

W.C. Hardy’s “St. Louis Blues”



Between the years of 1946 - 1961 one of the only ways to listen to American blues, jazz and rock’n’roll in Russia was to obtain smuggled records, some made on old x-rays. There’s a long article and back story about these interesting x-ray records on Spiegle.de, but it’s all in German and a little bit difficult to make sense of using Google Translate.

If you got caught with American popular music back then, you could find yourself in a world of hurt. Apparently it could get you thrown out of school or even arrested in extreme cases, but still the population wanted to hear the music. These x-ray records are physical artifacts from that era of Soviet censorship.





Percy Faith’s “Delicado”





Fred Astaire’s “Cheek to Cheek”





Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel”



(via Nerdcore)