Forum - Banjo Ben Clark

Heirloom Recordings

#1

So my mother gave me a cassette tape of my grandmother and her bluegrass band playing bluegrass or old time music.

This is my grandmother from my fathers side of the family (the music side of the family). Although I never got a chance to meet my grandmother (Died in 1968) she had 9 kids who all ended up playing music, so my father passed down the tradition to me.

The tape was converted from magnetic to cassette sometime in 80’s. Now I have the cassette and have no clue in how I should approach transferring it to digital? The original recording was supposed to be from the mid to late 1940’s and is her and her brothers playing on a radio broadcast.

My concern is that I do not have a cassette player to stick this into and listen to…nor do I want to in fear of having it “chewed up”. So I am wondering if any of you know of the best way to convert this (or a name of a company that does this)to digital?

I am “chomping at the bit” to hear the music, but will not risk playing it in fear of destroying the cassette… so any input on how I should proceed would be appreciated.

#2

Although my grandmother was not in it, here is a pic of her brothers and a cousin playing after church one day. Story goes is that she was not officially with them at this point. The tall fiddler ended up dying of a brain aneurysm shortly after this photo so she ended up joining them due to necessity. Odd thing is that she later would die at the age of 54 from a brain aneurysm.

#3

I did a google search and came up with this:
audiomover.com/cassette.php

I don’t have a casstte deck anymore. However, if the above service doesn’t work out, my sister has one and I could have her check to see if it still works. If it does, I could convert it to digital (I’d have to get the tape deck here to do so).

#4

I can digitize it for you, oldhat. I did something similar for a cousin a couple of years ago. He had an old cassette recording of him playing guitar and his deceased mother singing and he was trying to preserve it. It’s what gave me the idea for this song: http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=11345891

Wish you had a duplicate cassette, though. There is some risk involved in sending it through the mail, and with an old cassette and old player, you never know when a malfunction might occur. I’d feel really bad if something happened to your lone copy.