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The
invention of the long playing record gave an enormous boost to what
later would be called "the music industry". Existing magazines started
to flourish and new magazines - like High Fidelity - were launched because
of the proliferation of the new, black, vinyl disc. Although
in the first years many music lovers kept listening to 78 RPM shellac
discs, the LP (which was developped by Columbia, USA, and was presented
for the first time in 1948) was quickly conquering the world. Also catalogs
started to be published for the convenience of the growing number of
consumers. In the US, Schwann Long Playing Record Catalog, appeared
for the first time in 1948, typed by William Joseph But
what if you wanted an opinion on a specific record or wanted to know
what outstanding recordings were available of a given work? Well, then
you would have to search the magazines that reviewed the recordings
and would publish complete discographies. Making a list of editions,
page numbers and writing down a few sentences would be quite some work.
Moreover one would have to rely on the availability of reviews in the
specialized magazines. Roland Gelatt of High Fidelity Magazine did exactly
that. He put the reviews of the 1955 editions in a Record Annual. |
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Various
guides and catalogs with listings and comments had already been publishd
before. Irving Kolodin had published The New Guide To Recorded Music.
The 1950 edition listed 78 RPM shellac discs and the first LP records.
DeMotte's guide was really unique in the sense that it listed some 7000
individual records. It was not a duplication of Schwann, The Longplayer,
or The Gramophone catalogs. The Long Playing Record Guide compiled by Warren DeMotte listed the available recordings of compositions of practically each and every composer and Demotte evaluated the interpretations of the musicians and in many cases mentioned the technical quality of the discs. The reason for the publication is obvious. Read the first sentences of the introduction that Warren De Motte wrote to his THE LONG PLAYING RECORD GUIDE: "Since the advent, in 1948, of the long playing phonograph record, the record collector has been faced by an embarrassment of riches. Due to the use of the tape recorder and the LP process, resulting in the reasonably low recording costs, dozens of record companies have come into existence, and many of them issue records at an amazing rate. In only a few years a thick catalogue of recordings has been built up, with countless duplications that manage to confuse the collector, the dealer, and the recording companies alike." At the time "The Long Playing Record Guide" served thousands and thousands of music lovers in making their decisions on what recorded performance on LP to buy, or it would at least tell them about the qualities of the records they already had on the shelf.
Many record collectors and music listeners have come across this guide and have read the many evaluations and criticisms written by DeMotte. What makes "The Long Playing Record Guide" so interesting, is that DeMotte - despite of omitting recordings of works by Paganini and Granados for example - assesses the quality of each recording and compresses his opinion in a single phrase (or sometimes two) and he marks the best available performance with an arrow. Some people will argue that one cannot do justice to the efforts of musicians, producers, and recording engineers, by allotting just a few words to their product and add a discriminating arrow to the product of a fellow musician who would have given a better performance. But every time one reads DeMotte's judgement on a recording owned, one cannot doubt his expertise and above all his sincerity, even if there are most certainly differences of opinion. The
interesting aspect of DeMotte's painstaking exercise is that the result
is equally valuable today as it was in 1955, the year in which the first
edition was published. On my pages
(especially on The
Long Playing Record Guide by Warren DeMotte In the early nineteen sixties Warren DeMotte compiled "The LP/Stereo Record Guide & Tape Review: Formerly The Long Playing Record Guide". The new guide was published by Argyle Publishing Corp., in 1962. Again Leopold Stokowski wrote the preface. This guide is also an invaluable reference book for the serious classical record and tape collector. It lists the first stereo recordings from the first years of any original American disc and the the available American issues that are the equivalent of Decca SXL, His Master's Voice ASD, British Columbia SAX, English RCA SB, LSC, SR, etc. And again it is a magnificent reference guide. Rudolf A. Bruil - December 1998. |
Schwann
and printed it using a stencil machine in a high enough number of copies
to satisfy the first clients who would buy the new LP records in his
shop. In 1951, The Longplayer, a Complete Catalog of Classical Longplay
Records, and some time later, Jazz 'n Pops, were published and were
competing with Schwann's classical listings and the jazz section. The
Long Player and Jazz 'n Pops only lasted until 1959 and disappeared
from the scene. In Great Brittain it was The Gramophone Long Playing
Record Catalogue, issued by the magazine that was established in 1925,
was published on a regular basis and remained the world's reference
catalog for classical music, one could say.
By
1955 Warren DeMotte finished compiling "The Long Playing Record Guide"
and he asked Leopold Stokowski to write a preface. Stokowski, who had
always been interested in making recordings and in the technical aspects
of the gramophone record, saw the uniqueness of DeMotte's project. He
agreed. However he did not know DeMotte before; and they never met afterwards.
Nor
was it based on Roland Gelatt's High Fidelity Record Annual which saw
its first edition in July of 1955 and contained reviews which had appeared
in High Fidelity Magazine in 1953, 1954 and a few reviews from the early
1955 issues.
THE REMINGTON SITE
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