Need a little mind distraction from the awful news today? Here’s a wild one for you:
Jimmie Rodgers’s “Rodgers Puzzle Record” was released in 1931 in England, Australia, and India. It was a novelty record with three concentric grooves with three different songs, so when you dropped the needle, you didn’t know which song you might hear.
There were various versions of these “puzzle records” over the years. Most recently Jack White revived the idea and put out one of his records with multiple songs in concentric grooves.
As a disc cutter, these things are fascinating to study because they are extremely difficult to cut. The guys that can do this do it manually and with extreme precision. A fascinating bit of analog audio history.
See a video of the record playing at Deke’s original Facebook post!
