THE HAPPY HIGHLANDER’S RECORDS Episode 5 – English FA Cup Football special
You can watch the video episode here
(full of bonus images and slides with information in text form):
Or you can listen to the Audio Podcast here:
THE HAPPY HIGHLANDER’S RECORDS
Episode 5
English FA Cup Football special
Fit like a’body. I hope you are all hale and hearty and most importantly, happy.
So hello and welcome, friends, collectors, football supporters, and lovers of the old gramophones, to The Happy Highlander’s Records where history turns once more at seventy-eight revolutions per minute and where every crackle of shellac carries a story from another age.
Today’s broadcast is a special one. We are stepping onto the grand stage of English football tradition — the FA Cup Final — through the voices and recordings of the past. Long before television highlights, colour commentary, or instant replays, supporters experienced the Cup Final through newspapers, wireless broadcasts, and wonderful commemorative records like the ones we’ll hear in this episode.
The FA Cup, first contested in 1872, is the oldest national football competition in the world. For generations, Cup Final day was almost a national holiday — families gathered around radios, streets fell quiet at kick-off, and Wembley became the beating heart of British sport.
In this episode we’ll explore six sides of three historic 78-rpm shellac records, each capturing the excitement and pride surrounding famous finals. These records were souvenirs, celebrations, and sometimes propaganda for club pride — pressed not just to be heard, but to be treasured.
So wind up the gramophone, settle comfortably, and let us travel back through time — through cheers, brass bands, and footballing dreams.
Our first disc comes from the Regal label and dates from the 1932 FA Cup Final played at Wembley Stadium in London — a golden era for Arsenal Football Club.
By the early 1930s, Arsenal had become one of England’s dominant sides under the legendary manager Herbert Chapman, a man who revolutionised tactics, training, and even shirt numbering. Football was becoming modern — but still wonderfully formal — and recordings like this allowed supporters to “meet” their heroes in an age before television interviews.
This record is essentially an audio team sheet, introducing the Arsenal players who would walk out at Wembley in 1932. Imagine supporters hearing these voices for the first time — players transformed from newspaper names into real personalities.
Shellac records such as this were often sold as Cup Final souvenirs, allowing fans to relive the occasion long after the cheering stopped. Many were played endlessly on wind-up gramophones, which explains the surface wear we so often hear today.
And listen carefully — the accents, the delivery, and the polite manner reflect a very different footballing culture: players were public figures, yes, but still working men speaking with modest pride.
Let’s now place the needle on the record and meet the Arsenal side of 1932.
Turning the record over — as every good gramophone owner knows — we find Newcastle United’s answer from that same 1932 final.
Records with two opposing teams on either side were quite clever marketing. One disc, two sets of supporters, and twice the sales potential. It also captured the rivalry and balance of the Cup Final itself — two clubs sharing the same piece of history.
Newcastle United were already a storied club by this time, carrying enormous support from the North East, where football was more than sport — it was identity, industry, and community pride rolled into ninety minutes.
What’s fascinating about recordings like this is how formal introductions sound compared with modern football coverage. No hype music, no dramatic commentary — just dignified presentation, reflecting an era when the Cup Final was treated almost like a royal occasion.
These voices travelled far beyond Wembley, reaching supporters who could never afford the journey south. For many fans, this record may have been the closest they ever came to hearing their heroes speak.
So let us now hear the Newcastle United team of 1932.
We’ve just heard voices from the early 1930s — football already confident, organised, and stepping into the modern age. But now, on The Happy Highlander’s Records, we wind the clock back even further… to a time before live commentary, before the wireless carried match reports across the nation, and decades before television brought football into our homes, supporters experienced the magic of the FA Cup recreated through performance and imagination.
Our next recording comes from an era of Edwardian music halls and hand-wound gramophones — offering us a fascinating glimpse of how supporters experienced the Cup Final more than a century ago. This remarkable Zonophone record dates from 1911 and features entertainer Sammy Shields presenting “The English Cup Final”.
Rather than an actual match recording — something technology simply couldn’t capture at the time — this is a musical and theatrical recreation of Cup Final excitement, designed to bring the atmosphere of the occasion into Edwardian parlours across Britain.
In those days, the gramophone itself was still a marvel. Families would gather around it much as later generations gathered around the wireless, listening together as performers painted scenes with voice, music, and storytelling.
Shields combines humour, drama, and patriotic enthusiasm, reflecting how the FA Cup had already become a national celebration — a shared sporting story long before mass broadcasting existed. What makes this recording especially special is that it captures not just football, but entertainment culture of its era — when sport, music hall, and storytelling blended into one joyful performance. So now, let us travel back more than a century, and hear how the magic of the English Cup Final sounded in 1911.
Our next record brings us 40 years later and into the post-war era — 1951 — when Britain was rebuilding and football once again united communities across the country.
This Times Production sports recording celebrates Blackpool Football Club’s appearance in the FA Cup Final. By this period, recording technology had improved, and commemorative sports discs became more documentary in style, often including commentary, crowd atmosphere, and official narration.
Blackpool, famously associated with the great Stanley Matthews, represented flair and attacking football. The early 1950s Cup Finals helped cement Wembley as the spiritual home of the English game.
These recordings were cherished souvenirs, played in living rooms and pubs alike, allowing supporters to relive the excitement again and again — perhaps while retelling where they were on Cup Final day.
Let us now hear Blackpool’s 1951 Cup Final recording.
Finally, we return to Newcastle United — this time in 1951 — on the reverse side of the same commemorative record.
Newcastle were one of the great Cup sides of the early 1950s, and victories in this era strengthened their reputation as Wembley specialists. For supporters in the North East, Cup success brought enormous civic pride during a time of national recovery.
By now, football recordings had become closer to historical documents. You can often hear richer sound, more confident commentary, and a sense that football was entering the modern media age.
Yet despite improved technology, the charm remains the same: the excitement of supporters, the ceremony of the Cup Final, and the desire to preserve a fleeting sporting moment forever in sound.
So, as our final record spins, we close today’s musical journey through FA Cup history — proof that football memories, like shellac records, endure long after the final whistle.
And so, as the final grooves fade and the gramophone slows to silence, we come to the end of today’s journey through FA Cup history — told not through film reels or digital screens, but through shellac, steel needles, and the voices of another age.
These records remind us that football has never simply been about goals or results. It has always been about people — families gathered around a wireless set, friends crowding into sitting rooms, supporters dreaming together for ninety hopeful minutes. Each crackle we’ve heard in this episode carries laughter, anticipation, and the shared joy of belonging to something larger than ourselves.
From 1911 to 1951, across changing times and generations, one thing remains constant: the happiness the Cup can bring. Long after the cheering fades at Wembley, the memories endure — pressed into records, passed between hands, and played again whenever we wish to feel that moment once more.
This edition was recorded on an island off the West coast of Scotland where my collection of some 160,000 old shellac records is lovingly kept – to preserve, record and share these sounds from the past at 78rpm. You can listen to more episodes via my website TheHappyHighlandersRecords.com and you can also listen to recordings of each individual record via my YouTube Channel Scottish Island Records.
As the great writer A. A. Milne once said, “What day is it?” asked Pooh. “It’s today,” squeaked Piglet. “My favourite day,” said Pooh. And perhaps that is the true spirit of the FA Cup — every final becoming someone’s favourite day.
You’ve been listening to The Happy Highlander’s Records, where history spins, memories sing, and happiness plays at seventy-eight revolutions per minute. Until next time — keep smiling, keep listening, and keep the records turning.
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