Velvet Face, Edison Bell, Electric or Acoustic?

[larryh]

A friend sent me a you tube video of a violinist, the record is on a Edison Bell main label, it has on the top part " Velvet Face" and British Throughout. The number on the record is 517. I wasn't sure if all flat Edison records were recorded electrically or not?

Larry

[epigramophone]

Velvet Face was Edison Bell's prestige label which ran from about 1910 to 1927. The 1926/27 issues were electrically recorded, but yours dates to about 1921 so would be acoustic. The label could be either violet or green depending on the date of the pressing.

Velvet Face's greatest achievement was the first complete (acoustic) recording of The Dream of Gerontius, a feat which Fred Gaisberg of HMV had told Elgar could not be done with the resources then available. This is a hard set to find.

[larryh]

Thanks for that information. I am not very knowledgeable about the vertical cut Edisons either here or abroad. Somehow I thought that Edison only went to those types here till the Diamond Disc were about to end, but maybe they were around for a long time as well.

[Lucius1958]

Thanks for that information. I am not very knowledgeable about the vertical cut Edisons either here or abroad. Somehow I thought that Edison only went to those types here till the Diamond Disc were about to end, but maybe they were around for a long time as well.

Well, the disc mentioned is an Edison-Bell, which was a different company altogether: they offered lateral disc records long before Edison did.

Bill

[epigramophone]

Larry's confusion is understandable. In the 1890's Edison Bell acquired the patent rights to market both the Edison phonograph and the Bell-Tainter Graphophone in the UK. From 1904 they made their own phonographs which gradually differed more and more from the American product.

The Edison Bell Discaphone appeared in 1908 and played both lateral and vertical cut discs. It is believed to have used Paillard components, but after WW1 the machines claimed to be 100% British. In the 1930's this famous firm was absorbed by Decca.

[Menophanes]

Velvet Face's greatest achievement was the first complete (acoustic) recording of The Dream of Gerontius, a feat which Fred Gaisberg of HMV had told Elgar could not be done with the resources then available. This is a hard set to find.

Not quite complete; it embodies about three-quarters of the score. Each of the record-sleeves in the album bears a printed note showing, by reference to the vocal score, where it starts and finishes and where any cuts have been made. I wish record companies had always been so conscientious. The chorus consisted of eight singers (what a time they must have had in the Demons' Chorus!), while, according to the reminiscences of the conductor Joseph Batten, the orchestra numbered twenty-five, including a contrabass concertina (a long-forgotten Victorian speciality) to cover the organ part. The soloists (Edith Furmedge, Dan Jones and David Brazell) all sing with astonishing conviction under the difficult circumstances, and there are passages – notably the great hymn 'Praise to the Holiest' – which to my ears actually come off against all the odds.

Oliver Mundy.

[epigramophone]

The success of this recording was one of the reasons why Joseph Batten was "head hunted" by Columbia.