Origin Recordings / Bilarm Music to relaunch “So Rare” series on all digital services for the first time ever.
On May 31st, 2024, ORiGiN Recordings in conjunction with Bilarm Music, via ADA, will make available the four volumes of “So Rare” on all digital services providers for the first time. Lifelong great friends Barry Humphries and Bill Armstrong shared a love for classic early 20th Century recordings. Songs and artists their parents grew up with. The evocative popular music between World War I & II. Now, so rare. Combining their love and respect for the artists and music of those times Bill and Barry curated what became the four volume SO RARE series of compilation album releases.
Barry provided descriptive, eloquent sleeve notes on each song and artist while Bill meticulously digitised rare 78 RPM recordings by many of the greatest artists of the 20th Century. Al Bowley, Fats Waller, Ella Fitzgerald, Ginger Rogers, Leslie ‘Hutch’ Hutchison, Vera Lynn, Hildergarde, The Comedian Harmonists, Anne Shelton, Dick Todd, Frances Day, Big Crosby, Dinah Shore, Bob Hope, Billie Holiday, Noel Coward, Frank Sinatra and so many more. These artists sing songs that got the whole world through tough times between Wars and the Great Depression. Both worldwide collectively experienced events that go someway to explaining the melancholy and humour that pervades much of the repertoire. Having grown up in Melbourne, Australia both Barry and Bill were exposed to the very best of British and American artists and repertoire. Thus the unique blend of evocative songs of those times. If you want to disappear down a rabbit hole of nostalgia and entertainment from close to a hundred years ago then dare to go down into the sounds of SO RARE. How did they do it? All of the recordings included in the SO RARE series are old enough to have fallen out of copyright and are now in the Public Domain. Locating mint condition copies of these rare recordings highly experienced Melbourne based sound recording expert Bill Armstrong digitised the recordings mostly from “78 recordings”. Single sided shellac records that spin at 78 revs per minute. Bill has a set up in his studio space where he captures the recording and then cleans and filters the sound quality to be crystal clear. “We’re hearing these recordings better than anyone ever heard them before – without the crackle of the needle in the groove” says Bill. Thankfully Barry had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the artists and repertoire so his extensive sleeve notes provide insight to who and when these great recordings were created. About Bill Armstrong Bill Armstrong AM (1929 - ) is an Australian pioneer of recorded sound. He established one of the first multi-track studios in Melbourne where many great Australian artists and records were recorded including by The Easybeats, John Farnham, Russell Morris and the Little River Band to name a few. Now 92 and still actively working from his Port Melbourne Bilarm Studio space Bill Armstrong says: “My late great friend Barry and I shared a love for these great recordings. This was a passion project we pursued each time Barry came to town. We’d finished the first collection and realised we had hundreds more on our extensive list. Thus we created four volumes of So Rare recordings to help make them last past our own times”. About Barry Humphries John Barry Humphries AC CBE (17 February 1934 – 22 April 2023) was an Australian comedian, actor, author and satirist. He was best known for writing and playing his stage and television characters Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson. Humphries's characters brought him international renown. He appeared in numerous stage productions, films and television shows. So Rare was a project he shared with his lifelong friend Bill Armstrong. Like kids in a candy store they laboured over the selection and curation of the So Rare series so we can now enjoy that journey. "The whole point of art, aside from the aesthetic pleasure it yields, is that it provides a bridge to the past; that seductive land where we all find certainty and consolation, Nothing quite spans this gulf with such immediacy as the art of popular song." - Barry Humphries Comments are closed.
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