Introducing The Chapman Family ... Singing The Gospel

     I made mention that Freil Thrift was in two record albums with the Chapman family.  The one Monique found on ebay, "Redeemed By The Crucified One"... I've been posting about for several days now.  It came with 12 songs, 6 to a side.  All of those have been digitized by now, and uploaded to Youtube.  

    The seller listed it as being in "Very Good Plus".  At first, I questioned that.  There was a long shallow smudge that seemed likely to cause playback problems.  It took a day or so to gather the necessary equipment (record player, cables and converters) and re-familiarize myself with Audacity.  Recording went perfectly.  That smudge had no effect on playback.  The songs digitized perfectly - audio levels great, no clicks worth worrying about.   It went smoothly and took about an hour.  I was thrilled with it.

    The other album wasn't anywhere online to be found.  I had resigned myself to a long patient wait, when my sister told me she had one.  She called it "the green cover", and told me the one I have is the second one, while the green one is the first record Freil was ever in.  She also allowed that I might be able to borrow it.  So long as I returned it, because "it's as important as my Elvis gospel album!"
    (If you know Karen, you'll know that is the highest level of praise.)

    We were originally planning on her bringing it to Mom and Dad's for me.  I was already planning to visit this weekend.  At some point she realized she couldn't make it to the river (home is very close to the Satilla), so offered to meet up in Nahunta on my way home.  I spent yesterday "at the river."  On the way home, Karen and I met at the Gold House.  It's Nahunta's historic diner, a wonderful place to go.  Both for the memories, and the food.  They make wonderful southern food.  I love their fried chicken.  They also make about the best liver around.  And a great, thick burger and home-style fries.

    This time around, we just had coffee, and sat and talked for a bit.  Got home too tired to start digitizing the record right away.  Got up early this morning, pulled the record out.  Remember a few paragraphs ago, when I mentioned the "Very Good Plus" rating on the other album?  How I questioned it, because of the almost-scratch?  I take it back.  It deserves that rating.  When I looked at Karen's record, the rating would have been "Very Loved Plus."  This is what happens to an album when it's a family favorite, and gets played over and over... for about 50 years.

    As expected, playback wasn't perfect.  It was surprisingly good, though.  Only one spot completely skipped a word.  And that was near the end of a song, so not as high-impact as it could have been.  However.  I like that word.  It's dramatic, with a strong foreshadowing of bad news.  
    However, the album was full of clicks, and the volume was a lot lower than the other record.  To be fair, that's probably due to the way the album was created.  Audacity has a very versatile click remover.  And for the most part, it did a great job.  One or two spots I used custom settings, but most of the time default settings were fine.  Audacity also has a pretty cool amplify effect.  It calculates the highest safe level to raise volume to 0 db.  

    Click removal and the amplify effect fixed everything that could be fixed.  Did a bit of manual cutting and silence generation at the start and end of the songs.  Overall it went very well, but wound up taking three hours to get the best versions of all the songs.

    Best of all, it ended (literally) on a great note - the final song on side 2 was an instrumental, and Freil got a couple of excellent segments featuring his piano playing.  I'm thrilled at how well everything turned out.  It's going to take some time to get them turned into video clips so they can be uploaded to YouTube.  But it'll be absolutely worth it.  All those songs will be permanently available at any time, without having to add more wear to our treasured records.  And so many people who don't know the Singing Chapmans, and Freil's playing, will be able to hear and appreciate them.

Childhood Memories - The Singing Chapmans

     A few days ago, I was reminiscing with Monique about my uncle Freil's piano playing, and talked about the two record albums he made as part of a southern gospel music family group called "The Singing Chapmans".  Monique, of course, searched on eBay, found one of the albums, and ordered it for me.  It arrived yesterday, and I've been on pins and needles since then, wanting to hear it, and more, to share their songs so everybody else can enjoy the music too.

    Opened the package, took pictures, but got stuck trying to figure out how I was going to play it; and even more importantly, get the music digitized.  We had a couple of record players around the house, and one was a self-contained unit that would have been perfect if I just wanted to listen.  But Monique and I both remembered having a record player years ago that was perfect, with RCA audio outputs hardwired into the case.  Couldn't find it.  Gave up for the night.

Next day, I'm home from work, to see the old record player at my computer.  Monique had found it.  Actually, she found it exactly where we tried to look last night, but she went back and dug deeper.  I've seen old players quit working because they were band driven, and after years, the band can get old, brittle, not play right or outright break.  It was a worry in the back of my mind, but as it turned out the player was just fine.

    There was a bit of technical trouble getting all the working parts to work together.  First, my current computer doesn't have RCA input jacks.  All it's got is microphone in.  There are a number of ways around that, but I chose a bit of a hack.  Out in the shed, in my old audio/video cables box (from the days I did video production), was a "mic in/stereo in" connector.  The same box also had a 1/8" male to male stereo audio cable.  Lucky day!  Like a Rube Goldberg drawing... phono player to RCA out to converter to 1/8" to mic input on the computer.  :^)

    Still not ready.  The record played, I could hear it through the computer speakers (headphones, actually).  But the volume was so low, it was almost more imagination and wishful thinking than reality.  Google to the rescue - it suggested I see what the volume is in the SOUNDS controller.  When I checked, the volume was already maxed, but...  there was a "Microphone Boost" slider that offered up to 30db more volume.  

    Since the audio was so quiet, I slid that thing straight up to +30db and started the record back up.  It nearly broke my eardrums.
I yelled and jumped about half a foot straight into the air, scaring Monique at the same time.  After REDUCING the volume a bit... it was perfect!  And with that, suddenly Audacity was up and running, the audio check worked, audio levels set perfectly.  Roughly an hour later, the entire album is saved to my computer, one song at a time!!

Plus, I got to listen to music I haven't heard in 40 or 50 years.  Smiling the entire time.  It was like regaining a treasure I'd thought long lost.  Good memories of good times, music I never thought to hear again.

Next, I'll put the songs together with an image of the record album, and upload the videos to Youtube.  It may take a few days, but when I post again, there'll be something special for you to listen to.