Signatures in the dead wax

[bbphonoguy]

I just picked up a recording by Weber and Fields. Their signatures are in the dead wax around the label, as if they had inscribed their names on the master. Was this just some way of making the record more desirable when originally sold?

It's a Columbia label, if that's any help. Can't post pictures, because I'm too cheap to have a decent phone, and I don't own a digital camera.

[syncopeter]

It's to testify that they really recorded that record. In the early days pirating was highly popular, as it still is. With an autograph in the wax there was at least some proof that you bought the original and not a pantographed copy.
Many Fonotipia records have autographs in the wax.

[bbphonoguy]

Thanks Syncopeter. I thought that could possibly be the reason. I wonder if it was also a way to assure customers that you were actually listening to Weber and Fields, and not just a couple of guys that the recording company simply claimed to be Weber and Fields.

[VintageTechnologies]

Was this just some way of making the record more desirable when originally sold? It's a Columbia label, if that's any help.

I think so, in the case of Columbia. Some of their acoustic classical recordings by famous singers were neatly autographed. Besides proof of authenticity, the signatures lent prestige. Early Berliner records were also sometimes autographed.

[Viva-Tonal]

Here's one I have by Mary Garden:

[pno4tay]

This practice continued on into the electrical era occasionally. I have a Parlophone (IIRC) disc of pisnist Walter Gieseking of the Debussy Deux Arabesques which I believe was pressed from a Homocord master, and is probably one of Gieseking's earliest. It is signed rather boldly in the runoff area as well.

[Wolfe]

Here's one I have by Mary Garden:

Nice.

I have some Mary Garden Columbias like that.

Found a Pablo Casals Columbia in a shop once and the owner wanted to charge me extra because it had Casals' scrawl in the deadwax. Bought it anyway, even though it shouldn't have warranted an extra price. They're not that significant.

[De Soto Frank]

Reviving an old thread...

Last night a friend sent this j-peg of a "signed" Hungarian Columbia recorded by Kiraly Erno.

I have in my own collection, an Orthophonic Red-Seal of Challiapin (Song of the Flea?), signed in the Run-out area.


I am assuming that the artist signed the wax matrix itself, in the "dead run-off area", and the signature then became "part of the master", just like the recording grooves, and therefore, reproduced in every pressed copy ?


It may not "add value" to a given disc in this day & age, but it is kind of neat...

[Wolfe]

I am assuming that the artist signed the wax matrix itself, in the "dead run-off area", and the signature then became "part of the master", just like the recording grooves, and therefore, reproduced in every pressed copy ?

Yes, "they" would have signed the wax master. But who "they" is may be questioned sometimes, according to some.

I know it's been rumored that the sigs are not always those of the actual artists.

[neilmack]

Adelina Patti signed her name across the middle of the waxes recorded for G&T. At that time she went by the name Patti-Cederstrom, and so the beginning of her christian name and the end of her surname are visible either side of the label on early pressings. Later copies, particularly in the HMV No. 2 Catalogue series, are commonly dubbings rather than pressings, and therefore lack the signature. It's a quick way of distinguishing the true pressings from the inferior-sounding dubbings.