I don’t think I posted this before, but in my thrift shop adventures, I’ve found a few recording booth records, which are records that were recorded in an actual recording booth. The machines that used to make these are pretty rare now and worth quite a bit.
While I can’t find where I put the record itself, most of these are often made of thin plastic or even plastic on cardboard, so they tend to be in rough shape. You can hear there was a bad spot about 3/4 of the way through this track, where it gets extra crunchy. To put this in perspective, if this record actually made its way to the recipient, and then returned with the soldier, then, it literally went through a war.
I think this recording offers a pretty rare glimpse into what parents were sending their boys overseas; usually it would be letters, but this is a letter-as-audio. I believe this may have been dated 1957, which puts it around the time of the Vietnam War.
Recording:
The pitch and speed, while close, may be off as the record was recorded at 78rpm, and I dont have a 78 player, so I used an app called “Amazing Slow Downer” on IOS to adjust the speed and pitch to what sounds reasonably accurate.
If anyone has any information about it, or comments, please feel free to add comments below.