[78-L] A SECOND question for our GG contingent...?!

[Donna Halper]

At 11:55 PM 7/28/2009, you wrote:
>Okeh...
>
>We know that Grey Gull disappeared in the late fall of 1930...right?

 From my earlier notes, here's a few things we DO know for certain:

The Grey Gull company was incorporated in Massachusetts on 31 
December 1919.  The first listing for the new business appeared in 
the 1920 Boston City Directory:  "Grey Gull Record Company, Talking 
Machine Records, 295 Huntington Ave, rm. 207, and 81 Wareham 
St."  The Huntington Avenue address, which was in an office building, 
was located near hotels and music schools, while the Wareham Street 
location, not far from a commercial district, was probably Grey 
Gull's warehouse and manufacturing location.

By the next City Directory, owner Theodore Lyman Shaw had a new 
address--  598 Columbia Road in the Boston neighbourhood of 
Dorchester (not near downtown Boston at all-- probably chosen for its 
cheaper rent and its closeness to a large theatre, the Strand, which 
still had vaudeville and stage shows, and live performers Shaw might 
use on his records).

Several years later, circa 1923-24, Shaw, as well as his record 
company and his Shaw Advertising Agency (he had worked in advertising 
since about 1914), moved again, this time to 135 Dorchester Avenue, 
on the South Boston/Dorchester line.  There was also a Grey Gull 
warehouse and manufacturing plant around the corner on MacAllen 
Street.  And in addition to Grey Gull Records, there was now an 
associated label called Radiex, whose mailing address continued to be 
598 Columbia Road. (Today, the Strand Theatre is still standing, but 
all other reminders of what was once Grey Gull are long gone, having 
been replaced by a superhighway called the Southeast Expressway.)

[Btw, Will Dodge seems to have been the only local bandleader who 
made any recordings for GG.  I have no evidence that Joe Rines or Leo 
Reisman did.]

The 1930 Census still lists Shaw as a manufacturer of phonograph 
records, but that's the last time he is associated with records.

The reason 1930-31 are crucial is that Theodore Lyman Shaw came from 
a wealthy family which seems to have finally shut off the subsidies 
when his father Robert and brother Robert Jr died-- his brother had 
been listed as GG's treasurer, and his father was listed as a member 
of GG's board of directors.  The brother died in 1930, the father in 
1931.  GG ceases to have listings in phone books or city directories 
after that, and the Shaw Advertising agency also vanishes from sight.