Mr. Write's Page

In 1960, when we Smiths left Germany and returned to the ZI (Military abbreviation for Zone of the Interior, meaning the US of A), I took with me about 200 45 rpm records from the four years we lived overseas.

As I explained previously, I got most of those records free, as a perk for being Vice President of the base Teen Club and thereby the guardian of the jukebox.

My collection of 45s never grew much after that. By the early 1960s, 12-inch albums, 33 rpm, were taking over. The 7-inch 45s… well, they soon were kicked to the curb.

My collection of old 45s from the Teen Club is notable for two reasons. One is the unusual way I acquired it. The other is that most of the records bear European labels, not American.

They are the same top 40 songs and musicians as in the U.S., but the records were made and distributed by British and German companies.

I sorted through my record stash recently to see what exotic labels were there.

London
Decca, Ltd.
Parlophone
Columbia, Ltd.
His Master’s Voice
RCA Telefunken
MGM Great Britain
Mercury EMI, Ltd.
Capital Warenzeichen

And a few others. Those labels may or may not be more valuable than American recordings from the same period, but it doesn’t matter. I have no plans to let go of them.

In fact, I’m pleased to say that this year, the old 45s are out of the closet for the first time in a long time.

That’s because technology has finally caught up with a long-standing wish of mine: to convert the 45s to digital files. Finally, the hardware and software exist to do that.

So I recently purchased a new toy: a turntable with a USB plug, along with the software to make it go. I’m in the process of saving all of my old 45s, as well as my old albums, in MP3 format.

It’s a fun and satisfying project. Tedious, too.

But you know, when I play the old tunes, it isn’t the same as hearing them from those giant jukebox speakers, booming forth from the Teen Club and reverberating to the far reaches of Patch Barracks.