[78-L] Advent of Electrical Recording - Gilbert & Sullivan

[Han Enderman]

It is not clear to me what HMV did over the years.
I have only a few album cover images of mainly classical and children's music.
Those for children have illustrated covers, as to be expected.
Classical albums are totally dull, but (may) contain info on inside cover(s).
Only a single album, Parsifal, has a real illustration on cover (pasted on?); recording was 
said to be ca. 1925 electric.
The G&S covers are similar to other albums, by having HMV-logo and contents (title), but
in addition there is often a drawing or etching in gold at the bottom.
For Gondoliers I see an album without picture (first ed.?) and with picture of gondolier.
Presumably fully illustrated fronts must be rare.
Will send relevant images.
An Ellington 1933 album also has a small caricature, not of the Duke but of a black drummer.

Han Enderman
===
>>> FOUND IT!!!!!

http://gasdisc.oakapplepress.com/mik1917.htm

The website abbreviation of gasdisc is a little, um, disconcerting, and
might have been a better web address for Steve Barr's suggested
arrangement of 4'33", or a certain, um, Canadian contest that is a
favorite of David Diehl's discograhy.  But this one got the original
cover and the later U.S. cover and all other sorts of goodies.

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [78-L] Advent of Electrical Recording
From: "Michael Biel" <mbiel at mbiel.com>
Date: Sun, January 24, 2010 7:54 pm
To: "78-L Mail List" <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>

From: Matthew Duncan <recordgeek334578 at yahoo.com>
> I believe the first Gilbert and Sullivan album set with a pictorial cover was "The Mikado" 
on HMV, 1917. Prior to this album sets were issued on HMV without pictorial covers. 
The earliest of these held single sided discs such as Verdi's 'Ernarni' on HMV from 1903, 
the label's first complete recording of an opera as opposed to issuing excepts from them 
was issued in a more plain cover than the 1917 G&S one mentioned above and was made up
of 40 single sided discs. I believe the discs were 12" in size and were G&T labelled records
(pre-Nipper logo).

Matthew Duncan.
England.

Great to have confirmation of this. I'll look them up in WERM and see
if there are early British catalogs at R&H. Of course I need pictures. 
I'll need to see if anybody already published picture or if these albums
exist anywhere. Perhaps Earl might be able to help -- he knows opera
collectors and could also hop on over to the British Museum to see if
they are there. Surely they are. 

Mike Biel mbiel at mbiel.com 
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