Something about gramophones in South Africa

[Ivor-Duncombe]

Frank, I'm in South Africa. When the country was colonised people arrived from Holland, France, England, India, Germany and eventually from most European countries (except those behind the iron curtain). Our gramophones seem to be mainly of British manufacture or origin. These include HMV, Columbia, Decca, Singer, Parlophone, Gallotone and Trek. The Gramophone Company U.K. licensed the manufacture (assembly ) of some of its models locally (of these I have only come across Model 102s to date. Most Model 102s were imported. One does find the odd HMV Victor, Parlophone, Zonophone or other European brand horn gramophone on the market. There are fair numbers of horn gramophones and grand cabinet models around (mostly privately imported, I would imagine). If one sets one's heart on buying a working imported table model HMV 103, 107, 108, 109, or 109 over here then it shouldn't take you more than a year to find exactly what you want in an antique shop or at a flea market. Likewise imported HMV Models 101, 102 and, to a lesser extent, Columbia Models 206 and 9000 are not too difficult to come by, these Columbias being rather more scarce. By far the easiest Gramophone Company machines to procure here are the Models 87 and 88 HMV and the corresponding twin Columbia Models 205 and 211, all of which seem to have survived surprisingly well in Africa.

Pre-EMI Columbia suitcase models are surprisingly common - they do compete well as far as quality of sound goes. They do tend to suffer from alloy fatigue/decay and rust. I don't think that much thought given in their design to electrolytic effects between dissimilar metals?

A fair number of European machines were imported (Swiss, French and German mainly), but very few Victor portables, if any. Strangely enough, Edison cylinder talking machines abound and Edison dictaphones are not too hard to procure. The less expensive machines like Gallotone (locally manufactured or assembled), Singer, Trek sold well on the mines in Johannesburg up until 1960. Few of these have survived until now in very good condition although there is ample scrap available should the gramophone enthusiast wish to build a machine up from scratch. Fortunately most of these cheaper models had Garrard motors - which does help to make the recovery exercise worthwhile.

The miners spent most of the year on the reef from whence they sent money back to their families on the rural farms in the provinces (mainly Kwazulu-Natal and the Transkei). Amongst the first luxuries the typical miner would buy forhimself would be a smart suit, a gramophone and records. Arriving home during the annual December shut-down the miners would wow their families and friends at home with their fancy ("swank") clothing and music. "Swanking" remains a very popular and well-publicised hobby and activity today - it's all about the selection and match of flashy clothing and accessories and the swanker's deportment, with or without music, that makes for a great competition. Unfortunately the cheaper machines, which tended to be loaded to capacity with records, (and often strapped closed with a leather belt) did not take kindly to the long train trips (with several stops for shunting). The gramophones , however traveled better than the records. Very few of the miners' records have survived until now. For about 10 years I have been trying to collect the African "Kwelas" and "Jive" of the fifties. No one else wanted to collect them, but I bought every one I ever came across, cleaned the them and played them all - some pretty good stuff there! The tea box bass, gasoline/petrol-tin guitars, penny-whistle flutes, metal and/or skinned drum were orders of the day. If any one would like to sample this type of music music, then try and get hold of a CD by the Soweto String Quartet (SSQ), "Jive out of Africa", or The Basement Boys. Last year I was astonished and overjoyed to overhear a black gentlemen (who had just agreed to purchase an HMV 102 at Bellbottoms) ask where he could buy African records for his "new" machine. Bellbottoms were unable to assist, but I collared "Lion" as he left the shop. He introduced himself as Lion and I gave him my home address. I sold him all of the 100-odd records I had at a very nominal price plus a promise that he would continue to build the collection for his family and posterity. Lion has called at my home twice since his first visit, still looking for more music - which I find most reassuring.

I don't like to see gramophones leaving the country. Most of the machines we have were imported, but they're a part of our heritage now - the history a machine gathers as it survives in the environment where it lives the life it lives. I don't feel too strongly about gramophone restoration or even over-restoration if it's a matter of saving the machine, making it sound as good as it ever did, and most importantly, exposing it to a greater audience. In time, the unknown past becomes intriguing and the restored machine is accepted and with its restoration documented as a most important part of it machine history.

[epigramophone]

Thankyou for a fascinating insight from a part of the world that many of us know very little about.

The reason you will not find many Victor machines in South Africa is that Victor had a reciprocal agreement with HMV, whereby neither would sell in the other's territory.

I don't have any South African records, but I did find this sleeve :

[Ivor-Duncombe]

Hello, VV-XI, This can be easily translated as "Ask for the latest list of Afrikaans HMV recordings" (You probably worked that out for yourself!)

Thank you for the reminder about the Victot-Gramophone Co. agreement. That makes sense!

[US PHONO]

Ivor,
There was a time in the 1970's when your currency was very strong, and dealers from your country were buying up stock like crazy particularly in europe, and this may be the source of many of the horned disk phonographs that are found in an OK condition in your country. I could imagine that originally the family's gramophone was passed to a more disadvantaged family and so had a longevity beyond what was expected, till finally expiring in the countryside somewhere.

South Africa was also quite late to build its electricity infrastructure which is why portable spring wound portables were still being sold into the 1960's and why one has Elvis and the beatles on 78.

I have seen a Lumiere and some HMV cabinet gramophones with a - if I remember correctly - Mallams of Johannesburg dealer tag

What part of the country are you at?

[Ivor-Duncombe]

Good day to you. I'm in Centurion which is basically where Johannesburg meets Pretoria in Gauteng (previously Transvaal)in South Africa. One good thing about Gauteng is that gramophones don't rust here! You're right about Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard and others being on Seven Single and 78 simultaneously during the transition to microgroove. You're also right about most of the family gramophones in the more affluent areas being passed on to domestic workers and gardeners as time went on. The sad part is that the bicycle shop owners either sold their stocks of gramophone spares (if they could find a buyer), or they just stopped repairing gramophones. The record shops in the cities had cleared out all of their 78s and built new record shelves/racks by the time the Beatles arrived on the scene. I traded my HMV 102 in on a turntable to play via my Bush radio in order to be able to enjoy the Beatles. The rural general dealers only ever had stocks of African records which, I'm pretty sure, ran out well before the gramophones wore out and the bicycle shops had stopped repairing them. What really helped the rural people, when their beloved gramophones ground to a halt, was the advent of the transistor. This technology made it possible for him/her to have FM Radio and a 45 RPM record player in a single light and portable box. Radio became affordable to rural farm workers and fishermen for the first time. As you correctly say, the electrical mains grid did not cater well for the rural areas. Nine volt batteries were pretty expensive for someone on a laborer's wage, but the priority of batteries was high on the shopping list. I use to earn pocket money helping to repair both valve and transistor radios at out local radio shop in Johannesburg. Much of our business came from short circuited loudspeaker wires where insulation had been stripped to connect additional loudspeakers, blown output stages due to overloading of the amplifiers and/or to shorted speaker wires, and due to people trying to use old 12V car batteries to run their 9V transistor radios/record players. If they were lucky the batteries were incapable of delivering the full rated 12 volts to their music centres AND they were lucky not to have reversed the polarity when connecting extension wires to the sets. The destruction was awesome and pretty expensive to repair. It was such a shame - a person would save for months to buy a portable and sooner or a later a friend would offer to help them run on a car battery. Whenever we sold a radio we would do our best to warn the new owner's of the basic "do's and don'ts" of owning and operating a portable radio/gram.
I always regretted selling my HMV which was given to me when I was 3 years old. In later years it was my sense of guilt and yearning that made me purchase a wreck of on HMV like mine to restore in Bulawayo. In my search for parts to complete the restoration I met an elderly gentleman who had the foresight to stop in every small town that he ever passed through in South Africa, and to buy up all of the spares left in the rural bicycle shops. I eventually bought his complete collection of spares including many stripped machines. Twenty years later I'm still running on those spares. It has given me enormous pleasure to be able to play my very small part in keeping the gramophone "alive" in South Africa.

[chunnybh]

Really like the HMV sleeve.
Here is an ad from The Gramophone with a specially made EXPERT Senior for someone in South Africa.

[Steve]

I've seen in person the machine pictured in Chunny's post above and it was originally an early radio-gram with the radio controls in an angled fascia behind that pair of doors. I believe the radio parts were completely removed a long time ago, sadly. The motor inside was a Garrard 201 transcription type.

[chunnybh]

I've seen in person the machine pictured

Hi Steve, where was it. I always thought it was still in S.Africa?.

[Steve]

I always thought it was still in S.Africa?.

No, our mutual friend tracked it down and imported it to the UK a long time ago - hence how I got to see it! It has since been sold again to a private collector as far as I know.

[Ivor-Duncombe]

I'm most interested to hear about this SA-Expert machine. So the machine ended up in the UK. Was it built into the old cabinet in the UK? Are you able to tell me who selected the cabinet to be used - The commissioner of the work or the expediter? When is it forgivable to build a hybrid like this? Would the SA-Expert machine be classifies a Cr...phone? Or can the commissioner of the work be forgiven if the resulting machine performs as well as, or better than, an Expert machine?