I am going to make a confession. I have been listening to recorded music for a long time, from the time I was a toddler watching the wax spin on the old man’s Grundig radio/turntable console (I wish we had kept that one) through numerous stereos. In the Easy 80s, I got in trouble with Macy’s when they said I was late in the payments on a stereo system I bought there. I don’t think they even sell stereos at Macy’s anymore. I worked for Macy’s between 2000 and 2004 and kept getting in trouble there even by then. Today, I have a collection of hundreds of LPs and CDs and a stereo/turntable I haven’t bothered with in years but fear throwing out, ditto the CDs. I have nearly a million (I don’t think I’m exaggerating) MP3s on three different drives. If I started listening today, through all my 18 daily waking hours from now until death, I wouldn’t get to the end of my collection.
That brings me to my confession. I cannot, for the life of me, discern a considerable difference between sound quality of LPs vs. cassettes, CDs or sound files. Philistine of me, I realize. Every aficionado I read sings the praises of vinyl sound vs. anything else. Now, I do think LPs have it over all other media because of packaging. You can have a gatefold album with printed lyrics and that’s a whole afternoon.
What has this got to do with Forgotten NY? Here’s a painted ad for Baar and Beards at #15 West 37th Street just west of 5th Avenue, and they employed an unusual LP motif in the ad, calling the company a “top hit.” What did Baar and Beards produce, specifically? By now it’s hard to make it out because of fading, but as usual, I turn to the Indispensable Walter Grutchfield, who relays that it was “ladies’ neckwear and accessories,” i.e. scarves. Dr. Deborah Birx, whose scarf collection was something of an internet sensation during the Covid crisis, would have been a customer. Sylvan M. Baar (1897-1975) and Milton Beards (1906-1987) founded the company in 1941 and it remained in the building surprisingly long, until 1998.
I’m surprised Walter doesn’t go into the partially obscured ad above it, but it’s been half covered for a while. Frank Jump, if you’re reading, weigh in.
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2/5/24
6 comments
Your Dad must have been what they used to call a “audiophile”(remember them?)
I wish I had my uncle’s Grundig Traveler.He took it all over the world with him so he could
always listen to the BBC.That company went you know where.
I’m not going to try to post the link here as it’s quite the mess, but a photo in the Municipal Archives from the ca. 1940 tax lot photo project shows an even earlier incarnation when the firm was Levy, Baar & Beards. Manhattan block 839 Lot 25 is the best take of it.
I can’t tell the difference either. Dies that mean I have a tin ear?
Probably you and Kevin are like me and listen for the content, not the method of delivery.
Unfortunately, the sign has considerably deteriorated compared to the 1986 photo on 14to42.
The main difference between MP3 and CD is that the volume level on MP3 USUALLY HAS EVERYTHING COMPRESSED TO THE MAXIMUM POSSIBLE VOLUME LEVEL and loses all the dynamic range that the singer and arranger put into the performance. It can be very tiresome to listen to unless you just play at low volume in the background. Because of that and not something inherent in the medium the content itself very often sounds much better to me on CD. Now, cassettes…you don’t hear the tape hiss?