1898 – 1931
His Master's Voice
Victor's opposite number, and the world's recording expedition
The Gramophone Company Limited · Hayes, Middlesex
The house
The Gramophone Company was set up in London in 1898 to sell Berliner's discs in Europe, and it became the most widely travelled record company of the era. Fred Gaisberg and his fellow engineers took portable recording gear to Madrid, Milan, Moscow, Cairo, Calcutta, Shanghai and Tokyo, cutting local repertoire for local catalogues decades before anyone used the phrase world music.
The Barraud painting was bought by the company in 1899, and from 1909 the words His Master's Voice appeared on the label itself. Hayes, in Middlesex, held the pressing plant, the cabinet works and eventually the studios.
The Gramophone Company and Columbia Graphophone merged in 1931 to form Electric and Musical Industries — EMI — which is why the crimson HMV label and the magenta Columbia one ended up in the same building.
What it sounds like
Often a larger and more reverberant space than the American houses used, and a much wider range of repertoire: military bands, music hall, opera, and the earliest commercial recordings made in dozens of countries.
On the shelf
Pulling sleeves…