The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

As the CLPGS members among you will know, I write a regular series of articles on unusual and/or interesting record covers for the magazine.

I was recently given the cover pictured below, and thought that a few covers of female dealers might make a suitable subject for a future article. If anyone comes upon any such covers that they would be willing to share, perhaps they could post their images here. Your help would be much appreciated.

I have at least one in my collection - if only I could remember where!!! Sorry to be so tantalising and useless...

Hey, hey! You know what??
I've always been interested in the adverts for record shops on sleeves, as also on the many beautiful dealer stickers that are on the labels of records. It's a profuse European use, as was in Spain. In fact, when young, I used to visit the places where the stickers said there was a music store, and during the 1980s I could still found some those old shops that were still opened!
To the plot. Among many Spanish record shops I've identified, I remember two at least credited to women, actually widows identified by their husbands family names. One is Vda. M. Roca, Valencia and the other is Vda. M. Vellido, Bilbao of I remember well. Vda. is the Spanish abbreviation for the word Viuda (widow) and in old times it was usual that the wife adopted as society name the family name of the husband, which continued after the husband's death.
I want to recall on which records are these stickers, and if I find them I'll post some photos here. The Roca sticker is a small plain black on white printed paper rectangle, but the Vellido one is a richer small round sticker, printed in raised red lettering on black card, the sticker seeming a tiny record... If my memory is not deceiving me...

There are other Spanish dealers' stickers in many records in my collection, what is a plus! Some stickers are very beautiful. They're usually small, printed in blotted paper with raised lettering, some golden, some in two colours... These stickers, together with the small copyright stamps, some of which are actually pen-signed by the authors, are a characteristic of the European records of the twenties and thirties.
Of course, the biggest record dealers' stickers are omnipresent, which in Spain were probably UREÑA, ZATO, AEOLIAN, NAVARRO, CARMONA, SALVI, and AGENCIA ODEON, all in Madrid. I buy the majority of records in Madrid, where I live. But Barcelona also had very important dealers, as NEW-PHONO, and others. Some of them also made Gramophones of their own, building the cabinets, and assembling from imported parts, the well known Swiss or German motors and soundboxes.
Some of the dealers used the sleeves for advertising and promotion, instead of stickers. I mention CESAR VICENTE as one of the most important, judging for the quantity of sleeves that had survived... He had two main stores in Madrid and Barcelona.
Other smaller cities in Spain had important record dealers, especially cities where there were wealthy people ready to spend extra money on records. The stickers from small town dealers are much rarer, and some are pretty nice. I also remember VIDAL, from León... As in the States or in the rest of the civilised world, every small town which had a market for these luxuries had an important dealer or two. The fifty capital cities in Spain, plus some other big towns, had record dealers. It's curious, due to the generally lower economic level of Spain when compared to other countries. But it's clear that, among the richest, there was a bunch of public buying records at every important population center. A study to be developed in the future...
Among the ones I've seen, I remember only those two credited to a chief-woman, maybe there are others...

I have several images relating to Cesar Vicente, and he will be the subject of a future magazine article.
I try to keep a quantity of material in reserve for my series of articles, as I do not want to be in the position of running out one day.

I found one Spanish label carrying the sticker from one of the stores led by a woman, the widow of M. Vellido, in Bilbao

This is a couple of record cleaners I have.
One suburb is in Melbourne Australia and the other I think Sydney.

Stephen

Very interesting items. Thank you gentlemen.