The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

I managed to pick up today a couple of individual 78's that I've wanted for a while as well as a set that I am also very pleased to pick up. The set is La Boheme recorded in 1938 with the principle singers being: Gigli, Poli, Baronti, Albanese and Baracchi with the La Scala Orchestra - 13 records all in very nice condition. Interestingly it still has an old price tag on it which i've attached below which shows the cost as £4:15s:4d which was a lot of money even if that dated from the late 1940's.

I also managed to pick up a spare copy of Gigli singing M'appari as my current copy has a pressing fault where it look like a piece of paper fell into the schellac mix and whilst grooves are pressed into it it does give a sounding clomp each turn for about 6 seconds. However I think it is an extremely impressive recording from 1927.

https://app.box.com/s/h5o6pz74qjlg60sjkfpe0kdkwn23nvtg

Finally I managed to pick up a nice copy of Jack Hylton and his band playing "I used to be colour blind". This band didn't record much during 1938 when this was recorded as they spent much of that year touring the music halls and dance venues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHiz8_sfBhQ

All in all I am very pleased with today's purchases.

EDIT: following Epigramophones comments about the company I looked in to the company and found that they were based at 71 Foregate Street, Chester which is now a betting shop (Ladbrokes).
Anyone else managed to pick up anything interesting recently?

Rushworth & Dreaper, who retailed your records, commenced business as organ builders in Liverpool in 1828.
After five generations as a family business they ceased trading in 2002. Unfortunately most of their archives have not survived.

As to my own recent finds, Regina Pacini on a 1904 Fonotipia is an amazingly good recording for it's time.

An RCA Victor album of Pablo Casals playing suite 2 and 3 of the Bach Suites for unaccompanied cello.

Marie Novello playing Rubinstein's "Melody in F" and a piano arrangement of Ascher's "Alice, Where Art Thou?" on Edison Bell Winner. It's my first record from that company on the red label with a picture of a bell, not the expected race horse rider with records (the world's first disk jockey?). Also something of a lesson in humility.

I'm a big fan of Novello, among Leschitizky's last students and definitely an exponent of the old, more "personal" style of playing. Serious music snob that I am, I bought it thinking the Melody would be the main reason to have it and that Alice would be just a typical pop tune run-through tacked on for the crossover crowd. WRONG!!! The Melody is nice enough, but Alice turns out to be a florid, even Lisztian arrangement to boggle the mind, tossed off with panache. A total delight, and that's the side of the record to which I'll be returning most often.

That will be it for me for a while, as my record budget for the next couple of months at least is going into a big, "hen's teeth" type purchase from a fellow forum member that won't be complete until September.

Unless, of course, a copy of another Novello record I want should happen to turn up :

Debussy Préludes, Book 1 - (x) La Cathédrale engloutie
Chopin Etude in e minor Op.25 No.5
Marie Novello (piano)
(rec. c. May 1926, issued July 1926)
Edison Bell VF 674

epigramophone wrote:...As to my own recent finds, Regina Pacini on a 1904 Fonotipia is an amazingly good recording for it's time.

My collection of Fonotipias is not large, to put it mildly, but the ones I have are all uncommonly good recordings. Not long ago, I sampled an Italian acoustic recording on black label Victor, an outtake from one of those operas issued (I presume) more or less complete in piecemeal fashion with singers who must have had good careers in Italy but didn't travel to this side of the Atlantic (Tuminello, Cigada, those kinds of folks). Again, really excellent recording from a technical standpoint, I'd say far better than what Victor was doing domestically at the time. Somehow, the Italians--or, at least, those who worked for Fonotipia and G&T's Italian arm--seem to have had a real knack for capturing operatic voices.

I don't have many Fonotipias either. They seem to have always been collector's items and were never to be found in junk shops, at least not the ones which I used to frequent in the 1960's.
Singers must have appreciated them as well, since the list of those who left G&T to join Fonotipia in the first decade of the 20th century is an impressive one.