
when we had our first color TV, a maroon morningglory painted with a wreath
of roses. That was how it all began for me. No matter the vague
inconsistencies and inaccuracies of horn
model, phonograph and the purported year of 1899 for having been walled up.
I drove relatives, family, friends and quite a few strangers crazy with a
growing obsession of wanting a horned phonograph. The passion plunged me into
all kinds of research about the invention and history of the devices; I was
feverishly hunting up anything that might have a picture or two...which...at
that time was a pretty limited library. I wrote a term paper for a highschool
history requirement on the invention. Every weekend that I could, I haunted a
group of antique shops in a nearby town; one had 3 flowered morningglory
horns displaying on a shelf near the ceiling; pink, blue and green- but no
machines; another was offering a black Edison Gem for $80 or $90 and an
Edison Standard with a large brass horn for $150....a fortune for those days
for me.
Finally, after about a year of of making an ever increasing pest of myself in
every antique shop and flea market in ever-widening radii around my hometown,
we got a fateful phonecall one evening. A gentleman called from a shop saying
he had a machine and would I be interested. He was willing to meet me and my
parents at the shop that very evening. To say we rushed through dinner is
understated; I suggested eating it in the car; some $50 later, I was the
beaming, second owner of a Victor III with black and brass horn as well as a
soon-to-be-treasured Victor batwing 78 of Irish tenor John McCormack singing
Moonlight and Roses.
Over the years I have had very little contact with other collectors, but I
understand I now live near a couple of major 'powers' in Connecticut.
I have a small collection mainly because I have not ever had the space nor
great spare funds to afford to keep it fed. And for a period of many years, I
stopped hunting things up; my college and early career, not to mention my
hormones, sent me in other directions entirely for quite a time. I came back
to external horn phonographs around the surfacing of eBay. I have a
decided preference for external horn, Berliner/G&T, Edison and Victor machines
And since it is such a brief list, I offer the details of my group:
1 Victor III
1 HMV indeterminant 1920s model
1 Victor pre-dog Monarch Junior (marked Model E), front mount
2 Edison Standards, model A banner style
1 Edison Standard, Model F, with the model D designation struck out on the
plate, cygnet number 10
1 Edison Home, model B, tall case
1 Edison Triumph, model A banner style
1 Columbia AJ, front mount, apparently 3rd style
1 Columbia early model Q
1 Gramophone and Typwriter early model 3, new style
Kevin Tupper
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