[78-L] Glad you guys are back and Radiex Question

[Royal Pemberton]

I'd never seen this side of the history of GG.  And as for what Steven
said about their not reprinting labels....I have two copies of 4004
which was a pair of Irish comedy 'Flanagan' routines; one side was
called 'Flanagan's married life' (can't recall the other now), both
credited to Steve Porter.  The older copy is an acoustic recording on
a Grey Gull label, and as poor sounding as all that that implies.  The
later one is on a Radiex label, and is an electrical remake.  However,
the label copy portion of each label is exactly the same (and quite
likely just used the same master printing plates) on both records,
never mind the matrix numbers only match with the acoustic record.

On 10/5/08, Donna Halper <dlh at donnahalper.com> wrote:
>
>>Steven wrote--
>>
>>(2) Grey Gull was famed for re-recording "hits" using different artists! As
>>well, they usually DIDN'T re-print labels, since that cost MONEY...?!
>
> For the newbies on the list, the owner of GG, Theodore Lyman Shaw,
> never spent money unless he absolutely had to.  That has always
> puzzled me, given that he came from a fabulously wealthy upper-class
> White Anglo-Saxon Protestant family, with a long and distinguished
> history in Massachusetts.  But I think they all got upset with him
> because (a) he married a Catholic (gasp) and not just any Catholic
> but a manicurist... not exactly upper-class, don't ya know.  And (b)
> he didn't go into the family businesses (banking, real estate,
> dealing in antiques) but instead sunk some of the family money into
> creating and maintaining a recording studio and a record company,
> which at one time had offices in New York and Chicago as well as
> Massachusetts.  He became the black sheep of the Shaw family.  There
> was a period of time when it seems Theo did in fact try to promote
> and publicise his artists, but by the mid-1920s, rumours were
> circulating about his not paying them, plus the sound quality of the
> GG family of records was not exactly the best... And yet, he did have
> a good relationship with Andy Sannella and Mike Mosiello-- both did
> lots of work for him under a variety of names.  But other
> musicians... well, they didn't stay with him for very long, and by
> the late 1920s, just about nobody had much good to say about
> GG/Radiex/Van Dyke or anything else Theo put out.
>
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