Chappell Label 78s?

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Lah Ca
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Chappell Label 78s?

Post by Lah Ca »

In my boxes of new (to me) reocrds, I have uncovered a sizeable trove of UK Chappell 78s. I had not seen this label before, and the artists are unfamiliar as well. Collectively, the trove does not suggest itself as music I would enjoy.

A quick look at EBay shows that people are asking £ 7.00 for some of these disks. Hmmmm ... I am reasonably certain that I could offer them up for free here and nobody would take them.

Is the label at all collectable?

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Wolfe
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Re: Chappell Label 78s?

Post by Wolfe »

Chappell was apparently a short lived label. I've never seen one, but I'm not in the UK. They might have slight collectibility due to rarity.

http://early78s.uk/c/

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poodling around
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Re: Chappell Label 78s?

Post by poodling around »

Lah Ca wrote: Tue May 16, 2023 3:16 pm In my boxes of new (to me) reocrds, I have uncovered a sizeable trove of UK Chappell 78s. I had not seen this label before, and the artists are unfamiliar as well. Collectively, the trove does not suggest itself as music I would enjoy.

A quick look at EBay shows that people are asking £ 7.00 for some of these disks. Hmmmm ... I am reasonably certain that I could offer them up for free here and nobody would take them.

Is the label at all collectable?
I have a chunk of these in my collection. I seem to remember that one or two of them are very collectable but I can't remember why at the moment. Something to do with the artist / performer.

Sorry to be so vague - Anyway, like so many records basically it depends what is recorded on them as to whether they are collectable or not. I think that the vast majority of Chappell records are not very collectable.

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Orchorsol
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Re: Chappell Label 78s?

Post by Orchorsol »

Mostly "library music" to be used for film, television, radio and dramatic productions, so most of the output is fairly insipid background or theme music af various suggestive characters, often indicated by the titles. Occasionally they are lively, striking, hilarious, creepy, whatever - there are some gems amongst the dross. There were a number of similar labels and generally they weren't available for sale to the general public. Chappell ran from 1942 and like several other similar labels continued on 78 rpm long after commercial issues stopped in 1960 - the last issued were in 1969. The 1960s issues were on extremely high quality 'unfilled' vinyl.
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mrrgstuff
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Re: Chappell Label 78s?

Post by mrrgstuff »

If I understand correctly there are several types of Chappell records.

The earliest, dating to before WW1 must be pretty rare, but probably not valuable. The later ones are less rare, and almost certainly not valuable either.

http://www.mgthomas.co.uk/Records/labelindex-C.htm

I've only ever seen one of the pre WW1 type. It cost me about £8 I think, not because the seller considered it particularly valuable, all the 78s in the box were the same price! ;)

Lah Ca
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Re: Chappell Label 78s?

Post by Lah Ca »

Thank you all for the replies.

I was not concerned about value, per se, as in flipping them for £ 7.00 each--LOL. I was more concerned about whether anybody would want them or not.

I have not gone back to look, but I am quite certain that the disks in my boxes are of the Library Music genre. In the link provided by mrrgstuff immediately above, there are three post-WWII labels shown, red, blue, and yellow. All of these are present in my new boxes. There may be some white label ones, as well.

It is interesting that there are a number of sound effects records present, too.

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Orchorsol
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Re: Chappell Label 78s?

Post by Orchorsol »

Here's a late example on a similar label, illustrating how much fun some of them can be, and how good they can sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjjLgh9r9Vc

And there are lots more including some Chappells on my other channel (link in description of the above video).
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Lah Ca
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Re: Chappell Label 78s?

Post by Lah Ca »

Orchorsol wrote: Wed May 17, 2023 12:29 pm Here's a late example on a similar label, illustrating how much fun some of them can be, and how good they can sound: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjjLgh9r9Vc

And there are lots more including some Chappells on my other channel (link in description of the above video).
Thanks.

I have gone through some of them. Mostly they are background mood music--texture to set a mood for a scene. There is one of a saxophone trio, not a Blues in harmonic structure, but a Blues in tone and timbre and mood. It runs through a number of motifs that could suggest puzzlement, suspense, danger, etc. I could see it being used in 1950s hard-boiled detective fiction.

Some of the disks show no evidence of ever having been played. Some have a bit of minor surface noise, which may be from paper dust contamination from the badly foxing and self-destructing horrid heavy green paper/cardboard RCA Victor library sleeves the disks are all housed in. I would have to run them over my vacuum cleaning machine and re-sleeve them if I were to keep any of them. The vinyl quality, recording quality, and performance quality are all superb, if most often all a little boring (if you actually sit and listen). Audiophile-grade HiFi 78s!!!

I think I will go and retrieve them all from the cull boxes. They are too nice to go off to a thrift store for general pawing and casual inadvertent destruction. I can probably find someone who would love to have them.

What does anyone know about the legal rights to this music? Is it now public domain, or does Warner-Chappell still hold/claim the rights?

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Orchorsol
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Re: Chappell Label 78s?

Post by Orchorsol »

I'm pretty certain they must all be under copyright - theoretically. My experience uploading these library music 78s in general is that the bots recognise and claim only occasionally.
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Re: Chappell Label 78s?

Post by Hoodoo »

The record linked by Orchorsol, above is great.
I have a few 78s on the Boosey and Hawkes label that were produced for use in ads and jingles, etc. Some of them are excellent “crime jazz”.
No label pictures, sorry, as I am posting this from work.

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