[78-L] Article on Gennett

[Malcolm Rockwell]

Addending Dave's comments, Gennett also survived into the 50s by sales 
of their sound effects discs (by then the sound effects label was 
SpeedyQ) even though Starr sold off most of their masters and went out 
of the record pressing business in the late 30s. Gennett actually had 3 
distinct sound effects eras. I call them Gennett 1 (mid 20s), Gennett 2 
(1030s) and Speedy Q (1940s-50s). The main way to tell the difference 
between 1 & 2 is by listening to the changing sounds of automobiles and 
airplanes! It wouldn't do to have an 1920s auto effect behind a 1940 
film or radio program.
And, before someone gets smart, there were sub-categories of SE labels, 
such as the chapel series for Funeral Homes, among others.
The Klan records were as Dave says, a very small part of the personal 
label series output and subject to more modern hoo-rah due to the 
"Oooooh!" factor that PBS exploited. The exploitation is just as bad as 
the original records were, in my not-so-humble opinion.
Malcolm

*******

On 11/29/2012 7:12 PM, David Lewis wrote:
> Harold Aherne wrote: Between this and the History Detectives episode, I hope the public doesn't getthe impression that these Klan records were Gennett's bread and butter, or thatthe company's legacy should be defined by them (is it really correct that claim that Gennett was "kept afloat by Klan money"?).
> And it's nice to see that Paramount and NYRL are so well-remembered by the article's author.
>>>> Some of the Klan's discs were made in Homer Rodeheaver's Chicago studio while he was away in Japan, and he must've blown a gasket when he found out about it. I have a Vaughan disc which has a Klan song on one side and a barrelhouse piano solo on the other. The Klan side wasmade in the Rainbow studio and the barrelhouse was done at Gennett in Richmond. These matters are not so simple, and when you place them in the hands of people who are idiots when it comes to vintage records it can only lead to problems. Here's what I posted on that page: "This is a junk article pulled together from misunderstood information. Gennett's dealings with the Klan were part of a business model that employed 'special' or 'personal' recordings where you could pay them to make records for you. I know of no subsidies from the Klan to keep Gennett afloat; if you look at the ledger you will see a handful of Klan records among hundreds of discs by people you never heard of, and a great majority of t
>   hese records were musicians or others hiring Gennett to make records of them. The Klan products got their own labels, just like any other Gennett personal, whereas the jazz musicians -- and Lawrence Welk -- appeared on the regular Gennett label. That Ezra Wickmeyer was a Klan member and Gennett's chief engineer wasn't unusual, as in the 1920s the Klan were a legitimate political party in Indiana and had millions of members." "There is an interesting story here, but I think you missed it. With the History Detectives piece I am worried that Gennett will get regarded as 'the Klan label' when they did so many other things so well; the Klan part of their business was relatively minor. Klan records from the 1920s are not particularly rare and record collectors have known about them forever; they are relatively humdrum and quaint compared to those made in Louisiana in the 1960s. Just because mainstream historians have figured out that they were made doesn't make them any more inter
>   esting than they really are. There is also no correlation between the decline of the Indiana Klan and Gennett; Victor was just about the only record label in the country not to go under during the depression, and that was because they merged with RCA shortly before the Wall Street Crash of '29. Gennett managed to hang on in other ways, mainly through licensing their discs to other labels, a practice which lasted until at least the 1940s."
>
> Uncle Dave Lewis
> uncledavelewis at hotmail.com 		 	   		
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