The Talking Machine Forum — For All Antique Phonographs & Recordings

This picture from the Shorpy site was mentioned on the 78L message board , but it's so interesting that I thought I'd post the link here. It's a luncheon at the Brunswick recording labs in New York. The date is 1921. I'm suspect the girls in the foreground are the office staff, but at the back table we get to see Marie Tiffany and Elisabeth Lennox .They, being the artistes, have their hats on. For once one of these photographs from the days of orthochromatic film , makes everyone look their age..that is to say very young. Lennox looks like a kid.. I've always found her a very pleasing singer and I particularly like the unforced quality of her voice, and she was one of those very rare singers who are intelligible when they sing English. How rare it was...and is.( I was recently at a recital here in Toronto where the Shakespeare songs might as well have been in Serbo-Croatian, but I digress...) I can't find Marvin Maazel, the young pianist, at the front table, in any of the Brunswick catalogues I have, but I'll consult that three volume Brunswick Records series that was published a few years ago
Tiffany and Lennox recorded the Barcarolle from Tales of Hoffman,and two other duets and five will get you ten this was the post-recording session luncheon . But where is the conductor? One would suspect he would be there. I think Walter B Rogers was the staff conductor at this period , and the man in the centre at the back rather looks like him, but I think he's too young!
The luncheon...on paper plates...was obviously sent up from a local deli .
Even though the pic is posted here, do look at the shorpy site: the detail in those large format negatives is astounding. It really is like time travel to 1921.
Jim

http://www.shorpy.com/node/11233?size=_original