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John Burke's
Records at 78 r.p.m. |
This page was produced following emails received in response to some photos of my record players being featured on the Miscellaneous Photos page. |
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It sounds amazing to youngsters these days with their CDs fast becoming out of date and MP3s easily downloaded for free from the Internet, but music when I was a nipper meant playing a record made of brittle early plastic or shellac that broke into pieces if knocked (or sat on).
"45s" were just coming out when I was born but it was a while before we had a record player capable of playing them. No, we had a player - not a wind up gramaphone, but an electric record player - which played 78s only. Each record with a single tune on each side. |
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If the record were a long piece, like a classical music piece, it was likely to be edited down and there was a pause in the middle whilst you turned the record over to play the other side... These things spun round at 78 revolutions per minute (rpm) which was just enough for a bit of apparent distortion to the label if you watched it spinning. They were played with a needle of sapphire - a great advance on the steel needles of the gramaphone which reduced the playing life of a record to just a few score playings!
To a young lad's great fascination, they could be played by setting the turntable going and sticking your fingernail in the groove! Not loud, not without sounding extremely tinny, and not without your Mum or Dad shouting at you... but it was possible - especially when they were in the kitchen! |
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This was before beat groups came along, before The Beatles. The year I was born a "combo" called Bill Haley & His Comets released a record called "Rock Around The Clock" which was featured in a movie and that started the whole thing off. An American disk jockey named Alan Freed coined the phrase "Rock 'n' Roll" after hearing the music described as "...it rocks and it rolls..."
Another American called Elvis Presley was just starting to record and in England Cliff Richard was still a spotty 16-year-old called Harry Webb... Another teenager called Tommy Steele took up the cudgels for the British teens. |
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The majority of popular music was the likes of Guy Mitchell, Doris Day, Rosemary Clooney, and various orchestras. Trad Jazz was every bit as popular as the new kind of music. Frank, my brother and I graded records on how loud they went... We particularly liked Mars and Uranus from Dad's 12 inch records (7 of them!) of Holst's "The Planets Suite".
We had around 100 78s from Mum and Dad's collection. A few years ago I got into collecting them again at car boot sales and collector's markets. I now have around 500 of them, some of which I've cleaned up with the PC and put onto CD. Sooner or later I'm going to have to sell them - they take up a lot of room! |
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The Columbia 10" record sleeve from the 1930s/40s.
The record is by one of the British Dance Bands, Geraldo and the Savoy Hotel Orchestra.
"So Deep Is The Night" has the vocalist named as Michael Eastley. Most records of the day did not mention the name of the singer as it was the band or orchestra who the public knew.
Later Columbia labels were printed gold on black. |
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EMI was not yet a household name - in fact three-letter acronyms were not yet common. However many of the labels under what was to become the EMI group were already similarly packaged. EMI was at the time the export distribution organisation with distribution for Gt Britain handled by The Gramaphone Company Limited.
Parlophone was the label for jazz records - the record left is "Bad Penny Blues" by Humphrey Littleton. On the right "Yellow Rose of Texas" was found in mint condition for just 50 pence! |
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Regal Zonophone was a label that disappeared not long after 45s replaced 78s. The company continued to produce recording tape for reel-to-reel tape recorders for a while.
This is British band leader Joe Loss's recording of his signature tune; "In The Mood". |
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The labels that would become part of EMI each had two labels during the second half of the 1950s. On for standard music and one for the emerging popular or "Pop" music. Left is the standard cover from the His Master's Voice label, the example being a re-release of Glenn Miller's "American Patrol". The label's "Pop" cover has been seen above with the illustration of jiving dancers. The label is seen right.
The thin paper covers easily got torn and the discolouration of almost 50 years is apparent here - as is evidence of repair with Sellotape! |
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Sellotape shrinks and eventually would damage the cover even more. It also discolours.
Record shops brought out stiff card covers with their own advertisements on them. Some examples like Chas. Brogden's, left, were stitched for even greater strength.
As can be seen on both these examples it was the musical instrument shops that initially sold records. |
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