THE BRIGHT AND FIERY CROSS / THE JOLLY OLD KLANSMAN KKK 78 rpm RECORD RARE
$
120
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Description
Up for sale is this very interesting disc, in which there is quite a bit to say about. The titles are the Bright and Fiery Cross / The Jolly Old Klansman, which when you combine with the fact both sides are credited to "100% Americans," you will recognise immediately as a KKK affiliated item. The sides were recorded by Gennett in Richmond, Indiana on May 16th, 1923 by the Logansport "KKK" Quartet. The terrorist organisation known as the Klan was then enjoying a massive resurgence in membership during it's second iteration, which was officially established in 1915. This was about two years before the D.C. Stephenson revelations, in which Stephenson, then the grand wizard of the Indiana branch of the KKK would be tried and convicted of the murder and rape of a young woman, which heavily contributed to the Klans eventual decline into the more or less irrelevance it luckily experiences today. At the time of this records making however, Richmond likely had a rate of 30 percent membership amongst the entire city's male population. The recording engineer on the job the day the Logansport Quartet made these sides, Ezra Wickemeyer, was a local klan member in fact. He also was the engineer present on the day Louis Armstrong made his recording debut at the same studio with the famed King Oliver Creole Jazz Band that same year. The Gennett family who agreed to record this made a point to remove any signal on the label that the record was pressed in Richmond, them being catholics of Italian stock. All this history is covered in Season 10, Episode 2 of PBS's History Detectives, which can be seen online for free. In that program an expert estimates this record would have enjoyed pressing rates in the low thousands. Don't miss out on an opportunity to play this rare disc while watching Birth Of a Nation! But seriously, I do not condone any messages of hate, including the ones propagated by this.... well, little bit of propaganda.
Please feel free to message me with a question as I will get back to you promptly
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