[78-L] West African recordings, was Re: Advent of Electrical Recording

[fnarf at comcast.net]

According to Wikipedia, "EMI began recording at Kingsway Hall on December 31, 1925 using electrical equipment obtained from the American Western Electric company, to whom they paid a royalty on each disc sold for the patents involved, and continued making regular use of it even after the construction of its own recording complex at Abbey Road Studios in 1931. From about 1933 EMI used its own equipment designed by their brilliant engineer Alan Blumlein who successfully circumvented the Western Electric patents and thus avoided their substantial royalty costs. At this time he also developed and patented a stereo disc recording method which was eventually adopted for the LP standard set in 1958."

Kumasi Trio is on the record I heard as well. I think I am confused once again, and the tracks were merely archived at Hayes, not recorded there. Strong cold medicine and incipient pseudo-Alzheimers are combining to destroy my memory.



----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Pomeroy" <pomeroyaudio at att.net>
To: 78-l at klickitat.78online.com
Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 2:15:30 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: [78-L] West African recordings, was Re:  Advent of Electrical Recording

I have a French CD which contains 20 recordings from 1928 by the  
Kumasi Trio transferred from Zonophone 78s #1001 through #1010,  
(YY13601-2 through YY13620-2).  The notes state the recordings were  
made in Kingsway Hall, London.  Because of the processing to which  
the audio was subjected, it's a little hard to determine whether the  
recordings are electric or not.  But the room sound suggests they  
were recorded with the omnidirectional condenser mic of the period.

DOug Pomeroy

> Message: 11
> Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 21:07:35 +0000 (UTC)
> From: fnarf at comcast.net
> Subject: Re: [78-L] Advent of Electrical Recording
> To: 78-L Mail List <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
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>
> 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.
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