British Disc Record Labels – the First 25 Years: 1898 - 1923.

A Work still in Progress – May 2012.

There is no doubt that Frank Andrews is – and has been for 40 years – the principal researcher and discographer of British Record labels, and of the histories of the companies who made them, above all those of the early decades. Therefore, any attempt to date and to give a brief outline of these labels (which is precisely the purpose of the 23 pages below) is, of necessity, based on Frank’s work. Accordingly, unstinting acknowledgement, admiration and profound thanks are given to Frank Andrews for his many books, listings, and hundreds of articles that he has written in the last four decades. References are provided, including those to the ‘Hillandale News’ and ‘For The Record’ (the journal of the City of London Phonograph and Gramophone Society), the ‘Talking Machine Review’ (published from 1969 by the late Ernie Bayly, and from 1989 John Booth), not to mention many monumental label listings that Frank and others have produced. So inevitably, all the specific information given here, e.g. the date when a label appeared, or disappeared; who was the proprietor; who pressed them, &c., quotes from Frank’s prodigious and untiring work. Additionally, thanks are tendered to all those enthusiasts who kindly contributed images of record labels – their names appear with their images. Many also provided other information; above all William Dean-Myatt, M. Phil. All errors and inaccuracies are of course my own; and when you see the phrase ‘It is not known…’ that means I myself do not know; for I am still researching these things in Frank Andrews’ prolific writings! Still, at the time of writing about 250 ‘makes’ of record are to be found here, illustrated by just over 600 images, though some rare makes have no image – as yet.

To go straight to the labels, just click on an initial letter below. However, further below you will find some supplementary articles which give extra background information, and may help you to navigate the often baffling complexities of the first 25 years of British Record Labels.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Z

If you have any corrections, comments, additions, corrections, know of other labels in the time-span, or can contribute a missing

image, we’d be grateful to hear from you. Please email labels@normanfield.com . You will of course receive credit.

SUPPLEMENTARY ARTICLES.

1. What constitutes a ‘record label’, or a ‘make’ of record?

2. A brief sketch of the ‘Gramophone Boom’ and its aftermath: ~1908-1923.

3. How labels may be grouped together to make things simpler. (In progress)

4. Where were the pressing plants located? (To be written)

5. Where can Frank Andrews’ full articles & writings be consulted? (To be written)

1. What constitutes a ‘record label’, or a ‘make’ of record?

Well, as a dear departed friend of mine used often to say: ‘Dealer’s choice!’ And since, on these pages, it is I who am the dealer, why then, my definition is very broad indeed. I am still inspired by Dr. Lotz’s ‘German Ragtime’ of 1985: he included everything that was at all relevant – or even just seemed to be. Things that were apparently duplicated on more than one label each had their own entry, because you could never be absolutely sure that they were the same. The products of the mighty Gramophone Company appear here in several different places, rather than grouped together as they would be with a more rigorously academic approach. For these pages were always conceived with the thought, that someone, somewhere, might find a ‘funny old record, obviously very old indeed’, and want to find out a little more about it. And, perhaps, they would Google, and maybe even come to these web pages. There, we hope, they would find a confirmatory image, and an outline of the age of the disc, who made it & so on. If you were lucky enough to find at a car boot sale, a 7" Berliner, a 10" Gramophone & Typewriter, and a 12" His Master’s Voice record, (and I certainly hope you find a Berliner!) there is practically nothing to indicate to a novice, that the three items are connected in any way whatsoever. Therefore, to me they count as three ‘record labels’, and appear here as such. Though the ‘Make’ of the discs is in common, and is duly noted. And if such a novice were to become interested further, and wished to know more about the disc they had found – let’s say it was a Favorite Record – then a link is provided that will take them to a place where they may acquire an inexpensive booklet containing a CD-ROM that gives a detailed company history, and a database of thousands of Favorite sides. Alas, there are all too few listings available; but an attempt has been made to include all that we know of, even if they are out of print.

Please feel free to write with any comments, corrections, additions &c.; your input will be gratefully received, and naturally full credit will be given to you for your contributions.

There is still an enormous amount of work to be done on these pages; rest assured we will be applying ourselves to it with increasing vigour.

Finally, there comes a modest diatribe.

It is a lamentable fact that this first 25 years (1898 – ~1923) of our earliest and rarest British Audio Heritage on disc records seems, disquietingly, to be held in little esteem other than by amateur enthusiasts. It would appear that academia – by and large – tends to write off early recordings very readily, and on what seem to be rather fragile grounds. Reasons given include: (a) they are of poor sound quality; (b) badly (or at least inadequately) performed; (c) works have been mutilated & distorted in order to compress them into the short playing times that were possible at the time; (d) ’cellos and basses in orchestras are replaced by euphoniums and tubas; (e) the orchestras are in any case too small; (f) the performing styles are obsolete, if not actually grotesque; (g) the ‘popular’ material (which to be fair, predominates on many labels) is puerile, outmoded, unfunny, racially biased, and inherently obsolete; &c., &c. Final Verdict: “In short, there is really little or nothing to be learned from studying these sound recordings.” This is not the time and place to discuss this deplorable attitude *. But we cannot resist asking, what would become of an archaeologist who declined to study potsherds of impeccable stratigraphy, on the grounds that they were worn & weathered, and above all came from pots which were broken? 8^)

If even two or three individuals become slightly interested in early sound recordings as a result of consulting these pages, then they will have served a far more noble purpose than their author had in mind when he began to write them.

* A comprehensive and lucid summary and critique of this great problem was published in 2009 by Daniel Leech-Wilkinson, an academic musicologist. It is entitled: “The Changing Sound of Music: Approaches to Studying Recorded Musical Performances”. Besides its fundamental agenda, it also contains an immense amount of useful information on early recordings. You will find it at:

http://www.charm.rhul.ac.uk/studies/chapters/intro.html

2. A brief sketch of the Gramophone Boom and its Aftermath: ~1908-1923.

The noted German discographer Dr. Rainer Lotz has estimated that possibly several hundred different labels appeared in Britain in the years 1909 – 1914. Before then, there were merely a handful – perhaps 15 or 20. How did this vast increase come about?

Little has been published on the origins of this ‘Gramophone Boom’. I think it must have been a consequence of the 1906 General Election in Britain. For whatever reasons, the Liberal Party won a landslide majority in parliament. Therefore they began to carry out their most treasured policies. One of them was ‘Free Trade’. It meant that merchandise made in other countries could come into Britain with little or no import duty.

Now at this time, Germany was already the European Centre for the production of gramophone records. Back in the late 1890s, when The Gramophone Company was set up in the U.K. (it was the first company to sell disc records here in the normal way) their pressing factory was not in England but in Hanover, Germany. Other German companies soon evolved there, and so the European record-manufacturing industry became firmly based in Germany.

As long as merchandise coming into Britain had relatively large import duties imposed on it, British-based companies had a clear field without undue competition. This meant that disc records and the machines on which to play them were, & remained, expensive. Some records were almost unbelievably expensive: certain operatic discs by the most famous singers like Nellie Melba, Adelina Patti, and Francesco Tamagno cost £1 each, or even a little more. As the average wage for a skilled factory worker at that time was about thirty shillings (£1.50) a week, you can get some idea of the almost fabulous status of these stars. Of course, they were mostly single-sided records as well: you usually only got one performance for your money. We need to bear in mind, of course, that there was no radio, no television, no talking cinema in those days; the top opera singers were indeed the first ‘World Super-Stars’.

In the first few years of the 20th century there was just The Gramophone Company, Zonophone (soon absorbed by the first-named); Columbia, Nicole, Pathé, Odeon, Neophone (and its successor Musogram), and a few other concerns who were active in disc records up until the introduction of Free Trade.

It then began to change rather rapidly. Of course, not only cheap discs but also cheap gramophones were imported, both in immense numbers. At last the man in the street could aspire to own a gramophone, and purchase records to go with it. Accordingly, the repertoire on most of these ‘Boom’ labels was not high-brow. Military bands playing marches, overtures or selections from operas and ragtime pieces, popular vocal ballads, comic songs, instrumental solos on the cornet, banjo or concertina: these were the backbone of the catalogues. Most of these labels had no recording studio or pressing plant. They used the facilities that were offered by the big concerns, mostly in Germany. ‘Recording rooms’ were set up in London, and the resulting wax master discs were processed & pressed in Germany. Some artistes – the famous comedian Billy Williams was one – actually went to Germany to record.

On the web-pages, there appears a thumbnail of the label. Just click on it to see it larger; then click the back button to return. Some of the scans are of low quality. These will have been made some years ago, and we no longer have the disc to re-scan. Scanners have got a lot better too, and web-space is not a problem any longer. The size of the centre hole (0.25", 6.5mm) will give you an idea of the label diameter. All discs are 10" (25cm), double-sided and lateral-cut unless noted. Many of the labels are ‘related’, being produced by the same German company. Beka, Homophon, Favorite, Kalliope, and Dacapo were some of these ‘Prime Sources’. British companies also supplied ‘client pressings’ or ‘stencils’, as they were called in the trade. The Sound Recording Company (own label: Grammavox), and Edison Bell (main own labels: Bell Disc, Winner) were among these. And masters belonging to early, defunct British labels were acquired and issued by optimistic new concerns; e.g. Nicole material came out on the Empire, Sovereign and many other labels. Even some German (e.g. Beka) and U.S.A. masters from failed companies were prudently garnered here by surviving ones, and used as a source of new, completely unrelated labels. The convolutions by which a U.S. banjo solo by the virtuoso Vess Ossman ended up on the rare Pelican label were quite strange.

So most of the labels here are obscure ones, and this page is principally dedicated to them. But of course, all through this time period, the ‘major labels’ also existed, even if they were threatened by the flood of cheap discs coming in from Germany. Therefore, these major labels also appear, and are noted as such. Also noted, are the ‘budget labels’ the majors were compelled to produce – usually anonymously – in order to help them survive this turbulent epoch in British Gramophone history. And of course, there are still other labels, not readily definable as major or minor, which existed at the same time, so they also appear. In fact, no label is to be excluded; we have always followed the example of Dr. Rainer Lotz, as exemplified in his masterly book ‘German Ragtime’ (Storyville, 1985). That is, a German – or in this case, British – record is to be defined very broadly. Therefore a ‘British Record’ is one which (a) was manufactured and sold in Britain; (b) manufactured elsewhere but sold in Britain; (c) manufactured in Britain but sold elsewhere; (e) recorded in Britain but pressed & sold elsewhere, &c., &c.

The ‘Gramophone Boom’ continued apace; competition became cut-throat and prices were remorselessly driven down. Discs which had sold well in 1910 for 2s 6d (12.5p) were reduced again and again. The intervention of the majors, The Gramophone Co. and Columbia with their Cinch and Phœnix discs, sold at little if any profit, resulted in the final and vicious – one might almost say near-suicidal – Price War of 1913-14. Some record prices fell as low as 1s (5p).

On 4th of August 1914, Britain declared war on Germany, and the fate of Record Companies became a trivial matter in relation to the Cataclysm that was to afflict humanity for the next four years. Obviously, all imports from Germany vanished overnight; and worse still, records marked ‘Made in Prussia’, ‘Pressed in Germany’ or even ‘Pressed Abroad’ became instant dead-weight on the shelves of their importers here. They could not be sold at any price.

Many importers simply threw in the towel. A few British factors took desperate measures, and managed to get some supplies pressed in this country. These were often shoddy & inferior products, but often rare and interesting for all that.

The number of record labels available in Britain thus shrank, within a few months, to a tiny fraction of its size before August 1914. The major companies were least affected of course, and were doubtless relieved to be rid of the ‘unfair’ German competition. A few minors managed to carry on; the Sound Recording Company’s label Popular was one. The mutually related labels Coliseum and Scala also made it. One company, Guardsman, founded in early 1914, actually seemed to flourish – yet without ever threatening the big four: HMV and its subsidiary label Zonophone, and Columbia with its subsidiary label Regal. The multi-talented William Ditcham even started a new label – Bulldog – late in 1914; but though it survived the War, it never sold in large quantities. Pathé, with their idiosyncratic vertical cut centre start discs, was wiped out overnight when their factory in Belgium was denied to them; and though they managed to re-emerge with a slightly more orthodox outside start vertical cut disc recorded and pressed here, called Diamond, their sales were very modest.

One or two concerns of German origin, such as Lindström, managed to survive for some time even after the outbreak of War because they were properly constituted British companies, with British (or Allied) directors. Carl Lindström A.G. was a mighty organisation, controlling Odéon, Beka, Jumbo, Fonitipia, and, from early 1914, Lyrophon, Dacapo and Favorite. They had their own pressing plant in Hertford. But in 1916, the increasingly rigorous enforcement of the 1914 ‘Trading with the Enemy Act’ resulted in the closure of the Lindström works and the confiscation of the company and its assets – though the value of these was not underestimated; the factory still continued in production of both disc records and other ‘war work’.

The British record industry emerged from the War in November 1918 in a very mixed state. The majors were more or less OK, but the minors were pretty shaky, and their sales were minuscule.

How many labels were there now? Probably only 20 or 30. Still, though recovery into the 1920s was slow, it was also, on the whole, sure.

But probably never again, were so many 78 rpm labels to be available to the British public, as there were in the Halcyon Days of the Gramophone Boom of 1907-1914.

3. How labels may be grouped together to make things simpler.

Labels may be grouped or associated in several ways. The alphabetical index contains about 230 ‘makes’ of record. But very few were manufactured from start to finish by one company. A fully-developed record company would have a pretty straightforward structure something like this:

Now let us take a different example: J Graves of Sheffield – a large department store with a flourishing mail order trade. In about 1911, Graves wished to have their own record label to add to their sales lines. Granted that Graves already had a chairman, directors, secretary, shareholders &c. (as well as a sales department and indeed many customers), it would still have been absurd for them to set up their own recording room, plus a factory for plating the matrices & stampers, and also the heavy & expensive hydraulic presses for stamping the discs. The obvious thing was to have them manufactured by somebody else. This they did, and for 27 years, Graves’s label – which they called Ariel – was sold, often in profusion.

Very many companies did this sort of thing; but several variations in the set-up are possible. For example, Graves never had material recorded specifically for Ariel. The actual manufacturing companies (there were many between 1911 & 1937, often concurrent) submitted records to Graves, saying: ‘are there any of these you want as Ariels?’, and somebody there (usually J Graves himself) selected which ones they wanted. So a ‘flow chart’ for Ariel would be completely different and might look like the following:

So many different company structures were possible. The important Sound Recording Co. Ltd., for example, had its own recording rooms in London, its own labels, Grammavox and later Popular; it would make ‘own-label’ records for other concerns (and did so in immense profusion); but it had no plating and pressing factory of its own. Virtually everything the SRC produced was pressed by the firm Crystalate, which had factories in and near Tonbridge in Kent.

By contrast, though Crystalate ‘made records’ – millions of them! – in our time period, it had no label of its own until late 1922. But it pressed records not just for the SRC but other labels too: Jumbo, Guardsman, Bull Dog and many, many others.

As you look at the alphabetical index of labels, there are many things which recur again and again. German companies, British companies, pressing plants are often common to several labels which were often but by no means always separate products for different clients.

What makes it even worse is that little remained static for any length of time. Some companies went to the wall; some were taken over by others. Some new companies started up which used masters recorded by a previous, now defunct concern. The Disc Record Company Ltd. of Stockport (later London) was perhaps the classic example. Their hoard of master records appeared again and again between 1907 and 1915 on several labels. And, of course, they would also make custom pressings from client’s own masters: some Guardsman records were pressed at the DRC factory in Rosslyn Crescent, Harrow, Middlesex, rather than by Crystalate as was usual.

The only way to understand this whole period, is to know all about it and then fit all the pieces of the jig-saw puzzle together. This is, of course, impossible. Even the indefatigable Frank Andrews, who has spent over 40 years minutely researching these early record companies, ruefully confesses that there are some labels which he knows existed, but no example has ever been seen; some which are said to have existed, but no example has been seen; and even today, over 100 years later, occasionally a disc is found on a label which nobody has ever heard of before, not even Frank! Therefore, the fundamental question “How many record labels were there in the U.K. between 1898 and 1923?” simply cannot be answered. Probably about 250 is the best estimate; but even this depends on the awkward question: “What is the definition of ‘a record label’?”

Still, we can make a little progress by grouping together labels which have (or seem to have) certain things in common.

KALLIOPE. Dresden, Saxony.

MORE HERE….. page in progress, 11th April 2012.

4. Where were the pressing plants located?

A chart…

Towards a chart to show where the records were pressed…

The known British factories….

Crystalate – in & near Tonbridge, Kent.

Disc Record Co. – Wellington Rd, Stockport; then Rosslyn Crescent, Harrow, Middx.

Pathé – Barry Rd., north London.

Lindström – Mead Works, Gas something, Hertford, Herts.

Gramophone Co. – Hayes, Middx.

Universal Music Co. – Hayes, Middx.

Edison Bell – Peckham? When Huntingdon?

Columbia - ?? – then they ‘owned’ Hertford – but somebody else had it later??

Clarion – The Point, Wandsworth.

What about the ‘Inverness Works’ at Hounslow, Middx. The Irolite Mfg. Co?

Where were Neophones pressed?

Where were Parlophones pressed?

What about the factory at West Drayton, Middx? Diamond (vertical) discs, later owned by Pathé, were pressed there…

Page revised 16th February 2012.

Page revised 31st March 2012.

Revised 11th April 2012.