[78-L] Mae Questel, the Betty Boop girl

[Steven C. Barr]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <zimrec at juno.com>
<snip>
> As for Jan's query about record company archives indicating quantities 
> pressed and sold, the so-called blue cards of some early Trinidad 
> recordings, 1914, at Victor that I saw at BMG archive, before the Sony 
> merger, indicated sales figures.  I've never seen indication of quantity 
> pressed.  I have photocopies of those blue cards which show the following 
> sales - record number followed by sales:
>
> 67028 - 1988
> 67029 - 2535
> 67030 - 3176
> 67031 - 2054
> 67032 - 1948
>
> It would be interesting to know how many were pressed and distributed. 
> The 4500 and 4900 series Bluebird 78s of Trini artists are equally scarce, 
> if not more so in some cases.  They may have been pressed in larger 
> quantities, but all were exported to Trinidad.  The British colonial 
> authorities, acting as good censors in protecting the morals of the 
> citizenry, dumped them into the sea.  The blue cards indicate: Do not sell 
> in US unless international approval.  Apparently, such approval didn't 
> exist.  Copies of those Bluebird records have turned up in hands of 
> collectors and there are metal parts of many in the archive, but between 
> extant shellac pressings and the metal, there are still many missing 
> recordings.  The only physical surviving trace are the label samples that 
> were pasted to the blue cards.  Anybody for putting on some scuba gear and 
> searching the Caribbean for shellac?
>
To further confuses things, Victor(C) used both the B4500 and B4900 series 
for their Canada-only
BB issues!

Steven C. Barr