Buying lossless copies of 1920s 1930s swing, where should I go?

I don't know how many of you might be aware of a channel on youtube (I don't own it) but just know about it; prozoot. I'm just hoping it is okay to mention it on here, as I would assume the music is so old that it would be out of copyright.

https://www.youtube.com/user/Prozoot/videos

What I'm actually wondering is does anyone know if this prozoot has mastered these 78's for a CD or lossless release, whether that be paid for or free? I just think that he has done an absolute outstanding job with remastering these - it is a utter sin that youtube's compression has pretty much destroyed his work.

Some of the outstanding tracks I liked were.....

1931 - Abe Lyman Orchestra - Oh, How I miss you (Brunswick 6095)

1926 - Jan Garber Orchestra - There's no maybe with my baby

1929 - Carl Fenton Orchestra - What a day

1929 - George Olsen Orchestra - I'm on a diet of love

1933 - Ted Weems - sittin' and waitin'

1932 - Ben Selvin Orchestra's - Cabin in the Cotton

 

The internet archive has tons of 78's and cylinders in lossless quality. The artists you named all have 78's there. That's where the Youtube uploader probably got them. I once downloaded 500 tracks and made a lossless "History of Pop Music 1890-1919" collection which I shared online. If they are on the archive, they should be out of copyright...

All free, too!

https://archive.org

Do a search in the "audio" section.

 

Isn't Mickey Hart working on this to put up on the Smithsonian's website at some point?

 

That's what I thought. I made a visit there last week looking for Abe Lyman, and they are all low bitrate mp3s and oggs. Bought it to the attention of the online help team, and they noted that they only list music in the format that it was submitted in, which I guess makes sense. No point in flacing an mp3.

https://archive.org/download/AbeLymanCollection1925-1934

 

Now that you mention it, I do recall that some of the titles did not have lossless versions. I focused on an earlier era than you are, so I don't know the percentage of lossless uploads from the 20's, I'd say 75% of the earlier stuff had them. I did see some of the artists you mentioned in ALAC today. Root around in there a little and see if you turn up something. Good luck.

 

Thanks for the links anyway, will have a further burl around in there. Would be good if someone can unearth this prozoot guy, and ask if he'd be willing to submit his material to archive or smithsonian.

If prozoot has done so much work in cleaning 78s, and digitally remastering them, I can't imagine him then throwing all that effort away by only keeping mp3s. I would imagine he would have wave masters, particularly because this stuff is so rare in the condition that he's got it, and because that period is such an integril part of 20th century music.

 

Why can't you write to him on youtube and ask him for the lossless versions? If you click on his youtube ID there is another button you can click called 'About' - click that button and there you can send him a message. Pretty easy I'd say.

 

I have done so quite a wile ago, but looks like the channel hasn't been accessed for at least three to four years. Also done a general search on google and bing, but the name only seems to exist on youtube. Looks like the kind of user that has come and gone.

Also been digging around archive.org, and seems they have no standards - all the files are different formats and bitrates, and most of what I'm looking for seems to be only mp3 or ogg. I may have to look on ebay for CDs, getting pretty peeved with all this mp3 ****.

Does anyone know what labels I should be looking at? Which ones would have the original recordings, and what others may be fake?

 

hmm - maybe the guy died.

 

Here's a search I just did. I searched the picture prozoot used on his youtube page. Is that a picture of prozoot or someone prozoot likes? I don't know but if you search google for that picture you can find several websites that picture appears on.

This site: http://moviespictures.org/biography/Robles,_Roger shows that the picture is Roger Robles. Is that who prozoot is?

Roger Robles is also here: https://www.linkedin.com/pub/roger-robles/10/bb7/167

 

I wonder if there are any big grey market CD boxes which cover this era. We have this one, for example, and I know I've seen other similar ones.

http://www.amazon.com/Great-Vocalists-Jazz-Various-Artists/dp/B00003L2DQ

 

Thanks for the leads, I've contacted him through linkedin, hopefully this may lead off to something. Fingers crossed.

 

I don't have answers to your questions but Thanks so very much for posting these. They are in excellent quality, and are really fine performances.

I've posted in this forum about Harry Lauder and Hal Kemp. Love the big band era.