Recorded August 13, 1912

In the 1890s, Eldridge Reeves Johnson owned a small machine shop in Camden, New Jersey, when a customer brought in a Berliner phonograph. Unlike Edison talking machines, Berliner Gramophone Company used disc records instead of cylinders. The sound quality was bad and Johnson spent the next 6 years improving the sound and volume capacity. In 1901 Johnson’s Consolidated Talking Machine Company merged with Berliner’s Berliner Gramophone Company to form the Victor Talking Machine Company.

English painter Francis Barraud had a brother, Mark who passed away. When Mark Barraud died Francis inherited his brother fox terrier Nipper along with a cylinder phonograph and a number of recordings of Mark’s voice. Nipper took particular interest in the recorded voice of his late master emanating from the trumpet of the inherited Edison-Bell cylinder phonograph. Barraud committed the scene to canvas “Dog looking at and listening to a Phonograph.”

“Dog looking at and listening to a Phonograph.”
by Francis Barraud

Barraud sold it to Berliner as a trademark and modified it to show one of their disc machines. Barraud painted over the Edison machine and added a new Berliner brass sound horn. The new image was called “His Master’s Voice.”

Barraud’s modified painting “His Master’s Voice”

Victor recording studios used Victor staff conductor Walter B Rogers directing Victor’s own “house” orchestras, the Victor Orchestra for popular works and the Victor Concert Orchestra for “classical” music starting in 1907.

On August 13, 1912 the Victor Concert Orchestra was in the Victor Recording studios in Camden, New Jersey to record MARCHE ROMAINE by Charles Gounoud.

Marche Romaine composed by Charles Gounoud performed by the Victor Concert Orchestra recorded August 13, 1912

Thanks to the incredible collection at University of California Santa Barbara Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings :http://victor.library.ucsb.edu/index.php

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