This is a very rare and mysterious recording. The band itself is unknown; the name “Tempo-Meister-Orchester” was apparently used as a pseudonym for a number of different bands back in the day. However the vocalists are clearly recognizable: It is the Allan-Trio, the “Andrews Sisters from Prague”, in Czech: Sestry Allanovy.

The trio consisted of the three ladies Jiřina Salačová, Věra Kočvarová and Radka Hlavsová. In Germany at that time a number of recordings sung in German by the Allan-Trio were released as vocalists of the R.A. Dvorský swing band from Prague. Examples are “Die Männer sind schon die Liebe wert“, “Heimat, deine Sterne“ or “Wer verliebt ist, braucht Musik“.

So this allows the assumption that this recording also was made by R.A. Dvorský's orchestra. As far as it is known neither R.A. Dvorský nor the Allan-Trio have ever been to Berlin for recording sessions; the common discographies also do not mention this recording.

Accordingly the recording of “Ein Glück, daß man sich so verlieben kann“ most likely took place in Prague around 1942. The strongly worn label of the shellac record—apparently a deficient wartime pressing—neither reveals the catalogue number of the record nor the matrix number of the recording. This implies that the record itself had been inadequately stored before. However the state of the groove is relatively good; the digitization which is to be heard here was made around 2004 using a crystal cartridge, so the original sound has not been reproduced in an optimal manner.

However Digital Heritage Minds also has new improved means of shellac or 78s digitization (where not all 78s necessarily are made of shellac as well as not all shellacs are 78s). An update with a new digitization will follow soon.

This primarily serves the purpose of demonstrating that Digital Heritage Toolkit also implements audio streams as e.g. known by Spotify as opposed to simple audio file download.