[78-L] Advent of Electrical Recording

Fri Jan 22 13:07:35 PST 2010

They were entirely for the West African market. The musicians were brought to London for that purpose. Some of the discs presumably stayed in London, as there was a small West African community that early, but most went back to Nigeria and Ghana. They were on the Zon-o-phone label. I may be confused about HMV; the liner notes say they were recorded at EMI Hayes, which would have been all-electric by then (1927), so maybe I'm wrong.

Unfortunately the CD isn't mine; I got it from the library. You can see it (and hear samples, if you're in the US) here: http://www.amazon.com/Living-Hard-African-Britain-1927-1929/dp/B0015XQG4U/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1264193934&sr=8-2 but of course the liner notes aren't online. I dunno if there were matrix numbers given or not.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Matthew Duncan" <recordgeek334578 at yahoo.com>
To: "78-L Mail List" <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 12:48:17 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: Re: [78-L] Advent of Electrical Recording

It may be that if they are 1927-9 recordings (approx) and not done on studio soil that acoustic equipment may have been used...or portable equipment that wasn't as good as the electrical equipment inside a studio.

These recordings may have been made speculatively 'on location', not issued in Britain but exported to Africa and the West Indies??  Just a thought..of course matrix data would give much more info but it sounds as if the CD notes won't mention that kind of info.

I dare say the items didn't fall into the standard Bb and/or Cc matrix series but maybe the numbers set aside for out of studio recordings of which I think BLR and CLR are examples among several others.

The music sounds interesting though!!  HMV recorded some very exotic and exciting music at that time.

Matthew.

________________________________
From: "fnarf at comcast.net" <fnarf at comcast.net>
To: 78-L Mail List <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
Sent: Fri, 22 January, 2010 19:04:02
Subject: Re: [78-L] Advent of Electrical Recording

Great stuff, Matthew and Royal. Thanks.

One reason I ask is because I've got a CD of super-obscure West African recordings made in London in the late 20s, and to my untutored ear they sound thin and rough, as if they were maybe acoustic. The liner notes are not too forthcoming on the circumstances -- in some cases even the artist's name is only half-known -- but I think they're from HMV studios.

I also wonder if some of this stuff ended up in places like Africa, Asia, or South America for recording there? I know a little bit about these foreign RELEASES, but not actual recording in those countries.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Matthew Duncan" <recordgeek334578 at yahoo.com>
To: "78-L Mail List" <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 10:56:48 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: Re: [78-L] Advent of Electrical Recording

Many of the larger companies got going with electrical recording really quickly in the first half of 1925 like Victor in the USA and HMV in the UK, for example. They re-recorded various works, especially classical, with electrical equipment and usually the acoustic equivalent records were removed from the catalogue soon after although shops would have still stocked the earlier discs in many cases.

Several of the cheaper labels (especially in the UK) continued to issue acoustic items.  One good example of this is IMPERIAL.  Owned by Vocalion and later Crystallate they issued a lot of european classical music and US jazz and dance band items that were recorded electrically but many of their own recordings were acoustic into late 1927/early 1928 as far as I am aware.

I don't know about what happened to the equipment ...maybe some of it ended up in schools, sold off for spare parts or in music stores that made personal records??

I am not sure about the last acoustic records but I am sure someone on here could shed more light on this as well as more info on US labels and studios as although I collect US records from pre WWII, my knowledge of matrix series, studios, adverts etc and technical stuff is mainly British based.

Matthew Duncan
England.

________________________________
From: "fnarf at comcast.net" <fnarf at comcast.net>
To: 78-L <78-L at klickitat.78online.com>
Sent: Fri, 22 January, 2010 18:34:36
Subject: [78-L] Advent of Electrical Recording

I have a dumb question that's been bugging me for a while now. Everyone knows that electrical recording arrived in 1925. How sudden was the change? Did everybody change at once? Did some labels continue to record acoustically for some time afterwards? What happened to all the acoustical gear -- did they just throw it out, or did they pass it on to some other use, perhaps a cheaper auxiliary studio, or a budget label or something? What's the last known acoustical recording?

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