[78-L] Joseph C. Smith

[Chris Zwarg]

At 21:26 24.11.2008, you wrote:
>I guess this is another artist on the wrong label but there seem to be so many of these things that I guess artists were always roaming to other labels.
>
>I have a Joseph C. Smith on Brunswick, Medley of Irish Waltzes parts 1 & 2, (the only non-Victor one I've seen).  The sound is so good that I suspected it might be early electric but Mr. Barr's book tells me that this record, (no. 20009), was recorded in January 1923.  To my ears it sounds a lot better than the Victor recordings.

Especially to European collectors who usually have easier access to a wide variety of other companies' output, it has I think become an open secret that Victor's recording process since 1905 or thereabouts had fallen back badly against what was possible with really good acoustic recording. It has always puzzled me why Victor's orchestral accompaniments for singers, as well as their dance band discs, always have that very peculiar strident and "narrow" quality totally lacking warmth and bass response, quite unlike the much freer and more natural sounding results from their "sister company" HMV. With operatic material, you don't have to look at the matrix number to see whether you are dealing with a Victor or a HMV master - if the orchestra sounds like a real, if small, orchestra, and you hear the singer's sibilants, it's always HMV. On Victors you often have a hard time figuring out whether you are hearing woodwinds, Stroh violins, harmonium, or some other odd instruments. Likewise, female voices are often disfigured by the stridency - compare Melba's, Farrar's and Tetrazzini's HMV/G&T recordings to their Victors and you know what I mean. Why this is so on such obviously "prestige" and expensive records like Victor Red Seals is beyond me; many small German and French labels somehow put out much fuller- and lifelier-sounding acoustics than Victor. In the US, Okeh probably had the best acoustic sound on average (probably with know-how derived from Odeon), with Brunswick a close second and even "cheapo" Plaza/ARC at least on a par with Victor. OTOH Plaza's and Brunswick's early electrics (just like Deutsche Grammophon who licensed Brunswick's system in 1925) fall totally flat both against either companies' late acousticals and against the Western Electric process employed by Victor and Columbia.

Chris Zwarg