Columbia Records mini history

by CD Pinkerton
bobsboots.com





















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.