A Rare 78 rpm Record About the St. Francis Dam Disaster

st-francis-dam

          To play the song click on the link above.     

 

It’s the 80th anniversary of the St. Francis Dam Disaster.  Every 5 years I dust of my collection and mount an exhibit on the disaster.  It’s now at the California Oil Museum as is has been for several incarnations.  I’m amazed that after 80 years and several museum exhibits that new material keeps coming to me.  A couple of weeks ago Ron Riley was visiting Santa Paula.  His father, Tom Riley, was a survivor and the family provided me with lots of historic material over the years  On this trip he brought with him the above 78 rpm record.  

    Not only do I collect all things related to the St. Francis Dam Disaster but I also collect 78 records.  I have shelves of them in my garage.  A year or so ago I purchased a turntable that hooks up to the computer with a USB cable.  I’m using a program called Audicity.  The turntable sat there for a year gathering dust until the proper time.  Once the St. Francis Dam Disaster song arrived and student went into action.  I recorded it at 45 and then converted that file to 78. Then I had to get a LAME program to save it as an MP3.  I also got a pop and hiss filter for you listening pleasure.  Then I could email the song to friends.  It worked.  

  The only thing left to do was to post it to my blog.  To do that I had to upgrade for a mere $20 a year.  If you decide to download this song, if that’s even possible, you could pay me 99 cents through Paypal.  Details upon request.  

   Hope there are some comments on this.  I Googled the record and only found scant mention.  Now it will be famous.