Transcription Mystery Disc #44

This is a 78 rpm metal-core disc of the Wilcox-Gay brand. It is undated, but is a known-type: the black lacquer 5B. These date to the early 1950s. This one has 2 tracks on each side: Boulevard of Broken Dreams (1934), Japanese Sandman (1920), My Buddy (1922)  and Have Only Eyes For You (1934). Boulevard of Broken dreams and I only have eyes for you both come from film scores and the other two in the 50s would have been considered standards.All this does is affirm a date of after 1934 which the type of blank already did. I only have eyes for you was a hit in 1934 with Ben Selvin, and again in 1950 for Peggy Lee and a couple times since then as well.  However, the label is marked © 1950 above the logo. Incontrovertibly the recording must be preceded by that date.


This one cleaned up nicely. A simple low-pass filter took out the bed noise and a quick pop filter removed much of the harsh noise. There were no major cracks or scratches so only nominal edits were needed. All tracks are solo piano without vocal or narration. It sounds eerily like a saloon pianist in a western film.