LATEST ADDITIONS

Two recently announced Record Store Day offerings may interest you. One is from the jazz label Newvelle. The other is from Reverb LP, the online record marketplace created by reverb, a website for buying and selling musical instruments and accessories.

Despite recording a handful of legendary Paramount Records sides in 1930, Eddie James “Son” House, Jr. vanished after his rediscovery in August 1941 by Alan Lomax. His recordings gained stature over the ensuing decades, which in 1964 lead Dick Waterman, Nick Perls, and Phil Spiro on a mission to find House. They eventually located him that June in Rochester, New York, approximately 1,000 miles from his origins in the Mississippi Delta. Following his migration, House worked as a New York Central Railroad porter, killed a man in self-defense, and perhaps most importantly in the context of this review, put down his Dobro after the death of close friend and fellow bluesman Willie Brown. However, the younger generation’s enthusiasm for House’s original recordings reinvigorated his desire to play, which he then did for the first time in seven or eight (according to the liner notes) years.

Recently, I presented the idea to AnalogPlanet editor Michael Fremer that I could do my very own online radio show to post on AnalogPlanet. I could transfer most of the songs from vinyl, stitch them together, and speak in between DJ sets. MF said “try it and let’s see how it turns out.”

Denon's 103 cartridge originally introduced in the 1960s for radio station vinyl playback is still in production and now has achieved near-mythical status. A few body upgrades are available, most of which require the motor to be removed from the less than rigid body. However, this one costing $85 with the not particularly clever name Aluminum Body Cap is one you can easily add yourself to your existing 103.