You want some Bach? Which one? Johann Sebastian or Offen?”

The Old Time Radio Researcher Group has done an admirable job archiving long lost radio programs from the first half of the 20th century. The Internet Archive hosts many of these collections. most being old mystery serials or comedy shows. They are usually in one track and comprises the most complete set of known recordings for the programs. One of the collections that is music related is The Victor Borge Collection, a collection of radio performances featuring the Danish comedian/pianist of whom I consider one of the funniest persons ever to grace the stage.

Essentially there are two collections: a complete collection of radio transcriptions that you can find here, and this collection of selected single episodes. Most of his more famous routines can be found here. The first track is a fine biographical sketch. The other tracks include Victor Borge’s humorous musical antics (”Words and Music”), stand up routines (”Phonetic Punctuation” and “Inflationary Language” being the most famous), and a few straight instrumentals (”Brahms Lullaby”). There are a number of live performances so there is a lot of redundancy in the routines but each one has subtle changes exhibiting the artful mastery of this brilliant comedian and musician. If you never heard Victor Borge before I would suggest “Comedy in Music part one and two” or the hilarious “Inflationary Language”.

The collection is available in either separate tracks or album zip. Most of the tracks are in 128kbps MP3 although a few of them are in lesser bit rates.

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