[78-L] Albums

[Michael Biel]

From: D P Ingram <darren at ingram.fi>

> Interesting point. To me the album refers to the "case" in part, so you can
> have one disk in an album. Certainly as a child growing up using British English
> one might ask mother to "fetch the latest (group) album from the record store".

Your childhood is in the LP era, right?  So I have no problem with the
term.

> Perhaps 78 rpm disks were not generally referred to as albums as they were
> clearly one disk with an (often) open hole in the sleeve, just like many
> but not all 7" 45 rpm. disks and had 1 / 2 tracks, yet the 33.33 rpm disks
> had NORMALLY many tracks even if they were on one disk. In the 80s we
> referred to 12" singles and 12" albums to differentiate also.


The distinction is that usually a 78 is a "single".  45s on the other
hand are also usually singles except when they are "EPs" or Extended
Plays.  There we have one disc with the contents of two singles per
disc.

Since I have been doing the research with the original contemporary
industry publications, let me explain the usage of the word.  Empty
storage books were "albums".  Individual discs issued separately from
each other were "singles" or "records".  Groups of related records which
were sold individually were "sets".  If the sets were sold in a book
together they were an "album" or "album set".  As noted in an ad
Geoffrey Wheeler found in The Gramophone July 1933 p 49 announcing the
release of the Blackbirds set on Brunswick, the "records" were available
separately but if you "acquired the complete production" you could also
purchase "handsome Albums, suitably titled to house the discs". But as
the industry started to come out with more popular sets they were called
"albums", and the whole series would be called "Decca Albums" for
example.  

When the Lp was introduced by Columbia they called them Lps, but the
term album soon was used because the Lps were replacing the 78 albums. 
Decca even used the word album in the TITLE of two very early LPs, The
ANTA Album Of Stars Vol 1 DL 9002 and Vol 2 DL 9009.  (Were these issued
on 78s and/or 45s?)   

> The Oxford English Dictionary also looks at the derivation of album with several
> entries that can lead to the natural conclusion of the use of album within sound
> recordings.