KITTY GRAY & HER WAMPUS CATS Swingology VOCALION 03869 Oscar Woods Blues 78

	£		130
	$		172

Kitty Gray & Her Wampus Cats represent one of the absolute zeniths of late-1930s Texas music, delivering an explosive blend of raw barrelhouse blues and hot, uptempo small-group jazz. This legendary release features the historic pairing of "Swingology" and "Posin'" on the Vocalion label.
The A-side, "Swingology", is an infectious, floor-filling masterpiece universally revered by acoustic blues and jazz historians. It captures the definitive pioneer of Texas slide guitar, Oscar "Buddy" Woods, trading lightning-fast, stinging licks with second guitarist Joe Harris, all riding over Kitty Gray's frantic, driving barrelhouse piano work. This crossover gem bridges the exact evolutionary line where rural Texas country blues fused with urban swing-jive.
This historic session was cut on 30 October 1937 during a landmark regional field-recording trip by Vocalion's technical team in San Antonio, Texas (Matrix SA2765).
Cut during the complex economic landscape of the late Great Depression, "Swingology" and "Posin'" perfectly capture the resilient, celebratory nightlife of urban Black Texas. Shifting away from slow, down-home country laments, the tracks celebrate physical expression, streetwise slang, and the rhythmic dances characterizing late-1930s Southern "sporting houses" and dance halls. It spoke directly to working-class audiences seeking joy and release amidst economic hardship.
Vocalion's late-1930s regional Southern pressings were manufactured in tightly restricted batches compared to major Northern commercial pop releases. Because these high-energy swing-blues records were immediately routed to local jukeboxes and thrashed on brutal tracking gramophones, finding a copy that has retained its deep black factory gloss is an absolute phenomenon.
For a premium specimen to emerge in the UK via an early French collection—completely outside of original US Southern distribution channels—makes it a crowning achievement for any serious global archive.
This specific copy features the name "Tommy" lightly scratched into the label surface of BOTH sides. In the pre-war era, industry executives, recording directors (such as Vocalion/OKeh director Tommy Rockwell), and prominent inner-circle collectors routinely marked their personal archive and file copies across both labels to permanently identify them within busy studio rooms and broadcast libraries. This uniform marking stands as a wonderful testament to the deep, multi-layered mid-century history of this specific artifact.
This vintage archive-grade disc originates from a highly sophisticated, historic European blues estate. Reflecting its museum-tier preservation, the disc comes meticulously double-bagged (a vintage paper sleeve safely housed inside a rigid cardboard sleeve) and includes the original collector's handwritten analysis on a separate slip of paper tucked inside, written entirely in French.

Detailed Condition Report
Format: 10" Shellac 78 RPM
Grade (VJM System): Excellent (E)
Play Surface: Spectacular, museum-quality survival. The vintage 1930s Vocalion shellac retains its complete, brilliant factory mirror-shine and deep black gloss. Under bright inspection lighting, the play surfaces present as remarkably immaculate, displaying nothing more than one or two microscopic paper-sleeve wisps. Completely free of deep scratches, gray acoustic groove-wear, needle digs, structural stress lines, or edge chips.
Audio Performance: Both sides play beautifully loud, crisp, and robust with immense acoustic presence. Kitty Gray's driving piano lines and Oscar "Buddy" Woods' stinging, intricate acoustic slide guitar leads track with phenomenal clarity and separation. Surface noise is virtually non-existent, playing with an extraordinarily quiet background.
Center Labels: Highly desirable late-1930s Blue and Gold Vocalion typography. Both labels are wonderfully clean and crisp with vivid gold print. Both the A-side and B-side center labels feature the minor, localized contemporary collector/industry scratching of the name "Tommy" as transparently detailed in the history note above (please see photos). Spindle hole is tight with zero trailing wear. Free of modern ink writing, layout tearing, or vintage dealer sticker residue

We specialize in shipping fragile prewar shellac. This historic disc will be packaged defensively to completely isolate it from external pressures, handling drops, and transit shocks:
Double-Skin Box: Enclosed within an ultra-rigid, double-walled outer corrugated shipping box
.Thick Card Packaging: Sandwiched securely between multiple oversized layers of thick, stiff cardboard stiffeners to prevent any flexing.
Bubble Wrap: Generously wrapped in layers of shock-absorbing bubble wrap to insulate it from vibration.
Void Fill: The entire internal assembly is locked in place using dense void-fill material to ensure absolutely zero movement within the box during shipping.
Rest assured, this piece of musical history will be carefully packed and promptly di