Cumquat Lives!

[James Friedman]

I've tracked down the tranche of Cumquats that Wally Pfeiffer and Guy Cundell donated to Middle Tennessee State University some years ago.

The fine folks in the archive have made those 71 (!) discs available for listening here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/itu4eowj ... fmq58&dl=0

You can see the CDs included in the collection here: viewtopic.php?t=321369&sid=3bab382a32c7 ... 9c00e928dc

Due to an overabundance of copyright-related caution, the albums cannot be downloaded, but the librarian assures me that the link will be up indefinitely. And should it go dark, they will happily make the music available once again.

There's quite a bit to discover. I've been feasting on David Keli'i with Al Kealoha Perry and Johnny Pineapple's Lukewela
Sessions. I'm assuming that the latter features the elusive Jack de Toro on steel about whom Bruce Clarke said (in Andy Volk's indispensable "Lap Steel Guitar") "He had this strange, really beautiful swinging sound and it always sounded - this is only fantasy - like it was coming to you across a short wave radio. It was crystal clear but there was something about it that was different and he could swing like crazy. De Toro made about 12 sides that I know of with Johnny Pineapple."

I hope this resource brings about a renaissance of posts on steel guitar greats of the 1920s and 1930s.

Happy listening!

[David Matzenik]

Great news!!!

[Jesse Pearson]

Thanks for posting this link James...

[Guy Cundell]

This collection was advertised on the Forum in 2018 by Wally. I bought them and donated them to my good friends at MTSU, Murfeesboro, Tenn. I am pleased that the wonderful folks there have made them available. It is a formidable collection which may be the whole Cumquat Hawaiian catalogue.

I am so glad that the preservation work of fellow Australian Bruce Clarke can be now widely accessed.

[Mike Neer]

Amazing act of generosity, Guy. I hope generations to come enjoy and are inspired by this music. Thank you.

[Guy Cundell]

Cheers, Mike.

One thing about the collection is that the liner notes are not good and so it is best to refer to Malcolm Rockwell's discography, Hawaiian and Hawaiian Guitar Records, for info on the tracks. Problem is I've Googled it and can't find it for sale anywhere. It was published in 2007 by Mahina Piha Press. I can't even find the publisher's website.

[Keith Aiken]

try this

https://78data.com/index.htm

[Andy Volk]

When you think about it, the Cumquat catalog is a towering achievement in world music archival presentation. Bruce was one person in the world with the drive, dedication and skills to preserve this music and bring it into the digital age. He truly sweated over every waveform to balance the signal to noise ratio so that this music could sound its best.

And Guy, your generosity in sharing this music and frankly, for all you do for steel guitar deserves a standing ovation.

[Tim Toberer]

Great timing! I am getting really into this music and the good stuff is hard to find.

[Jim Mckay]

This is fantastic.

[Nic Neufeld]

Maika'i loa! Mahalo nui!

[Chris Clem]

Although I had heard a lot about these Cumguat CDs. This is the first time I actually had a chance to hear them. This is huge undertaking to find all these songs let alone transferring them to digital....so congrats for that!

Then I listened to a lot of the tracks. Having transferred many of these same songs myself I was always curios what the Cumguat CDs sounded like.....Yikes. Added reverb on every song is a huge (no no). Using a Stereo cartridge to transfer Mono records is OK if you sum it back to Mono somewhere in the transfer (but he never does). The EQ is so over the top it is distorting. What was he thinking?

I don't like to pick on someone who can't answer for themselves. SO SORRY..... but he made some poor choices on these transfers that needed to be pointed out.

[Mike Neer]

I do agree with you, Chris, the sound quality suffered from the processing he used, but the quality of the music outweighs all the negative thoughts about the transfers and the loss of high end in the interest of reducing noise.

Several years after getting many of the Cumquat CDs, I was given some cassettes of Dick McIntire recordings directly from 78s by Hal Smith. They sounded 10x better.

[David Matzenik]

Audiophiles give me a pain in the ass. Bruce Clarke didn't just live through that era, he collected those records and became very good guitarist. When he made the transfers, it was early in the digital revolution. We do not know what his comparisons or benchmarks were, or how many years he thought he had left. It wasn't like he was going to make any money either.

[Andy Volk]

The fact that Bruce took it upon himself to try to rescue this classic genre from obscurity and made it available in a contemporary format, in my view, supersedes the arguments about his choices. Software wasn't as good 25 years ago and balancing signal to noise is always an issue with 78s. Reverb is a weird thing .... a hallmark of surf and Harry Belafonte Calypso records but scorned in other genres. I hear what you're saying, Chris and I appreciate all you've shared but mostly, I'm just grateful to hear the music.

[David M Brown]

Due to an overabundance of copyright-related caution, the albums cannot be downloaded, but the librarian assures me that the link will be up indefinitely.

I sure wish these were downloadable.

[James Friedman]

I've noticed variance in the sound quality of the Cumquats, so I reached out to a fellow collector friend who is quite adept in the dark arts of transferring 78s to digital files. His thoughts on a few representative tracks I shared...

"'Nola' sounds okay, though the slight pitch problems from athletic playing might also be partially due to an off-centre pressing. There’s a bit of distortion on 'Hoonanea' and 'Lassie,' which points to somewhat pre-loved copies of the originals. It could also be that there wasn’t much of a choice of styli to enable Bruce to ride over or under groove damage. However, the Andy Iona seems fine. Sure, there’s slight added reverb here and there. But, on balance, these transfers seem acceptable by the standards of their day — which I think is the point.

I was trying to work out how Bruce might have done these, as I don’t detect much evidence of remedial software. My hunch is that these transfers are pre-digital, using EQ alone to reduce surface noise, plus some kind of old analogue declicker unit (e.g. Packburn) and maybe a noise gate, though the latter could be simply a compression effect from the mp3.

Bruce Clarke was born in 1925 and died in 2008, so I suspect his reissue activities were largely conducted before the 1990s advent of the first truly effective (and, at the time, extremely expensive) digital retrieval technology, i.e. Cedar or the slightly earlier Sonic Solutions. Present-day retrieval software that any kid posting on Youtube can now get for a few bucks simply wasn’t around.

Prior to that, surface noise could only be dealt with via top-end EQ, which even in expert hands can dull the resulting sound. Extraneous impulse noise was partially addressed by transferring 78s to analogue tope, then physically excising the pops and clicks on a splicing block, or by meticulously scraping a little oxide off the tape itself with a razor blade at the relevant points. The latter was a very delicate and time-consuming operation and, even so, could sometimes produce drop-outs.

There’s also the factor of industry fashion. When stereo recording was introduced in the late-1950s, record labels started deleting their mono catalogue. However, by the mid-1960s they found they could give older recordings a spurious makeover by reissuing them in fake stereo with added reverb. This process comprised a slight phase shift and/or EQ difference between the two channels to give the illusion of “space”, and meanwhile the reverb gave them “air”. Major labels started reissuing 1920s-40s catalogue in this way, essentially mimicking the ambiance of 1960s-70s pop records to get market share.

The most commercially successful embodiment of that approach was a late-1980s British reissue series called “Jazz Classics in Digital Stereo”, which used a compromise between old and new retrieval techniques. It was swimming in reverb and fake stereo, but also used early digital software. Thanks to an associated BBC radio show, it sold like hot cakes over here, though the audio results were often ludicrous, with for example the BG Trio sounding as if they’d been recorded at Penn Station. Interestingly, like Bruce, the engineer, was Australian."

I want to flag the aforementioned rendition of "Nola" by Bernie Kaai. The final 30 seconds is a fabulous, torrid, swinging solo that comes out of nowhere.

[Andy Volk]

My hunch is that these transfers are pre-digital, using EQ alone to reduce surface noise, plus some kind of old analogue declicker unit (e.g. Packburn) and maybe a noise gate, though the latter could be simply a compression effect from the mp3.

When I interviewed him in 2002, Bruce told me he was spending lots of time on the computer playing around with every waveform so, at least to me, this clinches he was using some kind of software/digital technology. He had years of connections in the Australian recording industry so I wouldn't be surprised if a friend got him whatever was available in the late 90s/early 2000s that was top of the line. But this is conjecture.

[David Matzenik]

I bought 8 of Bruce's CDs. They sound good to me, but then I don't mind scratchy 78s either.

[Levi Gemmell]

I want to flag the aforementioned rendition of "Nola" by Bernie Kaai. The final 30 seconds is a fabulous, torrid, swinging solo that comes out of nowhere.

Appreciate you calling attention to this James, I had a good listen this morning - really cool. I've heard lots of Bernie Ka'ai but this has got me thinking.

Very fluid picking across the strings reminds me of Andy Iona, who we know used three fingers (or maybe even four?) since his thumb was missing.

Has anyone seen a picture of Bernie's picking hand?

[Joe A. Roberts]

Here you go. Also doing a reverse slant!