music

The main competitors in the world record market, The Gramophone Company, and the Columbia Graphophone Company, originally hesitated to enter the Australian market and it took several years before they established record pressing plants in Australia. Whereas the Columbia Graphophone also ran a recording studio from the beginning, the Gramophone Company could not bring itself to operate recording facilities in Australia in order to produce local acts. The Great Depression forced the rivals to amalgamate into EMI also in Australia in 1931. The Gramophone Company The 1898 established British major record company, the Gramophone Company, sent an agent and 25,000 recordings as well as a large number of gramophones to Australia in February 1900 to establish a distribution branch under the direct control of the London parent company. Since the sales figures of the first two years in business did not meet the expectations, the retail business was closed down and sold with the remaining stock to the independent Sydney record retailer Hoffnung & Co. Ltd. in 1905. After World War I, the Australian government enforced a protective economic policy including high tariff barriers and trade restrictions. Thus, when the distribution agreement with Hoffnung & Co. Ltd. expired in 1925, the Gramophone Co. management decided to take the record business again into its own hands and established a gramophone and record plant in Sydney with a capacity of 150,000 records monthly. To cover the whole pacific market two companies were formed. An Australian firm with a production site in Sydney and a distribution branch for New Zealand held by the new Australian company. In mid of 1925, a general manager of the new Australian and New Zealand branches, William Manson, was sent to Sydney and on January 18, 1926, he could ceremonially open the new factory, which immediately started to press the “His Master’s Voice records and the budget ‘Zonophone’ label recordings. The firm’s internal correspondence reveals that the business ran well. The orders could only be met by additional shifts and supplementary shipping from London. Due to a rapidly growing population, the demand for recordings in Australia and New Zealand was far from saturated – in contrast to the stagnating European and U.S. markets. Source: musicbusinessresearch.wordpress.com/2011/05/16/the-early-...

See earlier photo of Frances Alda at:


She recorded for Victor in 1924 (for example, www.youtube.com/watch?v=69j87i828PY which shows lots of photos from LoC.
One [ www.loc.gov/item/2006684395/ ]
shows a similar microphone and describes it as a radio microphone.

See NYT of Jan 16, 1925
timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1925/01/16/10163339...
"Frances Alda of the Metropolitan Opera Company appeared for the first time in her career before the microphone last night, being heard in a group of songs through Station WEAF by an audience estimated as between six and seven millions. The recital was broadcast from the studio at 195 Broadway and relayed by telephone lines through seven other radio stations."

This was the second Victor radio program of a series that began with the Jan 1, 1925 program by Bori and McCormack. See

Brox Sisters www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q2410061 One of the sisters is holding a variation of the Ritz Paris bellhop teddy bear. www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/cute-ritz-paris-teddy-bear...

I was just about to ask about the bear. Thanks, Richard! Fantastic photograph.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brox_Sisters "The Brox Sisters were an American trio of singing sisters, enjoying their greatest popularity in the 1920s and early 1930s." The Wikipedia entry uses this photo and names them as Patricia, Bobbe, Lorayne (left to right). See also syncopatedtimes.com/the-brox-sisters/ "They rose to fame in the Music Box Revue which played at the New York Theatre from 1921 to 1924. In 1925 and 1926 the sisters performed on Broadway in the musical comedy “Cocoanuts” with the Marx Brothers."

The Washington Times. April 29, 1924, Page 10, column 3 chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1924-04-29/ed-... reported that the Brox Sisters were to be among the performers "when station WJZ broadcasts the program of the annual banquet of the Talking Machine and Radio Men’s Association from the grand ballroom of the Hotel Pennsylvania." April 1924 appears, from a Victrola ad in the Evening Star. April 24, 1924, Page 14, bottom left chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1924-04-24/ed-... to have been the month when the first record on the Victor label by the Brox Sisters was released. Bain's arrangement with Victor probably led to the photo shoot. Aside: An amusing video of the trio performing "Falling in Love Again" (as Marlene Dietrich) in 1931 is at www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3u-WR3O_Wo

Brox sisters discography (1921-1930): adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.php/mastertalent/detail/113019...