Resurrecting Victor Talking Machine Company

[FloridaClay]

It appears they do have masters and various other artifacts in some sort of storefront museum. Maybe someone here who lives nearby could check it out.

http://www.victorrecords.com/thevault/

Clay

[gramophone78]

Members of the APS can turn to the March 2016 issue of AP magazine (page 30) and read Steve Ramm's article on Alexander; a former Paul McCartney impersonator/musician and NJ resident. Who bought the rights to 'Victor Talking Machine Company' & 'Victor Records' trademarks.

He has also been collecting original masters over the years.

[Wolfe]

Wonder how many metal Victor masters they really have in the vault. Most have heard the old saw about the destruction of the masters back at the Camden site in the 1960's ?

They got the wrong Jimmy in that article, it's Jimmie Rodgers.

I'd love new pressing on vinyl like Historic Masters was doing. Old shellac copies are fine as Victrola fodder.

[CarlosV]

Wonder how many metal Victor masters they really have in the vault. Most have heard the old saw about the destruction of the masters back at the Camden site in the 1960's ?

They got the wrong Jimmy in that article, it's Jimmie Rodgers.

I'd love new pressing on vinyl like Historic Masters was doing. Old shellac copies are fine as Victrola fodder.

The Victor masters were not destroyed. The official reissues available in LPs and cds were mostly made from new pressings of the original masters, with exceptions for rare takes and eventual masters that got lost.

[Curt A]

Apparently, they are releasing the 1942 album A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens...

http://www.victorrecords.com/voice/2015 ... er-january

[Wolfe]

The Victor masters were not destroyed. The official reissues available in LPs and cds were mostly made from new pressings of the original masters, with exceptions for rare takes and eventual masters that got lost.

There's been a some masters turn up here and there, naturally. But I can't think of too many specific examples of wide scale repressing to vinyl of Victor masters for reissue campaigns. Maybe you can provide some examples? From back in the LP days especially. Those old Camden/RCA Victor LP's sound like they were always dubbed from shellac 78's.

As I said, sure there are some things still around. I saw some white label vinyl pressings of 1920'a Victor masters on e-bay recently. Opera records.

[CarlosV]

The Victor masters were not destroyed. The official reissues available in LPs and cds were mostly made from new pressings of the original masters, with exceptions for rare takes and eventual masters that got lost.

There's been a some masters turn up here and there, naturally. But I can't think of too many specific examples of wide scale repressing to vinyl of Victor masters for reissue campaigns. Maybe you can provide some examples? From back in the LP days especially. Those old Camden/RCA Victor LP's sound like they were always dubbed from shellac 78's.

As I said, sure there are some things still around. I saw some white label vinyl pressings of 1920'a Victor masters on e-bay recently. Opera records.

In the jazz area, the 1990 Centennial cd set of Jelly Roll Morton's Victors by BMG used metal parts, as well as the 1999 Centennnial edition of Ellington's Victors, in which accompaigning book the producer Orrin Keepnews acknowledges the assistance of the staff of Victor-BMG to its vaults. Mosaic Records recent issue of the complete Lionel Hampton small group 1937-1941 Victors is ALL taken from metal parts and test pressings. So the story that parts were destroyed does not hold water, certainly in a huge archive such as that numerous metal parts must have been lost or misplaced over 100 years but the archive exists and most of the original parts are there and being used. As to your question about LPs, it is true that nobody cared much about listing record sources in those times, but I have at least one from the early 60s with Bix Beiderbecke Victors that mentions it used master recordings for all but one, which was a rare version of Clementine taken from a cracked record. Glenn Miller's Camden LPs from the 60s sound like coming from metal parts or at least very good quality shellac prints.

[Wolfe]

^ None of that surprises me. Also accounting for stuff that turns up in vaults in Europe where metal parts were sent for pressing in the 78 days. I too have many CD reissues of Victor material that some utilize metal parts or vinyl pressings. The majority of them use shellac copies in preponderance.




TMF member grebogantz posted this on another thread :

"There seems to be some misinformation flying around the internet about how RCA "destroyed all" the metal matrix parts that were once at the Camden record plant. I presume that some of the metal was scrapped (probably stampers), but also some of it (masters and mothers) was transferred to the several "vault" locations maintained by RCA in subsequent years. During the 1980s, the largest repository vault was in Indianapolis. I know that we had a number of 78rpm metal parts there as well as in a vault in New York. Many of the reissues of acoustic and early electric recordings that were being done when CDs first made the scene were transcribed from vinyl pressings made from the stored metal matrices in the RCA vaults. So not "all" of it was destroyed as has been claimed. The Indy vault has since been relocated to an underground secure location in the Washington, DC area, so far as I can determine. The New York studios probably don't maintain their vault anymore since little or no mastering is done there anymore. So I suspect that whatever valuable metal parts that were there are now combined with the Indy material at the new location. Since Columbia and RCA are now merged under the Sony/BMG umbrella, I presume that the Columbia material is now also stored with the RCA masters."