[78-L] Damage Control on Acoustic 78s?

[Steven C. Barr]

see end...
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dan Van Landingham" <danvanlandingham at yahoo.com>
> Regarding poor audio quality on 78 recordings.I had a beautiful 
> arrangement of Charles Gounod's "Ave Maria" with the famous "accompaniment 
> by the Bach Prelude No.l in C Major(from the first book of the
> Well Tempered Clavier).This was a Victor electric by the Victor Salon 
> Orchestra as conducted by Rosario
> Bourdon dating from circa 1926-29.This was a great favourite of mine and I 
> would love to know if anyone
> had ever heard of it.The copy I had was a circa 1938-41 Victor in the 
> 30XXX  series(black label,bright
> gold ink which I referred to as "yellow gold" as opposed to the circa 1942 
> and later Victors which had a'
> lighter gold colour think of white gold on your wedding band..This 
> recording disappeared thanks to my
> sister in law who sold off much of my collection without my knowledge.When 
> she told me about doing it,I
> was,to say the least,infuriated.It's an old story now but I would love to 
> find another extant copy of it.The
> record was cut on a 12 inch master.The reverse was an orchestral 
> arrangement of Schubert's "Ave Maria"
> again recorded by the same Victor group which I'm sure was a studio 
> group.I dubbed it off in the early '90s
> and it came from the collection of a now deceased dear friend of mine who 
> gave me an album which had
> contained it along with a dozen others in 1983.He passed away in the 
> summer of 1987.My sister in law
> sold much of my collection back in 2004 and when I returned to Oregon 
> later that year,that album was
> gone.I don't know is it was ever reissued by Victor,or now,BMG-Sony.By the 
> way,when GE bought
> RCA in '85,why didn't EMI step in and claim the RCA Victor company as HMV 
> had merged with
> "British Columbia" in 1931 to form EMI.American Columbia was,from what I 
> have recently read,taken
> over by the Grigsby-Grunow Company which manufactured the MAJESTIC radio 
> in the '30s.Any info
> would be greatly appreciated by me as I would love to find another copy of 
> that particular recording.
>
1) Did your sister-in-law think she was doing you a "great favour" by 
"getting rid of all those records?"
This is an all too-common view held by the "non-pack-rats" of the 
world...who cringe at the thought of
us "pack rats" accumulating miscellaneae, and want to turn the world into 
nice, modern suburbia, with
"a place for everything and everything in its place?!" OTOH, was she just 
hoping to cash in on your
record collection, hoping you might not object...?!

2) The UK branches related to Victor and Columbia (US) were merged in 1931, 
creating
"Electric and Musical Indistries" (EMI). Since at the time US Columbia was 
owned by its
erstwhile British branch, this placed US Victor and Columbia under the same 
ownership...
in clear violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. As a result, US Columbia 
(in VERY shaky
financial condition at the time) was "fire-sold" to Grigsby-Grunow. Since 
the depression
effectively eliminated the market for high-end radios, that whole operation 
wound up in
bankruptcy in mid-1934; the Columbia operation was sold for $70,000 to ARC.
Herbert Berliner had hoped to acquire it for his Compo Company, but couldn't 
raise
the necessary funds...!

Steven C. Barr