[78-L] Another foreign label question

[David Lennick]

Classical recordings from England were generally issued by their US 
counterparts (Victor/HMV, Columbia/Columbia, Brunswick/Polydor), but there was 
enough interest in discs from unrepresented labels or some other countries that 
places like The Gramophone Shop did a thriving business in imports, publishing 
a catalog in 1931 and often packaging these discs in their own album sets. 
Popular records didn't see much US action (there were exceptions for really 
famous artists and a couple of dance bands) so imports were a specialized 
business for "connoisseurs".

One way to tell if the records were brought over by tourists or imported by 
dealers is if they have local tax stamps on the labels..presumably the legit 
imports won't have them (anybody know if I'm correct on this?).

dl

Bart wrote:
> A good number of my disks are made in England.   But since the fellow 
> who gave them to me was a bit of collector that may not be 
> representative of what was available in stores in the USA in the '30s 
> and '20s.  How common was it to have imported disks for sale in the 
> usual course of business during the 78rpm era?  Or does the number of 
> foreign label disks represent the work of tourists and collectors and 
> the like over the intervening decades?
> 
> Bart
> 
> 
> ____________________________________