An uncredited Victor studio orchestra
Vocals: Della Baker, Olive Kline, Lucy Isabelle Marsh, Helen Clark (sop); Elsie Baker (cont); Richard Crooks, Lambert Murphy (ten); Royal Dadmun, Clifford Cairns (bar); with
Rosario Bourdon (director)

Victor 35756 (17 & 16 April 1925 respectively)
HMV C.1205 (issued June 1925; the version in this video)

It's dire, dated and distorted; but it's an interesting curiosity. Victor issued a number of 12-inch "Gems from . . ." records using the Victor Light Opera Company (see above) and an uncredited studio orchestra. The first Victor electrical recording which provided a viable master was 26 February 1925. These recordings were made a mere seven weeks later in April 1925.

By June 1925, a metal copy had been shipped across the Atlantic to HMV at Hayes in Middlesex, further metal negatives/positives taken, shellacs stamped and given HMV branded labels; and the whole catalogued in the HMV MID-JUNE LIST for 1925. This record was priced at 4/6 (four shillings and six pence which is 22.5 pence in a straight conversion); the average wage was around £4 at the time. These were pricey products.

We had someone's cast-off copy of this in my childhood (it was over 25 years old by then). The heavyweight HMV sound-box and steel needle distorted horrendously at just the same musical points as this transcription does on this copy (were Victor's engineers still learning the constraints of the electric system - sopranos were challenging). As it had an HMV label, I assumed it was an English ensemble, probably recorded in Middlesex, producing this dated music; the diction and enunciation sounded so typically so. It's only relatively recently that I discovered, to my amazement, that it's a group of Americans in Camden, New Jersey - nearer Middlesex County, NJ, than Middlesex, England!

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