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The Sailors is a recorded version of a theatrical comedy routine by vaudeville performers Stiffy (Nat Phillips) and Mo (Roy Rene). You can listen to part one of The Sailors here in its entirety. Part one is the first side of a two-sided disc.
Curator’s notes
The routine is a mix of comedy dialogue and fragments of songs, including the first line of a song from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance (1879). Part one (the first side of the record) sets the scene, with two sailors recently returned from sea.
In these days before albums, songs or other performances were recorded and released as two sides of a single 78 rpm disc, the size of the record only allowing for around three minutes per side. Recording four ‘sides’ (the term used in the industry) allowed the release of two double-sided records.
The recording process was relatively simple. The artists gathered around a single microphone and their performance was cut directly onto a wax master disc. A series of processes was used to copy the master disc and make ‘stampers’, a metal disc with ridges rather than grooves, from which could be pressed many hundreds of copies.
