A Victrola that cries,

As we were told earlier, a piano is present at Corrientes 348; this indicates regular live entertainment. However, it would appear that management does not find this 100% reliable and so a Victrola - a source of recorded entertainment - has also been made available.

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 beginning of the century. 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.

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.

Three models (among many) of Victrola music cabinets available at Maple & Co.



In September 1906, Johnson and his engineers designed a new line of phonographs with the turntable and amplifying horn tucked away inside a wooden cabinet. This was not done for reasons of audio fidelity, but for visual aesthetics. The intention was to produce a phonograph that looked less like a piece of machinery and more like a piece of furniture. These internal horn machines, trademarked with the name Victrola, were first marketed to the public in August of that year and were an immediate hit. Soon an extensive line of Victrolas was marketed, ranging from small tabletop models selling for $15, through many sizes and designs of cabinets intended to go with the decor of middle-class homes in the $100 to $250 range, up to $600 Chippendale and Queen Anne-style cabinets of fine wood with gold trim designed to look at home in elegant mansions. Victrolas became by far the most popular brand of home phonograph, and sold in great numbers until the end of the 1920s. RCA Victor continued to market phonographs with the "Victrola" name until the early 1970s.

In 1925, Victor switched from the old acoustical or mechanical method of recording sound to the new microphone based electrical system developed by Western Electric. Victor called their version of the improved fidelity recording process "Orthophonic", and sold a line of new designs of phonographs to play these improved records, called "Orthophonic Victrolas". The large top-of- the-line "Credenza" models of Orthophonic Victrolas had a 1.8m long horn coiled inside the cabinet, and are often considered the high point of the development of the commercial wind-up phonograph, offering audio fidelity seldom matched by most home electric phonographs until some 30 years later. They were introduced on "Victor Day", November 2, 1925.

An additional historical note must be added here as it refers specifically to this line. As already mentioned, RCA Victor Co. manufactured and exported the Victrola and also published and released high-quality 78RPMs under the title "His Master's Voice". Singers under contract to RCA Victor - Carlos Gardel, for example - had no qualms including the name "Victrola" in their lyrics because it was "part of the family". However, singers under contract to competing publishers were not about to give gratuitous advertising to their competitors by mentioning the trademarked name. So, with this in mind, in their recordings of A Media Luz, they changed the line "una Victrola que llora" (a Victrola that cries) to "una fonola que llora" (a phonograph that cries). It is starting to hit me that cut-throat behaviour in the music industry is not as recent as I may well wish to imagine it.

Previous Next