I bought this new in late 1966 (high school days) thinking it was a follow-up album to "Hark! The Years!" on the Capitol label (a compilation of actual early recordings by famous people of that same turn-of-the-century era) or something like it, anyway. The first track made me so mad I couldn’t stand to play the rest of it. Years later while in college I finally played it, and having studied a little about some of the personalities portrayed, the humor – and the uncanny accuracy of the characterizations of some personality subjects – was finally appreciated and this album became a family favorite as our kids came along.The album dutifully offered “Notes on the discovery of Frederick Kolb’s private collection of cylinder recordings” and what followed was a rambling paragraph of nonsense about meeting a series of distant relatives of Kolb, ending with Kolb’s youngest son, who in turn sent them to yet another distant relative – a narrative not totally unlike the genuine articles written by well-known expert on early recordings, Ulysses “Jim” Walsh for the legitimate Hobbies Magazine from 1942-1985. Walsh’ s wordy articles eventually got to the point, which this album narrative never did – and should have been a tip-off that it was not actually an authentic historical album, but a parody. This is a "must-have" for anybody who collects early records.Times have changed since 1966, as I write in 2018, more than a half-century later, and it should be noted that some of these tracks would certainly be considered offensive by some.