[78-L] Help Identifying a 78

[Eric Hollis]

Well, that makes some sense to me, considering the batch of records that I
got it from.  I got a complete set of the 1914 records from the "Photo Drama
of Creation", released in 1914 in New York City.  It was a similar
syncronized film/record/lantern slide production that ran 8 hours.  The
narrator of the Photo Drama was Henry Burr, although he's not credited on
the discs.  The producers of the Drama were very fond of Les Remeaux, and it
was later recorded at a radio station in NYC that they ran beginning in
1924.

It's likely that the film of Les Remeaux was shown in connection with the
Photo Drama, and that's how this recording got to be in this batch.

Thanks for helping me with a mystery...

Sincerely,
Eric


At 18:02 01.11.2008, you wrote:
>*Hello to the list.*>**>*I'm new to collecting 78's.  I just came across the following record.  It*>*appears to be pretty old, and I would estimate it to be approximately 1912 -*>*1914, based on the other records that came with it.  It is one sided.*>**>*Label: Etablissements Gaumont*>**>*Number etched on record: 02564*>**>*The name of the piece was hand written on the label, and I cant read it, but*>*i recognize the tune.  It is a rendition of "The Palms" by Jen-Baptiste*>*Faure.*
in French: "Les rameaux".


>*Thanks for any help that you could provide.*>**>*Sincerely,*>*Eric*
This is a synchronous sound disc to accompany a short film of the
singer. Léon Gaumont, together with German film pioneer Oskar Messter,
invented a contraption to keep a gramophone and film projector in
sync, and between 1903 to 1914, several hundred musical shorts were
made. Today, the records are quite rare (they were never sold to the
public but only leased to theatres with the film prints) - of the
(nitrate) films however, barely a few dozen survive; the "Vitaphone
Project" is child's play in comparison...

Sorry I cannot identify the singer on yours (there is no proper
catalogue of these discs/films yet) except maybe by listening -
Gaumont regularly employed Parisian opera and cabaret stars who made
other records as well so the voice might sound familiar to me. An MP3
sent off-list to my e-mail would do.

Chris Zwarg