"During World War II, Pepsi-Cola set up recording booths around the U.S. so that service members could send messages home to their loved ones." Such a record read: This is a recored message from your Man in Service Dear Friend: Just this minute completed recording the voice of your Man in Service. You will be happy to know that he is thinking of you and greatly enjoyed sending you this personal message. It gives us great pleasure to send you this record with our compliments. Cordially, Pepsi-Cola Records By The Recording Corp. 395 Broadway, N.Y.C. 13, N.Y. "Pepsi-Cola Company operated three canteens or centers around the country: one in New York City’s Times Square, one in Washington, DC and one in San Francisco, CA. The centers provided shaves, showers, checking, a lounge, and reading and writing facilities, all at no cost to service men and women. They also offered a low cost sandwich bar with free Pepsi and a central place to leave and receive messages. Pepsi-Cola branded records were sent in the mail to the servicemen’s family in hopes of giving them comfort while their loved one was at war." I am curious to know if there are any U.S archives that try to preserve, archive and make available these recordings on a large scale? If there is not, there should be... I am currently setting up my capability to play back and digitize 78rpm shellac records for the public. Just because I think shellac recordings and their music are so neat. Of course with a modern record cartridge and special 78rpm stylus, only using 2-4 grams of tracking weight. So I should easily be able to digitize Pepsi-Cola recordings, it would certainly be a worthwhile extension of my equipment! In order to build a comprehensive public archive of them online. Possibly locate the families they were meant for. Do you think such an archive could be significant when it comes to cultural, WW2 history/research and would be all-around important to preserve these moments in time? Or is it undignified towards those people and their families. Trying to gauge interest and opinions for such a project.
Will be receiving this collection which is quite large, very exciting!Interesting to see a varied assortment of discs. Going to be really interesting to share. Probably very important to some people at one point in time, enough to record on a record and send back home.
Digitized several records, here is an example of one: A message From your man in service 1 - Google Drive Sounds like early 40's
I just listened to the first one. Interesting! Also as a side note - he pronounces Los Angeles with a hard 'g' which makes me wonder if the pronunciation has changed.
3 more audio files have been added, each encompassing one side of a record. These records are extremely fragile so I am still thinking of the best way to digitize the contents with the least amount of chance to degrade the medium.
