AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING

Radio Record, 17 June 1938, Page 13

AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING

Story of Gramophone Recordings in New Zealand Told to

WILTON

BAIRD

T’S a far cry now to those old days when someone hitched the tin horn in position, put a cylinder on the gramophone and let go, while after a good deal of scratching and scraping, not unlike a male choir giving preliminary coughs, a strong nasal voice blared out: "In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree," sung by J. W. Myers, Edison record, London, New York and Paris, Most of us have forgotten those days, but one man in New Zealand remembers all about them. They were part of his life. I remembers them so well that if you ask him, as I did, what was the first gramophone recording ever made of a big orchestra he will say: "Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, by the Court Symphony Orchestra, made in London. I haven't seen that recording for many a long year. Let me see. It was Colombia, 442, in the catalogue, or 244, No, 2 Was ‘Traviata.’ " We took the trouble there and then to leok up an od catalogue and check. It was 244 all right. That is how well Mr. Sid Vause, now the man who looks after 2ZB’s recordings. remem-

bers those early discs in New Zealand. They must haye been almost human to him, and he watched them grow up from infancy, develop, and mature into the perfect things they are to-day ... watched much as a father watches his family grow up. Followed The Band {tv Was 30 years ago as a youth that Mr. Yause first became associated with gramophones. Before that, from a yery early age, he had always been fascinated by music. IXven in the days when the wandering German bands used to visit New Zealand he was always one of the boys who followed on behind, missed their Junch and got a tanning for it when they came home, When the first Edison cylinder reached New Zealand, the gramophone business was merely a side-line to the eycle and sewing-machine trade. Doing clerical work at the time for a Wellington business firm, Mr. Vause felt the strong tug of those early record-

ings. He used to go to a music shop in Barrett’s Buildings at night, after his work was done, to work among his records. IDO you remember those early artists who recorded: Manuel Romaine, the singer; Will Oakland, the counter-tenor; Billy Williams, the comedian; and Collins and Harman, ragtime singers? It wasn’t long before Mr. Vause was induced to leave his clerical work and go into the retail side of of the gramophone business. Those were the days long before radio when people would come into a shop and say: "Give me a couple of pounds’ worth of records, please. I leave it to you to choose them." But, since radio arrived, they don’t say that very much to-day. Cylinders To Discs AN D now, in the business itself, Mr. Vause saw recording technique begin its pnrocess of evoln-

tion. The cylindrical recordings gave way to those on discs. One disc recording on the market in those early days was the Pathe, a disc which was played from inside to out. Instead of a needle, the machine had a sapphire point. They lasted a long time, those dises, they were very hard. Some of the worlds’ best artists were recorded on them. To-day some of those old discs are fetching fancy prices from collectors, They have an historic value to-day. And it is not hard to imagine someone paying a fancy price for a recording of Melba singing to an accompaniment played by Verdi. As works of art they were not brilliant, shouted as they were into the old tin horn. And some of the artists who made these early recordings disliked them so much that they would not let them go out. (Continued on page 56.)

In the Beginning

ent ee oer SONGS ROUND WORLD (Continued from page 13.) "THEN, about 30 years ago, Columbia dises first began to make their appearance. At that time the company was small, but it acquired the rights for Italian Rena recordings and the reeordings came on the market as Colum-bia-Rena discs, At this time, along with hundreds of others, Mr. Vause was experimenting on the mechanical side to improve the gramophone technique. "We made gramophone diaphragms," he told me, "of glass, shellac, paper and bits of cork. We even made one out of the middle section of a billiard ball. None of them was any good." NY R. VAUSE, then managing a retai! shop in Wellington, was struck with the great future for recordings. He began to import direct from Columbia in London. It was not long after this, in 1916, that Columbia and Regal recordings began to come into the coun. try in regular supplies. One of the things that gave a big fillip to the business was the visit to New Zealand of the French-Canadian tenor Paul Default. Learning of the proposed visit, Mr. Vause placed an order for the tenor’s recordings so that on the singer’s arrival in Wellington hig songs were on the gramophone market with two direct results-record sales and increased purchases of gramophones throughout the district. (NE other influence on the gramophone market of those days was the World War. The songs that travelled round the English-speaking conntries overnight-‘Tipperary" and its fellows-were snapped up in recordings, There was a record made in the Columbia factory at that time which had huge sales. It deseribed the first arrival of the British troops on the Continent. Belgian refugees in England at that time put in the background of crowd effects. Sales jumped at this time from dozens to thousands. The first recorded fox-trot made its appearance in New Zealand about this time. Mr. Vause remembers it wed, its catalogue number was 6936, It was a banjo and piano piece, the hanjo played by Cromer, and it had "Bees and Turnips" on one side and "Hors d’Oeuyre" on the other. A third infinence on the sales was the introduction of silent surface re eording, HE Wellington agents of Columbia next persuaded Mr. VYause to join the wholesale side of the business in 1918. He took charge of the sales iu the Wellington district, which included Taranaki and Hawke’s Bay. While he was wiih them, Columbi. made some of the recordings at the request of Mr. Vause that soon made notable "hits" in New Zealand. Two of these were "Tlarvest Moon’ and "Breeze." In 1928 in Wellington there was in fashion a dance called "Yale Blues,’ The music of "Breeze" had been originally published in 1918 Now, ten (Continued on next page.)

(Continued from previous page.) years later, Mr. Vause heard the tune on an American Brunswick record in the studio of a Wellington teacher of Gancing. He senj the record over to Colombia in Sydney and urged them to make a recording. Will Quintrell reorchestrated the musie from the old record, ing and the Colombia version of the ten-year-old song came on the market. It sold 21,000 records in) Wellington, Taranaki and Hawke's Bay. The first electrical recording, "Come All Ye Faithful," sung by 4000 voices, reached New Zealand in 1926. "And if you don’t believe us," said the advertisers, count ’em."" If had a huge sale. The rapid strides of the industry had led Colombia to set up its own pressing factory in Sydney and, in 1920, Mr. Vause went over and personilly supervised the recording of the "Yoymaker's Joream," another bestseller of those days, It was through his persistence thar Colombian sent over planj and men in 1980 to make the first electrical recordings of Maori singers, recordings that are now known the world over.