Introducing The TMF Label Gallery & Guide

[Neophone]

I'll try to do a few scans when I come back home on Tuesday - mostly of Swedish labels.

Just a thought... Seeing the entry on Decca, I got the idea that maybe you could separate the British labels from the American, seeing as they were, for most of their existence, different companies. Many names seem to have existed in multiple countries, but with no relation to each other.

Emidicta,

Yes I do plan on separating different companies with the same name by country. In some cases I'm currently not sure of a few individual labels and in other cases if I'm not there while David is uploading them he may not know which is which. I didn't specify nationalities in the file names. But we need everybody's help.

Regards,
J.

[richardh]

Ah, you just answered the question I had. This will be such a great resource. A library of record labels from all around the world. I have some great foreign ones I can scan.

RJ

[MordEth]

OK, I was very lazy last night and really didn’t reply to anything here, although I did upload several more companies, and so here are the new additions: Audiodisc, Beka-Grand-Record, Bell/Bell Record, Beltona, Black & White, Broadcast, Cardinal, Challenge, Champion and “Cinch” Record.

I’d also like to thank Norman for providing the second (electrically recorded) Champion label—John did not have it among his scans. I look forward to getting the rest of everyone’s images up, as well.

I’ll be working on more of these companies today.

— MordEth

[MordEth]

Here are the updates since my last post: Choral-Aires of B.S.C., Clarion, Claxtonola, Cleartone, Cole Records, Commodore, Conqueror, Contiental, Copley/Copley Record, Coral, Cosmo, Crown, Dacapo-Record, Dana, World Record and World’s Greatest Music.

Also—I added the blue Electrola label from the images that Norman provided.

Still, there’s a lot of work left to do on this, and expect to see more labels tomorrow. Only 317 more images to go from the ones John scanned—no count on everyone’s additions to that.

— MordEth

[MordEth]

Here are yesterday’s in-commute efforts: Dance-Tone, Derby, Diva, Dominion Records, Domino, Edison Bell/Edison Bell Winner, Empire, Epa Cord, Everybodys, Excello Records and Exclusive.

Perhaps someone could tell me (since I haven’t remembered to ask John this), should I hyphenate ‘Edison Bell Winner’ as ‘Edison Bell-Winner’?

Stay tuned for more of these today as I start being more productive...despite having the day off, so far, most of what I have accomplished involved staying up far too late last night and then catching up on sleep.

— MordEth

[gramophoneshane]

Perhaps someone could tell me (since I haven’t remembered to ask John this), should I hyphenate ‘Edison Bell Winner’ as ‘Edison Bell-Winner’?

— MordEth

Personally, I'd just call them "Edison Bell" records.
"Winner" was the name given to EB's 10" discs, and "Velvet Face" designated the 12" records. Later they introduced the "Electron" label, and kiddy records on "The Bell" & "Little Briton" labels.

I'm not sure if it would be best to have the main header as "Edison Bell", with sub-headings for each type of EB label, or if they should all be lumped in together under one title?
In a way, I think they should probably all just go under a single "Edison Bell" category, otherwise it's a bit like having separate categories/titles for Victor "Concert" & "Monarch" discs.
As far as I know, there is only 1 "Velvet face" label, 1 "Little Briton", 2 or 3 "The Bell", 1 or 2 "Electron" and 14 "Winner" labels.

Perhaps we could do with a few more members input on how they think such companies labels are best categorized & found?
There are quite a few companies like Beka Records for example, who had "Beka", "Beka-Grand" & Beka-Meister" labels, and creating sub-headings for each variation or size- as in Grand/Meister or Concert/Monarch, could become a nightmare to sort, sub-head & find.
It could get a little confusing too. As an example, we now have an "Edison Bell-Winner" category, and a "Winner" category. Both are "Edison Bell" products, but one has the earlier Horse Racing trademark & the other the Bell trademark with the words Edison Bell prominently displayed.

That said, there are also company labels that should be separated, like "Aeolian-Vocalion" & "Vocalion", along with their cheap label "Aco", or Columbia & Regal, or The Gramophone & Typewriter Co (G&T), The Gramophone Co (HMV) & Zonophone, Cinch & The Twin.

[MordEth]

Personally, I'd just call them "Edison Bell" records.

Ah. I had kind of assumed that ‘The Winner’ was a separate company, and that ‘Edison Bell Winner’ discs were a partnership between these companies. (Keep in mind that I am still very clueless with regards to who owned what labels.)

"Winner" was the name given to EB's 10" discs, and "Velvet Face" designated the 12" records. Later they introduced the "Electron" label, and kiddy records on "The Bell" & "Little Briton" labels.

I haven‘t seen any of the ‘Electron’, ‘The Bell’ or ‘Little Briton’ labels, and if John has any of these, he’s not scanned them yet—I just looked through the 239 images that I have left from his initial set of scans.

I just finished getting HMV online, and I only have Homokord and Hit of the Week to get up to be finished from are now online, so I am done with A-H (from his scans).

I'm not sure if it would be best to have the main header as "Edison Bell", with sub-headings for each type of EB label, or if they should all be lumped in together under one title?
In a way, I think they should probably all just go under a single "Edison Bell" category, otherwise it's a bit like having separate categories/titles for Victor "Concert" & "Monarch" discs.
As far as I know, there is only 1 "Velvet face" label, 1 "Little Briton", 2 or 3 "The Bell", 2 "Electron" and 14 "Winner" labels.

John and I were currently basing the grouping based on the names off the labels, so it would be useful to more clueless users like myself (e.g., someone who wouldn’t know that ‘The Winner’ was an Edison Bell product). From our discussions, we will be adding descriptions to each label, that would include information regarding whose label it is, the date(s) when it was produced, etc. as members provide this information and/or John researches it.

Eventually, we’d like to have samples of all of these label variations.

Perhaps we could do with a few more members input on how they think such companies labels are best categorized & found?
There are quite a few companies like Beka Records for example, who had "Beka", "Beka-Grand" & Beka-Meister" labels, and creating sub-headings for each variation or size- as in Grand/Meister or Concert/Monarch, could become a nightmare to sort, sub-head & find.
It could get a little confusing too. As an example, we now have an "Edison Bell-Winner" category, and a "Winner" category. Both are "Edison Bell" products, but one has the earlier Horse Racing trademark & the other the Bell trademark with the words Edison Bell prominently displayed.

I think that member input would be a good thing. Keep in mind that we can link these pages to each other (and I plan to add more navigation, such as ‘previous’ and ‘next’ functionality, after I get John’s labels up and members can get an idea of what we don’t already have). So basically, we have a framework that will be expanding, and content can be moved/sorted as we go along, also. In addition to this, I still need to get ‘last updated on...’ added to both the main page and each gallery.

Ideally, the TMF Label Gallery & Guide should be useful to both new and old record collectors, and we need to get working on the Guide portion.

— MordEth

Edit: As edited above, A-H are now completed (from John’s scans). New content since yesterday is: Exner, Societa Italiana di Fonotipia, The Gillette Company, Globe, Good Time Jazz, Grammophon, “Gramola” Record, Grey Gull, Harmonia Records Corp., Harmony, Harmony Disc Record, The Hit Record, Hit of the Week, “His Master’s Voice”, Homokord, Rex and Supertone.

Changed content includes Edison Bell/Edison Bell-Winner (hyphenated the bit after the ‘/’), Zonophone (UK) and Zon-O-Phone Record (USA) (split these two apart and added country in parentheses).

[gramophoneshane]

Don't worry about being clueless about which companies owned which labels. Even with what I know about labels, I still regard myself as clueless I'm still seeing labels that I've never seen before. There's even one in the new HMV section I didn't know existed.
Actually, I think there's alot more to learn & varieties to see with labels, than there is with the machines themselves.
I've only ever seen a couple pictures of the Electron & Little Briton labels myself. Both are fairly rare. I do have a couple "The Bell" labels on John's yahoo group board though. I just had a look, and I've actually got 3 variations of the Velvet-Face label too.
It comes to something when you can't even remember what labels you own

I hope you've got plenty of cyberspace put aside for the HMV & Columbia labels lol. There are literally hundreds of them!
So I hope you don't have any plans for the next 12 months David

[MordEth]

Shane,

I owe you more of a reply later, but I’m tossing this up and going to bed. So it’ll have to wait until after I get some sleep.

Morning and work come all too early.

But I wanted to get up tonight’s labels.

I hope you've got plenty of cyberspace put aside for the HMV & Columbia labels lol. There are literally hundreds of them!

Thankfully, not only do we have unlimited storage on this server, we have unlimited bandwidth as well. So we may as well be using it! I’m enjoying the growth of the TMF Label Gallery & Guide.

Anyway, here’s tonight’s additions: Ideal, Imperial, Jazz Man, Jewel, Joe Davis, King, LaBelle, Lakeside Disc Record, Liberty, Little Wonder, London, Lyratone Recording, MacGregor, Madison, Majestic and Manor.

Expect more of them tomorrow; I work on them during my commute.

— MordEth

[OrthoSean]

I've been watching all of this develop with intense excitement! I'm guessing I need to buy a scanner soon and start contributing to this cause, since the scanner I have isn't working. I've got a ton a labels that are very unique indeed which would be great to add in with what's here already so far and many others which others may not have either. As has been the case with seemingly everything in my boat lately, it's going to take me some time to get moving on it. I'll do my best, though!

Sean