W.C. Hardy’s “St. Louis Blues”
 
Between the years of 1946 - 1961 one of the only ways to listen to American blues, jazz and rock’n’roll in Russia was to obtain smuggled records, some made on old x-rays. There’s a long article and back story about these interesting x-ray records on Spiegle.de, but it’s all in German and a little bit difficult to make sense of using Google Translate. 

If you got caught with American popular music back then, you could find yourself in a world of hurt. Apparently it could get you thrown out of school or even arrested in extreme cases, but still the population wanted to hear the music. These x-ray records are physical artifacts from that era of Soviet censorship.
 

Percy Faith’s “Delicado”
 

Fred Astaire’s “Cheek to Cheek”
 

Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel”
 
(via Nerdcore)