[78-L] Compo comments, was Re: Hollywood Bowl recordings

[Steven C. Barr]

David Lennick" <dlennick at sympatico.ca>
> On 10/1/2010 11:07 PM, Steven C. Barr wrote:
>> From: "Michael Biel"<mbiel at mbiel.com>
>>>>> I made special mention of the [1928 Mac] Hollywood Bowl recordings,
>>>>> which were quite
>>>>> unusual for the time. They were the first outdoor recordings Victor 
>>>>> had
>>>>> made,
>>>>> and special precautions had to be taken so as not to get any 
>>>>> extraneous
>>>>> sounds
>>>>> on the recordings.   Cary Ginell
>>> On 9/27/2010 1:18 AM, DAVID BURNHAM wrote:
>>>> Not exactly, Victor recorded the Victory Tower, (later the Peace 
>>>> Tower),
>>>> carillon in Ottawa on July 1, 1927, and, of course, studios were fairly
>>>> small in
>>>> those days so they recorded it outdoors.   db
>>> Do we consider Canadian Victor as the same company as VTMC or RCA Victor
>>> in the U.S.?  VTMC, of course, had released recordings taken off the air
>>> of the Lindbergh Arrival in Washington DC, and the speeches at the
>>> Washington Monument which were made several months before the Ottawa
>>> Canadian National Exhibition recordings.  Of course the CNE recordings
>>> released by Canadian Victor were recordings they made, while the Compo
>>> recordings of the event were broadcast recordings.
>>>
>> There ISN'T a simple answer to this question...! Herbert Berliner, the 
>> son
>> of
>> Emile, set up a company (actually, he inhertited a company foundeed by
>> his father...?!) In Canada; from 1918 onward Herbert recorded MANY sides
>> for his Canadian-based 216### series in his Montreal studios. Around
>> late1922, the US-based VTMC elected to take over Herbert's supposed
>> "branch operation," on the basis that he was issuing more of his own
>> recordings than the US sides he was supposed to be issuing...?!
>>
>> In the meantime, Herbert's "Compo Company" side operation had
>> started to issue its own electric sides (Compo started recording
>> electrically as an experiment in mid-1924, and issued its first
>> electrical recordings in late January 1925...!). As a result, VTM(C)
>> started issuing electric "VE" records from "the get-go"...and even
>> issued a promo disc which paired an acoustic Jack Shilkret side
>> w2ith the same titile title, supposedly recorded acoustically by
>> the same band...!
>>
>> Steven C. Barr
>
> Herbert's Compo Company also issued a couple of "Tenor Solo" discs that 
> were
> clearly pirated from John McCormack Victors, and I've long suspected that 
> many
> Compo pressings were done at the Berliner Gramophone Company plant or that
> Herbie stole er redirected the shellac compound from there to his own 
> factory
> in Lachine. The McCormacks were replaced pretty soon with rerecordings by 
> Billy
> James, but the original pirate versions are easily recognizable.
>
> Herbert Berliner had another quirk..around 1940 he decided that radio 
> stations
> should start paying for the privilege of broadcasting all Canadian Decca
> pressings. The broadcasters felt otherwise, so for about 9 years all 
> Canadian
> Deccas carried the words "Broadcasting Prohibited" on the label and a 
> sentence
> on the record sleeve swearing that the disc was sold with the express 
> condition
> of not being broadcast on the radio. One result is that Canadian radio 
> station
> libraries are missing all the Deccas from this period and the years 
> preceding
> (the CBC had two Mae Questel 78s which survived, somehow). Around 1949 the 
> DJs
> started sneaking Deccas on the air (one jock told me the first one he 
> played
> was "Good Night Irene" by The Weavers) and the ban just fell away. US 
> Decca
> bought Compo outright the following year. And stations subscribing to the 
> World
> Program Service were getting lots of Decca product on transcriptions in 
> better
> quality, although not the major artists like Bing Crosby and Guy Lombardo 
> and
> the Andrews Sisters.
>
The "famous Tenor" sides are fairly well known: in fact, I did a 
Mini-discography
of theserecordings some years ago...!

Steven C. Barr