The Legacy of the Victor Talking Machine
The Victor Talking Machine Company (1901 ~1929) was the leading American producer of phonographs and phonograph records and one of the leading phonograph companies in the world at the time. It was headquartered in Camden, New Jersey.
The company was founded by Eldridge R. Johnson. who had previously made phonographs to play Emile Berliner's Berliner Gramophone records. Some sources claim Berliner as a co-founder; others say Berliner was never connected with the Victor company, though that may have been part of a ruse by Johnson to defeat the Zonophone lawsuits that had put Berliner Gramophone out of business in the U.S and threatened Johnson's phonograph business. Zonophone had used patent ruses to defeat Berliner, the inventor of disc records, whose technology Zonophone had copied. In any event, Victor ultimately acquired the remaining assets of Berliner Gramophone. It also acquired Zonophone after defeating it in court.
From the start, Victor pioneered manufacturing processes and eventually gained notoriety by using artists. In 1901 Victor made a three-track puzzle record and in 1903, a three-step mother-stamper process to produce more stampers and records than previously possible. After increasing the quality of disc records and phonographs, Johnson began an ambitious project to have the most prestigious singers and musicians of the day record for Victor Records, with exclusive agreements where possible. Often these artists demanded fees which the company could not hope to make up from sale of their records. Johnson shrewdly knew that he would get his money's worth in the long run in promotion of the Victor brand name.
These new celebrity recordings bore red labels and were marketed as Red Seal records. For many years these recordings were single-sided; only in 1923 did Victor begin making double-sided Red Seal records. Many advertisements were printed mentioning by name the greatest names of music in the era, with the statement that they recorded only for Victor Records. As Johnson intended, much of the public assumed from this that Victor Records must be superior to cylinder records.
The origins of country music as we know it today can be traced to two seminal influences and a remarkable coincidence. Jimmie Rodgers and the Carter Family are considered the founders of country music and their songs were first captured at an historic recording session in Bristol, Tennessee on August 1, 1927, where Ralph Peer was the talent scout and sound engineer for Victor Records. Until around 1926, hillbilly music was recorded acoustically. Instead of playing or singing into a microphone, the musicians let rip directly into an acoustic horn. About as close to hi-fi as a clock radio, the original discs of the early 1920s acoustic recordings have more surface noise than actual music.
While phonograph companies recorded their pop and classical acts in formal studios in New York and Chicago, most early hillbilly acts were cut by producers during recording excursions all over the South. Hotels, furniture stores or warehouses in cities large and small, convent places to congregate local talent, were turned into temporary studios.
Auditions were held and the chosen few came back a few days or weeks later to lay their songs onto wax. The Bristol Sessions were the most famous examples of this process. The setup was fairly simple. A singer played a fiddle or guitar and sang. The microphone was in front of the artist. The signal went directly to the lathe that cut the disc. Those discs had a wax surface that allowed the needle to cut grooves into it. After recording, the discs were shipped back to the home office in cold storage, where they were plated as soon as possible. The resulting metal parts were then used to stamp out the actual 78 records.
Source: Wikipedia
Edited by Richard Bell. Roots of Country Music. May 2011.
