Found in the basement of a bar in Reinbeck Iowa – a home recording of Louise and Skinny Matthews, two performing artists recording in 1942.
These Recordio discs were sold as blanks – and with the help of a special cutting turntable you could cut your own records. These discs are quite fragile – with a cardboard core and a thin layer of material that can flake off if you look at it funny.
They are not professional quality – and so prepare for a lo-fi experience with plenty of surface noise. I did my best to improve the sound, but these discs were not known for their high fidelity.
But how cool is this – the only recording of these two artists in existence!
The first track is a cover of Ernest Tubbs’ “Walking the Floor Over You”, which had just come out in 1941 and was a big hit – selling over a million copies. Both Louise and Skinny sing together on this one.
The second track is an old Jimmie Rogers tune which he originally recorded as “Desert Blues” in 1929. It is here presented as “Big Chief Buffalo Nickel” from a line in the lyrics. Skinny takes this one solo. I’m wondering if he was the guitar player on both tracks?
I was not able to find much out about these two – a local newspaper in Washington, Iowa mentions a local named Skinny Matthews in a few articles in 1938. It’d be kind of cool if the ancestors of Skinny and Louise found this video and could tell us more about them!
Recorded on July 23, 1942 somewhere in (presumably) Iowa.
Credits:
Skinny Matthews – vocals, guitar (?)
Louise Matthews – vocals
Leave a Reply