78 rpm record label scans

Scans of British 78 rpm record labels up to ~1923.

WORK STILL IN PROGRESS, June 2010.

Many of these labels have already been described & illustrated in the long and on-going series by Frank Andrews in ‘For The Record’, the quarterly magazine of the CLPGS – if you’re interested in early phonographs, gramophones & records, you really should check out their website: www.clpgs.org.uk

The intention of this page is to assemble here as many as we can, of the bewildering variety of record labels which suddenly began to appear in this country from about 1908 onwards. There were more and ever more of them. Their proliferation was indeed astonishing. The noted Discographer Dr. Rainer Lotz has estimated that possibly four hundred different labels appeared in Britain in the years 1908 – 1914. Before then, there were merely a handful of labels – perhaps eight, ten or a dozen. How on earth did the great 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 without any import duty – or a very small one.

Now Germany was at this time the European Centre of the production of gramophone records. Way back in the late 1890s, when The Gramophone Company (later HMV) was set up – it was of course the first company to sell disc records here – their pressing factory was not in England but in Hanover, Germany. Other German companies soon evolved there, and so the European record-making industry became firmly based in Germany.

As long as merchandise coming into Britain had large Import Duties imposed on it, British-based companies had a clear field without undue competition. As far as the nascent gramophone record trade was concerned, this meant that records and the machines on which to play them, were relatively 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 weekly wage for a skilled factory worker at that time was about £1.50, you can get some idea of the almost fabulous status of these stars! We do have 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 probably one or two other companies who were active 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.

On this page, there appears a thumbnail of the label. Just click on it to see it larger; then click the back button to return here. Some of the scans are of low quality. These may have been made some years ago, and we no longer have the disc to re-scan. And scanners have got a lot better too. The size of the centre hole 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. Homophon, Favorite, Kalliope, Da Capo were some of the ‘Prime Sources’. Eventually this will be noted on the page.

Finally, we must re-state that we are only enthusiasts of 78 rpm history, not experts in it. So any comments we make alongside the labels may be conjectural on our part, and possibly wrong. However, some expert Discographers have kindly added to, and corrected what we have written over the years – and also donated labels scans, many extremely rare, for display on this site. We try very hard to ensure that proper credit has been given. If you sent us a scan which appears here, and it is not credited to you, it is my error: please let me know & it will be rectified. Where no credit is given, the label reposes in our own modest collection. These comments will be added eventually.

Note: Most of the labels here are obscure ones, and to which this page is principally dedicated. 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 below, 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 here.