Victor Recording Company

The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American recording company and phonograph manufacturer, incorporated in 1901. Victor was an independent enterprise until 1929 when it was purchased by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and became the RCA Victor Division of the Radio Corporation of America until late 1968, when it was renamed RCA Records.

Established in Camden, New Jersey, Victor was the largest and most prestigious firm of its kind in the world, best known for its use of the iconic "His Master's Voice" trademark, the design, production and marketing of the popular "Victrola" line of phonographs and the company's extensive catalog of operatic and classical music recordings by world famous artists on the prestigious Red Seal label. After Victor merged with RCA in 1929, the company maintained its eminence as America's foremost producer of records and phonographs until the 1960s.

History

In 1896, Emile Berliner, the inventor of the gramophone and disc record, contracted Eldridge R. Johnson, owner of a small machine shop in Camden, New Jersey, to manufacture a spring-driven motor for the gramophone. Johnson immediately became fascinated with the gramophone, and over the next several years developed a number of improvements for it and the process of disc recording. In 1900, Johnson formed the Consolidated Talking Machine Company of Philadelphia which, after lengthy and complex patent litigations, was reorganized in 1901 as the Victor Talking Machine Company in Camden, New Jersey.Gelatt, Roland, ''The Fabulous Phonograph: 1877–1977'', MacMillan, New York, 1954.

Name

There are different accounts as to how the "Victor" name came about. RCA historian Fred Barnum gives various possible origins of the name. In ''"His Master's Voice" In America'' he writes, "One story claims that Johnson considered his first improved Gramophone to be both a scientific and business 'victory.' A second account is that Johnson emerged as the 'Victor' in 1901, from the long and costly litigations involving Berliner's gramophone patents and Frank Seaman's Zonophone. A third story is that Johnson's partner, Leon Douglass, derived the word from his wife's name 'Victoria.' Finally, a fourth story is that Johnson took the name from the popular 'Victor' bicycle, which he had admired for its superior engineering. Of these four accounts, the first two are the most generally accepted."Barnum, Fred, "'His Master's Voice' In America", General Electric Co, 1991. , The first use of the Victor name was on a letterhead dated March 28, 1901.

Marketing

Herbert Rose Barraud's deceased brother, a London photographer, willed him his estate, including his DC-powered Edison-Bell cylinder phonograph with a case of cylinders, and his dog, named Nipper. Barraud's original painting depicts Nipper peering quizzically into the horn of an Edison-Bell phonograph. Barraud titled the painting "His Master's Voice". The horn on the Edison-Bell machine was black, and after a failed attempt at selling the painting to a cylinder record supplier of Edison Phonographs in the UK, it was suggested to Barraud that the painting might be brightened up (and possibly made more marketable) by substituting one of the brass-belled horns on display in the window at the new gramophone shop on Maiden Lane. The Gramophone Company in London was founded and managed by an American, William Barry Owen. One day in 1899, Barraud paid a visit to the shop with a photograph of the painting and asked to borrow a brass horn. Owen lent Barraud a horn and asked him to bring along his painting when he returned it. When Owen was shown the canvas a few days later, he offered to buy it if Barraud would paint out the cylinder machine and substitute a disc Gramophone. Barraud agreed to modify the canvas but he did not completely eradicate all remnants of his original brushwork. On close inspection of the painting, the contours of the Edison-Bell phonograph are visible beneath the paint of the gramophone. Emile Berliner acquired a United States copyright for the picture in 1900 and Eldridge Johnson adopted the Nipper/"His Master's Voice" trademark for use by Consolidated and the following year, for Victor.

In 1915, the "His Master's Voice" logo was rendered in immense circular leaded-glass windows in the tower of the Victrola cabinet building at Victor's headquarters in Camden, New Jersey. The building still stands today with replica windows installed during RCA's ownership of the plant in its later years. Today, one of the original windows is located at the Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C.

Acoustical recording era (1901–1925)

In the company's early years, Victor issued recordings on the Victor, Monarch and De Luxe labels, with the Victor label on 7-inch records, Monarch on 10-inch records and De Luxe on 12-inch records. De Luxe Special 14-inch records were briefly marketed in 1903–1904. In 1905, all labels and sizes were consolidated into the Victor imprint.

Victor recorded the first jazz and blues records ever issued. The Victor Military Band recorded the first recorded blues song, "The Memphis Blues", on July 15, 1914, in Camden, New Jersey. In 1917, The Original Dixieland Jazz Band recorded "Livery Stable Blues".

Electrical recording era and acquisition by RCA (1925–1929)

In the early 1920s, the advent of radio as a home entertainment medium presented Victor and the entire record industry with new challenges. Not only was music becoming available over the air free of charge, but live radio broadcasts using high-quality microphones and heard over amplified receivers provided sound that was startlingly more clear and realistic than any contemporary phonograph record. Eldridge Johnson and Victor's senior executives were initially dismissive of the encroachments of radio, but after plummeting sales and their apathy and resistance of radio and electrical recording brought the company to the brink of bankruptcy in 1925, Victor switched from the acoustical or mechanical method of recording to the new microphone-based electrical system developed by Western Electric. Victor called its version of the improved fidelity recording process "Orthophonic", and marketed a new line of phonographs referred to as " Orthophonic Victrolas", scientifically developed by Western Electric to play these new records. Victor's first electrical recordings, issued in the spring of 1925 were not advertised as such; in order to create an extensive catalog of records made by the new process to satisfy anticipated demand, and to allow dealers time to liquidate their stocks of old-style Victrolas, Victor and its longtime rival, Columbia Records, agreed to keep electrical recording secret until the autumn of 1925. Then, with the company's largest advertising campaign to date, Victor publicly announced the new technology and introduced its new records and the Orthophonic Victrola on November 2, 1925, dubbed "Victor Day".

Victor's first commercial electrical recording was made at the company's Camden, New Jersey studios on February 26, 1925. A group of eight popular Victor artists, Billy Murray, Frank Banta, Henry Burr, Albert Campbell, Frank Croxton, John Meyer, Monroe Silver, and Rudy Wiedoeft gathered to record "A Miniature Concert". Several takes were recorded by the old acoustical process, then additional takes were recorded electrically for test purposes. The electrical recordings turned out well, and Victor issued the results that summer as the two sides of twelve inch 78 rpm disc, Victor 35753. Victor's first electrical recording to be ''issued'' was Victor 19626, a ten-inch record consisting of two numbers recorded on March 16, 1925, from the University of Pennsylvania's thirty-seventh annual production of the Mask and Wig Club, released in April, 1925. On March 21, 1925, Victor recorded its first electrical Red Seal disc, twelve inch 6502 by French pianist Alfred Cortot, of works by Chopin and Schubert.Victor Recording Book log, pp. 4761 and 4761A.

In 1926, Johnson sold his controlling (but not holding) interest in the Victor Company to the banking firms of JW Seligman and Speyer & Co., who in turn sold Victor to the Radio Corporation of America in 1929.

List of Victor Records artists

Archives

The Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR) is a continuation of the Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings (EDVR) project by Ted Fagan and William Moran to make a complete discography of all Victor recordings as well as adding the recordings of Columbia, Brunswick and other historic American labels now controlled by Sony Music Entertainment. The Victor archive files are the main source of information for this project.

In 2011, the Library of Congress and Victor catalog owner Sony Music Entertainment launched the National Jukebox offering streaming audio of more than 10,000 pre-1925 recorded works for listening by the general public; the majority of these recordings have not been widely available for over 100 years.

See also

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Further reading

* Bryan, Martin F. ''Report to the Phonothèque Québécoise on the Search for Archival Documents of Berliner Gram-O-Phone Co., Victor Talking Machine Co., R.C.A. Victor Co. (Montréal), 1899–1972''. Further augmented ed. Montréal: Phonothèque Québécoise, 1994. 19, p.

References

External links

* Victor masters in th
Discography of American Historical Recordings





RCA Corporation Heritage Impact - CheapPaperWriting.com

RCA Corporation records at Hagley Museum and Library
(1887–1983) About the history of RCA and Victor

RCA Corporation photos at Hagley Museum
(1878–1960)

Victor Records
on the Internet Archive'
Great 78 Project


Victor Talking Machine Company, Camden, NJ., c. 1924. (fro

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RCA Records
Record labels based in New Jersey
American jazz record labels
Record labels established in 1901
Record labels disestablished in 1929
Defunct companies based in New Jersey
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Companies based in Camden, New Jersey
Mass media in Camden, New Jersey