Back when I sold off my record collection, I kept a few hundred from my non-music section that I thought were kind of rare. Not necessarily valuable, just stuff that I knew was hard to find. The kind that doesn’t exist digitally and probably never had much of an audience to begin with. The main reason I bought those records in the first place was because I knew they needed to be preserved. If I didn’t take it home, it would languish at the bottom of a stack getting scratched to oblivion and the world might never hear it again.

I haven’t done a very good job at digitizing these in the past few years and I have quite a backlog. I’m trying to change that. I thought it would be good to release these in batches instead of just trickling them out one by one.

Here’s the first batch. There are 38 records. About 1/3rd of them I have already shared here on AGB at some point (like my all time favorite, the seashell pronunciation record). I’m sharing them again here for two reasons. First, I thought it would be nice to gather everything together. But more importantly, I’ve done high resolution scans of the front and back of the jackets as well as the center labels. These were scanned on a large flatbed scanner, not photographed. The bad news is that I found out after I scanned everything that my scanner now makes two faint green lines appear across every image. Needless to say I was pretty fuckin upset when I saw that. Oh well. Nothing I can do now. Also, there are maybe 10-15 that don’t have scans because I accidentally sold them before I scanned them (oops).

Each one is listed individually below with links to download and Discogs info as well as a brief description. You can download all of them at once in this 4.6 GB zip file. Also, they’re spit into two groups, music & non-music, just in case some of yall don’t jam with the spoken word and field recording stuff.

Music
George Mgrdician – East Of Athens (1964) / Download / Discogs / Middle Eastern excellence
Hedy West – Accompanying Herself On The 5 String Banjo (1963) / I ripped this but then saw it was already on archive.org so you should go download it there
Michael P. Williams – The God Who Takes A Little And Makes A Lot / Download / Discogs / Private press gospel
Nimrod Workman – Mother Jones’ Will (1978) / Download / Discogs / I fucking love this guy’s voice. All vocals, no music, just pure Appalachian emotion.
Philip Sainton – Moby Dick Soundtrack (1956) / Download / Discogs / Classic
Siobhan McKenna – Irish Ballads, Folk Songs And Lyrics (1956) / Download / Discogs / A little bit of everything
Sundaram Balachander – Man From Madras (1968) / Download / Discogs / Carnatic master
Various Artists – No More Feeling Cheated (1982) / Download / Discogs / Kids songs and stories, pretty goofy stuff
Various Artists – Skid Row Sounds – Stories And Songs (1968) / Download / Discogs / Some big band/jazz kinda jams and sad stories
Various Artists – Southern Prison Blues (1965) / Download / Discogs / This has been repressed a bunch of times but as of now is not available as far as I can tell. High quality country glues and gospel.
Various Artists – Southern Sanctified Singers (1970) / Download / Discogs / More high quality blues and gospel.
Various Artists – The Unexpurgated Folk Songs Of Men (1960) / Download / Discogs / This is a weird one. I think someone just placed a microphone in the middle of a bunch of old vulgar grumps, hit record, and let em ramble.

Non-Music
Albert Camus – Reading From His Novels And Essays (1960) / Download / Discogs / I don’t speak French but this is still cool
An Evening In Sapsucker Woods / Download / Discogs / Field recording of a pond at dusk
Auscultation Of The Heart (1962) / Download / Discogs / Wonky heartbeats
Boris Karloff / Bela Lugosi – Arsenic And Old Lace / The Doctor Prescribed Death / Download / Discogs / Creepy dudes reading creepy stories
Boston: Birthplace Of Liberty (1961) / Download / Discogs / Kind of like an audio guide from a walking tour
Concentration Camp Horrors (1980) / Download / Discogs / Radio broadcasts of soldiers and other folks when they liberated concentration camps
Elie Wiesel – Reading From His Works (1968) / Download / Discogs / Harrowing
Elijah Muhammad – Muhammad Speaks, Volume 2, Part 1 – The Time Of Judgement / Download / Discogs / A self-proclaimed messenger of Allah
Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Home Computers (1983) / Download / Discogs / Steve Allen talking about floppy disks while Jayne Meadows laughs
Frank Lloyd Wright – On Record (1961) / Download / Discogs / Famous old white guy sounding exactly how you’d expect a famous old white guy to sound
Getting Through – A Guide To Better Understanding Of The Hard Of Hearing (1971) / Download / Discogs / Kind of a promotional record for hearing aids but also some really compassionate stuff about, well, understanding the hard of hearing.
I Love A Mystery – The Temple Of Vampires (1976) / Download / Discogs / An old spooky radioplay
The Inquiry Development Program (1966) / Download / Discogs / What, you don’t know what the Inquiry Development Program is? Well I’ve got the perfect record for you!
J. R. R. Tolkien Reads And Sings From His The Lord Of The Rings (1975) / Download / Discogs / It’s another old white guy! But honestly this is fucking awesome.
J. R. R. Tolkien Reads And Sings His The Hobbit And The Fellowship Of The Ring (1975) / Download / Discogs / So is this one.
Jack Van Impe – The Coming War With Russia (1969) / Download / Discogs / The Walking Bible is afraid
James Baldwin – Black Man In America (1962) / Download / Discogs / Now this is a fucking interview
Jimmy Nelson’s “Instant Ventriloquism” And “Ventriloquism For The Beginner” (1964) / Download / Discogs / You really want to listen to this one. Trust me.
Jimmy Swaggart – Flying Missiles Atomic Bombs And The Second Coming Of Jesus Christ (1972) / Download / Discogs / Another televangelist trying to scare you into giving him all of your money.
Metabolic Abnormalities In Diabetes (1966) / Download / Discogs / Get educated.
The Most Important Event Of The Year (1965) / Download / Discogs / I won’t spoil the surprise but I must agree, this was the most important event of the year.
Pronouncing The Scientific Names Of Seashells Of North America (1969) / Download / Discogs / The best of the best.
Russ Burgess – Developing Your E.S.P. Powers / Download / Discogs / Impress your friends with this cool trick.
The Sea At Castle Hill / The Alexander Hamilton Of The Hudson River Day Line (1963) / Download / Discogs / One of those Droll Yankees gems, a field recording of random places in New England.
Stairway To Hell – Evils Of Led Zeppelin Exposed / Download / Discogs List to Nileppez Del backwards and sell your soul to Satan.
Voices Of The Loon (1980) / Download / Discogs / Loons make some of the scariest sounds in the animal world.
Walter Van Tilburg Clark read by Henry Fonda – The Ox-Bow Incident (1979) / Download / Discogs / Henry Fonda reading about lynch mobs and herd mentality.
Yehuda Lev – The Sounds Of Jerusalem (1959) / I ripped this for myself but I’m not posting it here because it’s a Folkways release and they have (almost) everything they’ve ever released available digitally and for a reasonable price. Consider this my recommendation to buy this from them because it’s really fucking good.