Transcription Mystery Disc #171

This disc was so bent that I had to manually intervene and bend it back. This is a dangerous move as any flexing of the core can de-laminate the acetate from the substrate. In other words the coating can peel right off. But in this case the bend was so pronounced the needle couldn't track whatsoever. So steps were taken to save this 78 rpm metal-core oddity.

Sentimental Reasons


The disc is labeled With both names and a date "Johnny singing, Atlantic City July 7, 1948."  This recording is almost exactly 65 years old. We know where and when it was recorded. The vocalist, Johnny opens with "This song is for my darling wife, Sentimental Reasons."  then he broke into an acapella version of "(I Love You) for Sentimental Reasons."  two years previous Nat King Cole had a huge hit with it so he is most likely emulating this version. But Eddie Howard, Dinah Shore and even Charlie Spivak had cut versions of the song by the time Johnny got around to recording this abbreviated version.

You will notice that the brand name Voice-O-Disc is very similar to Voice-O-Graph.  I've never seen the make before but it's likely they were a cheap knock off disc offered to vendors using Voice-O-Graph discs. In this case I know they were recorded at Atlantic City, it might have even been a small run with labels slapped onto a known blank. It's impossible to say now.