eBay item 220262676074 is a great looking pair of record players, apparently from a radio station. I'm not sure they'll fetch $2,200 + $250 shipping, but they'd make a handsome drinks cabinet. In Bill & Frank's essential book Last Night a DJ Saved My Life
, there's a 1931 picture of Christoper Stone, Britain's first radio DJ, wearing black tie and leaning over a console a bit like this one. In Frank & Bill's telling of the story, the first man in the world to ever play records in public for people to dance to was Jimmy Savile, who - in 1943 - hired a function room in Leeds and cobbled together a system from a turntable and a radio. By 1947, he had two turntables and a microphone. Jimmy's later claim to have invented rap music in 1962 is perhaps less convincing... (Thanks, Rachel)
The purple velvet platters are classy.
ReplyDeleteI see two turntables; where's the microphone?
ReplyDelete...the mic was a megaphone that the DJ held and spoke through
ReplyDeleteSlipmats not "platters." Ya know, for scratchin'.
ReplyDeleteSuddenly I'm foreseeing a future in which there are actual wood-and-bronze DJ consoles - "Let's invite the Petersens over and have dinner and a mix party!" "What a lovely console you have Janet...are those Shure cartridges or Stantons?"
ReplyDelete