Wax cylinder xmas music MP3s

A wax-cylinder afficianado has produced a killer roundup of Christmas music digitized from the dead recording medium, all from the first couple-three decades of the twentieth century.

Last year I posted a series of entries entitled "Vintage Christmas Wax" which most folks were pretty happy about. Alas, several of the old links have expired. Rather than have everyone search for the active links, I decided to compile the remaining links into one simple post. So, once again, here is a collection of vintage wax recordings from the early 1900s through the late 1930s (my favorite continues to be Eddie Cantor). Many of these fantastic transfers are from The Antique Christmas Lights Museum. Others were sourced from The Cylinder Preservation & Digitization Project, Canada's Virtual Gramaphone, the Library & Archives Canada, The Library of Congress, The Edison National Historic Site, and the Internet Archive. Happy Holidays!!! NOTE: Some of the files may take some time to load.

Link (via Beyond the Beyond)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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Robotech_Master

I don’t suppose, he said lazily, someone could compile all those mp3s into a zip file so I don’t have to right click and save so many times? :)
Patrick McNamara

You should get the recordings onto Archive.org.
sabik

#1 – wget? Or some other automatic website downloader?
franko

someone in the comments posted a link to a .zip file he compiled of the complete set:

http://rapidshare.com/files/77420864/Vintage_Christmas_Wax.zip.html
Tommy

Franko, you rock. Thanks.

But now my wife is really gonna kill me. I’ve been playing digitized vinyl the past couple weeks and she’s already annoyed at the sound quality. What’s she gonna say about wax cylinders?
jacord

I just downloaded the .zip file, it seems most if not all of the MP3s from collectionscanada.ca are truncated (something like 1/5 of the songs). That site is painfully slow at the moment.

What’s she gonna say about wax cylinders?

She’ll brain you with a candy cane in all likelihood.
Sean Blueart

CORY,

I’d like to kindly challenge your editorial use of the phrase “dead recording medium.” If it’s still in use, no matter how slightly, is it truly dead?

sincerely – Sean Culver, artist, daguerreotypist
The Unusual Suspect

(Waiting for the RIAA to sue everybody for making .mp3s of wax cylinder recordings without getting explicit approval from Thomas Edison first.)
Bat Guano

The Eddie Cantor is a great track, but it definitely ain’t from a wax cylinder. Sound is too clean, and Depression era lyrics and references to the brewing European war put it around 1938. Cylinders then were as cassettes are to now. (I was going to say 8-tracks, but I doubt people had any sort of kitschy affection to cylinders at that time.)