[78-L] Over There to Over Here

[Taylor Bowie]

I can't speak about foreign classical records,  but in my early years of 
collecting (maybe 1965 -80) I don't recall seeing very many English or other 
foreign dance band records either on auction,  junk stores (remember them?), 
or in the collections of others.  Since that time,  with improved 
transportation,  mail service and communication,  I started seeing all sorts 
of English dance records on all sorts of labels and now own several hundred 
of the 1923-38 era.    These have pretty much all come from overseas sellers 
or were obtained from fellow collectors who bought them from dealers in 
England,  Australia,  etc.

It seems very unlikely that any store in the 20s or 30s would have imported 
much of that English pop stuff,  and I can't see American or Canadian 
tourists,  packing up their trunks to come home,  being loaded down with 
dance records on Edison Bell Winner and Filmophone!

Am I correct in saying that the first foreign popular records to be reissued 
in any quantity in the US were the Ray Noble HMVs reissued on Victor in the 
early 30s?

Taylor


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Lennick" <dlennick at sympatico.ca>
To: "78-L Mail List" <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
Sent: Monday, July 13, 2009 10:04 AM
Subject: Re: [78-L] Another foreign label question


> 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
>>
>>
>> ____________________________________
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