[78-L] Liner notes

[Michael Biel]

On 12/19/2011 6:00 PM, Cary Ginell wrote:
>> How about liner notes on record labels themselves? Did anything precede
>> King DJ 78s in putting brief biographical info on 78 labels?   Cary Ginell

From: David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca>
> And how did they think the DJs were ever going to read those things once they 
> had them cued up on the turntable? Except for one-hoss radio stations where 
> Uncle Clem held up the record and then put it on the platter and dropped the 
> arm onto it.

Now that would be for "combo" operations where the announcer was his own
engineer.  But the bigger stations had a separate engineer with the
records in the control room.  And the bigger UNION stations had a
Petrillo Union Musician as the "record turner" and he might either be in
his own studio or sometimes was right next to the DJ so the DJ could
peek at the record.  My feeling is that the bios were really for the
music director who opened the mail to convince him to give it a listen. 
(Of course a fiver scotch taped to the record would usually work much
better!) (Having the record delivered by a naked hooker was a sure bet
for air play.)

Mike (did that ever happen?)  Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com  





>
>
>> Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2011 17:09:24 -0500
>> From: dlennick at sympatico.ca
>> To: 78-l at klickitat.78online.com
>> Subject: Re: [78-L] Liner notes
>>
>> I'm guessing here but I think they stopped inserting booklets in the early 40s
>> and switched to printing the info on the inside liners. This may have coincided
>> with the cutting the disc prices in half..why give the peasants an expensive
>> printed pamphlet when they had those blank covers they could fill? Obviously
>> there were exceptions, like Decca's cast album booklets, with the inside liners
>> being used for "candid photos of the stars who wished they'd fixed their hair" etc.
>>
>> dl
>>
>> On 12/19/2011 5:03 PM, Robert M. Bratcher Jr. wrote:
>>> When did Victor& perhaps Columbia stop putting booklets (with liner notes) in the classical music sets? Did they all have them& perhaps lots of the booklets got lost over time?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> ________________________________
>>>> From: David Lennick<dlennick at sympatico.ca>
>>>> To: 78-L Mail List<78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
>>>> Sent: Monday, December 19, 2011 3:54 PM
>>>> Subject: Re: [78-L] Liner notes
>>>>
>>>> Actually, notes (can't really call them "liner notes" until they started being
>>>> printed on the actual inside liner in the 40s, whence the term) were included
>>>> in most classical album sets of more than 2 discs from the mid 20s. Some 2-disc
>>>> sets also had them. Even the two ten-inch single discs of Modern Russian Music
>>>> on English Columbia (Iron Foundry etc) had no album but had a paper insert.
>>>> Popular albums from Decca had them in the 30s, popular albums from Victor and
>>>> Columbia initially had them only if the recordings were a significant set like
>>>> the Bix Memorial Album, the Hal Kemp Memorial etc.
>>>>
>>>> dl
>>>>
>>>> On 12/19/2011 4:15 PM, Kristjan Saag wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks, Ted, David& Mike for valuable information about early liner
>>>>> notes in albums.
>>>>> From the examples given I conclude that liner notes were still
>>>>> exceptions in the early 78 rpm era. Could the same be said for the
>>>>> 1940's? Or did information about songs, artists, composers etc. become
>>>>> standard any time before the LP era?
>>>>> I'm also curious about the number of albums released each year, compared
>>>>> to singles. Capitol, for instance, released about 150 albums during the
>>>>> May 1945-mid 1949 period (before the LP album) and about 750 singles
>>>>> during the same period, which makes the album/single ratio about 1/5.
>>>>> What about other major companies and their popular music series? Anyone
>>>>> for a guess?
>>>>> Kristjan