[78-L] The Label - The Story of Columbia Records.

[Michael Biel]

  On 8/23/2010 11:24 AM, David Lennick wrote:
> It's still worth reading, and he's on much firmer ground once he gets to the
> stereo era. But fact checking by people at the Library of Congress or half the
> people on this list would have found hundreds of errors that could easily have
> been corrected, beginning with the cover illustration (a mono number on a "360
> Sound Stereo" label). This isn't being picky..this is about basic incorrect info.
>
> dl
>
> On 8/23/2010 11:10 AM, DAVID BURNHAM wrote:
>> Autry did record for Harmony, which kept the acoustical process till 1929 or
>> 1930, but that book is so full of howlers I try not to believe anything in it
>> (which is too bad, because the guy obviously had access to private files and
>> Goddard Lieberson's personal notes).
>> dl
>>
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>>
>> Everything Marmorstein says is followed by a footnote indicating his source of
>> information.  If this is full of howlers, (which I assume means
>> miss-information, not jokes), I have to assume there simply are no believable
>> authorities in this field.

It is rare that I find a book about the phonograph history that does not 
have factual or techincal errors, even if they are footnoted.  A few 
errors even crept into my dissertation (which has 1300 footnotes) and 
there also has been a lot of additional information discovered in the 
years since.  When there are footnotes I often make it a point to check 
out the original source, and often find misinterpretations.

Just opening up The Label at random, on page 70 he says that "The crash 
certainly put Edison out of business."  Edison had announced the closing 
of the record business two weeks BEFORE the stock market crash.  On page 
40s he says that Joe "Hayman eventually decamped for Victor."  Earlier 
he discusses the Marine Band making Columbia cylinders in the early 
1890s under Sousa but also discusses Sousa making discs for Berliner and 
Victor when he went out on his own whit the Marine Band under a new 
leader staying with Columbia cylinders till 1899.  Then he says that the 
first disc in the first  Columbia disc catalog in 1902 was Sousa's Stars 
and Stripes.  He doesn't say who recorded it, but does say the "Sousa 
went from Columbia to Victor."  Rather confusing since the Sousa Band 
never recorded for Columbia.

He states on p 55 that when Columbia signed with Western Electric on Feb 
26, 1925 this was two months before Victor.  On the same page he states 
that General Electric was "also located in Bridgeport" which would come 
as a surprise to Schnectady.  And was Ted Wallerstein working for 
Brunswick in 1925?  If so, when did he go to Victor?  He worked for all 
three companies?   He also said that Harmony was formed "in 1925 to 
distribute the acoustical recordings [Columbia] had in its vault.  
Several years later it would still record acoustically occasionally"  It 
credits an interview with Rich Conoty and Note the Notes for this mix-up.

There are loads of other things like this peppered thru it.

Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com

>>   Every book I've read - including "The Fabulous
>> Phonograph", "From Tinfoil to Stereo" and many others - is always shot down as
>> being so full of errors that they should be in the fiction section of the book
>> store.
>>
>> There is so much information in the Marmorstein book that I can't possibly
>> remember it all, including dozens of names, so I'm just really reading it to get
>> a sense of the evolution of the label.
>>
>>
>> db
>