By the turn of the 20th
century, The Washington, DC
(District of Columbia) based record company known as "Columbia" had
moved to New York City, and had established itself as one of the top
manufacturers of cylinder
recordings and acoustically recorded wax discs. In 1912,
Columbia halted manufacture of new cylinder records, and began
manufacturing all of its new acoustically recorded releases on 78
RPM discs. By 1924
Western Electric had perfected their patented process of recording
music
via an electrical process. Columbia was one of the first to license the
new recording process, and in early 1925 released its
first electrical process recording. It dubbed the process "Viva-tonal",
and it became the cutting edge of recording technology of the day. The
records were released as heavy black discs made from a shellac
compound, and were very fragile. The
very first Viva-tonal release was by a 30 year old
pianist named
Art Gillham, who was popularly known as "The Whispering Pianist." Columbia also continued to use its well established logo called "The Magic Notes" which was nothing more than a pair of sixteenth notes in a circle. In 2008, there was a bootleg CD set released entitled If Your Memory Serves You Well. The discs in that release were issued with a silk screen of this early Columbia label. As a matter of fact, the photo supplied to the boot manufacturer was the actual label from the Whispering Pianist... the very first Viva-tonal release. You can view that actual label here. |