A Curious Pair of Canadian Labels

[Lah Ca]

My apologies as I didn’t intend to cause any confusion, I just used my example to express that perhaps your record was indeed pressed during the war and that the label reflected wartime sentiment somehow.

No need for apologies. The confusion is highly interesting.

The record was in catalogues from 1910 to 1920. Was it in production, pressed and repressed, over that time period or was it listed because there was unsold stock? Who knows?

In the US at least, the record seems to have appeared with three different labels, at least the Tannhäuser March side .

2023-11-07 18.45.49 archive.org 7e4bbc2c5213.jpg (87.7 KiB) Viewed 305 times

2023-11-07 18.43.01 duckduckgo.com e6980a984336.jpg (50.69 KiB) Viewed 305 times

2023-11-07 18.44.52 duckduckgo.com 9f358ec6d08b.jpg (31.58 KiB) Viewed 305 times

How many Canadian pressing might there have been? Canada was a much smaller market than the US.

The Canadian record under discussion here cannot have been manufactured any earlier than 1910 or any earlier than the introduction of the Oct 1911 patent label. When was this label introduced?

As you point out that style of label was discontinued in the US in 1913, but as your Canadian example disk, music recorded in 1914, demonstrates, Berliner Montreal continued using the labels, perhaps as late as 1915. Who knows how much longer?

So the curious record here could have been manufactured anywhere along this continuum.

And as for the possibility of Berliner just randomly using up old label stock, wartime production makes sense. Canada would be starting to experience shortages of material goods as the war effort ramped up.

[Lah Ca]

Well ... whatever else we can or cannot say about this curious record, it is probably not all that rare as I seem to have two copies of it now.

[Lah Ca]

It could have been used for patriotic reasons during the 1914-1918 War.

You probably win the prize for best guess.

2023-12-01 13.53.38 duckduckgo.com 6be916fb545b.jpg (3.78 KiB) Viewed 246 times

While we will never know any answers here for certain, it is the opinion of a knowledgeable CAPS member that the old Royal Union label stock was used during WWI for any record release that was "our side" related.

The knowledgeable person also notes the irony of having La Marseillaise back to back with Wagner on a wartime record release.