Tuesday, October 12, 2004

Whistling A Tune....And More!

As the introduction to this site says:

This website is the result of over ten years of collecting whistling records. It is, to the best of my knowledge, the only site of it's kind in all of cyberspace. You'll find over 100 MP3s from whistlers around the world, discographies, album covers and more. Don't miss the section on vintage training records for parakeets and canaries!

I began collecting whistling records in 1993 when two volumes of Incredibly Strange Music were released on compact disc. These were compilations of oddball recordings from the fifties and sixties. One of the tracks was Fred Lowery whistling "The William Tell Overture" from his Whistle a Happy Tune album. Never before had I heard anything like it and was instantly hooked.

Learning about the relatively few whistling records in existence and tracking them down took quite some time. They were stumbled upon, one by one. The last three or four years it has became much easier to find them, especially the more obscure ones, thanks to the internet and online sources like ebay. I'd estimate 90% of my collection arrived in the mail, the other 10% came from local record stores.

Check out the Online Guide to Whistling Records.