It was my wife’s idea to use thumbnail images of 78rpm record labels at the start of every blog entry, and I think it was a brilliant one. The effect is rather like an illuminated letter at the start of an ancient monastic parchment. The images I use all come from The British Dance Band Encyclopaedia, an excellent site put together by Mike Thomas, who very kindly gave me permission to plunder his section on record labels as the mood took me. There is much more to this site than labels, though, and I recommend a lengthy visit to anyone interested in the dance band days. Click this way.
My wife had not seen a 78rpm record label before this, and she was surprised at how attractive some of them are. I explained that since 78s used to be sold in grey or brown paper or cardboard sleeves, usually bearing nothing more interesting than the name of the record shop, or advertisements for other records or for phonographs, the label was always the most colourful part of the whole thing. I hope the ones I include in these postings will illustrate that point. Mind you, the attractiveness of a label did not necessarily have any correlation with the quality of the music buried in the grooves. Some of my favourite records are on Columbia and Brunswick, both of which have, IMHO, pretty dull labels. Then there’s the colourful, imaginative Dominion label. Very nice. Too bad Dominion records were of such mediocre quality. Decca had a very baroque label, with a glowering Beethoven above the name, and I have always been very fond of Broadcast Twelve, Beltona and Bluebird. The letter B is purely coincidental.
After the war, 78rpm, labels for some reason became duller and less imaginative and they were eventually superseded by LPs labels which by and large were unrelievedly dreary and boring. This was partly because of the amount of information that each label had to hold, but mainly because the real illustrative art was to be found on the sleeves, and record covers became works of art in their own right. We have, at my wife’s instigation, the framed cover of a Grateful Dead LP on our living room wall. No one has ever asked me what my favourite LP cover is, but when they do I have my answer ready. Out of sheer cussedness, I shall inform them that it is the Beatles’ White Album.
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