The Berliner Gramophone Company: Personal Recollections of Oliver Berliner
Part one of a two-part article
I've been asked to say a few words about my grandfather
(Emile) and father’s (Edgar) Berliner Gramophone
Company of Canada, on the assumption ... via family
ties ... that I'd know something about it. Sadly, I was born
the same year that (1) Emile Berliner died, (2) RCA bought
Victor, (3) my father resigned the Victor Company of
Canada presidency, and (4) the stock market crashed.
Today, I find myself with many questions I never got
around to asking my father. But a great deal of Company
history can be found in dear Ed Moogk’s book, Roll Back
The Years which I'm sure all CAPS members have. What I
can do is add a few stories that didn't make the history
books, things my father told me as he bounced me on his
knee, as it were.
Company Location
But first, Grandpa chose Montreal over Toronto because it
was most convenient for him, and not necessarily best for
the business. It was comparatively easy in those days to take
a train from Philadelphia to Manhattan and on upstate to
Montreal. In late 1899, he established an office and show-
room at 2315 St. Catherine Street and shipped presses to the
Bell Canada plant, where the first Canadian pressings were
to be made (starting January 2 1900). Having sold his
microphone to Alexander Graham Bell, he obviously
enjoyed a "connection" with the Bell people, and thus was
able to do things with them that would be unheard of
nowadays.
Although he resided in Washington, my grandfather
had established his recording studio in Philly, because that
was the town where Mr. Max Levy, the inventor of photo-
engraving, resided and you'll recall that he'd dubbed the
process, "etching the human voice." (He had dreamed that,
some day, people would create their wills via records
of their voices, but that format has yet to catch on.) The photo (on
p. 4) shows the Company office. Curiously, some advertisements listed the office at 2316, which would have been
across the street. Could this have been a printer's error, just
like the ad that listed The Berliner Graphophone
Company?
Depiction of Nipper
You'll observe the HMV lithograph displayed prominently in
the window, something I'd like to comment on. Stories persist that artist Francis Barraud depicted Nipper listening to
late brother Mark's voice on an Edison-Bell phonograph
while both dog and machine were sitting atop Mark's coffin.
(Ed. note: See Angels, Nipper and Immortality, Antique
Phonograph News, March - April 1992.) Adherents to this
ridiculous theory justify it by contending that coffins were
often used in artwork of the period. Well, let me present a
few facts: first, Mark never owned a phonograph (he was
too poor), and there was no reason to put one on his coffin.
Furthermore, he never recorded his voice. Second, Nipper
was painted a dozen years after Mark's death and about five
years after the dog's own demise.
Was Nipper ever encountered listening to his master’s
(recorded) voice? Certainly not. In reality, the dog would sit,
tilt his head, and cock one ear whenever something
intrigued or puzzled him. Photographer Philip Barraud captured Nipper on film in this pose and it is widely believed
that Francis copied one of these photos rather than painting
him from memory; this accounts for the exquisite detail of
Nipper on canvas. (Embarrassed by questions about this,
Francis tried to destroy all photos of Nipper.) If you've ever
seen the original HMV painting, which I'm certain none of
the coffin theorists have, you'd recognise that the phonograph was painted using Francis and Philip's own machine
as a model; the dog was based on a photograph (refer to
"The Story of Nipper...") and the base was from Francis’
imagination and was painted just wide enough for the
widths of the two objects depicted upon it... but not for a
body supposedly beneath it.
With all these facts in mind, how could anyone sup-
port the coffin theory? One further tidbit: do you think the
Gramophone Company would have bought the painting if
anyone thought it depicted their machine and a dog on a
coffin? Finally, Francis made up the phrase, "his master’s
voice" to apply to the scene he'd created — out of thin air —
and not because it had ever actually occurred; just as he
coined the phrase "What will master say?" in connection
with his Nipper drawings for Reid's Stout advertisements.
Growth of the Company
My father was 14 years old when they started pressing
records in Canada (2 million in 1900!). During his college
years, he worked summers at the company but he didn't join
full-time until 1909. Trained at MIT as a mechanical engineer, he never got to put those skills to work. In 1910 he
married a lady name Millie; they divorced nearly two
decades later and Millie went on to marry Ben Gardner,
who was company treasurer but later became president (of
RCA Victor) when my father left in 1930. (He'd quit in 1929
because of unhappiness with the RCA people, but stayed
until 1930 at the urgent request of David Sarnoff.)
The company was a proprietorship of grandpas, who
installed Emanuel Blout as general manager so that grandpa
could move freely between the States and the Canadian
operations. Incorporating the business in 1904, grandpa
omitted himself and listed his eldest son, Herbert, along
with Emanuel Blout as one of the five incorporators. The
corporation acquired rights to Victor recordings which, of
course, the prior entity had also done.
In 1906 the company erected its own factory and discontinued
pressing records at Bell. There appears to have
been a number of irregular and unexplained job changes. At
the time of incorporation Mr. Blout was elected president. I
don’t think my father or Herbert had a corporate title and in
1909, Mr. Blout and my father, both purportedly directors
(and with my dad now listed as vice-president) were in
effect, replaced.
Emile Berliner at last assumed the presidency of his own company, Mr. Blout returned to the States,
Herbert was appointed vice-president/general
manager, and
my dad,
secretary-treasurer.
Simultaneously, the firm
changed its name to the Berliner Gramophone Company
Ltd. Though grandpa now had the presiding title, he left
the business in Herbert's hands, which later proved to have
been a mistake.
The Berliner Gramophone Company: Personal Recollections of Oliver Berliner
Part two of a two-part article
In 1918 Herbert Berliner initiated a conflict of interest by
forming the Compo Company. It’s been said that he did
this because he was sorry that the Berliner Company was
neglecting Canadian artists in favour of importing Victor
masters. But the fact remains that Compo directed most of
its attention to American artists and recorded many of them
where they resided, in the States. Curiously, Herbert had
already established a series for Canadian artists at the Berliner
Company so there seems to have been no justification for
forming Compo to specialize in them...and of course,
Compo actually never did.
(Apparently, his real interest was
in producing his own recordings rather than importing
Victor's masters, and he had no real desire to emphasize
Canadian artists.) By 1921, grandpa had had enough. He dismissed Herbert and Edgar was promoted to that position.
A year later my father acquired control of the company.
Grandpa retired.
I don't know what,if anything, my dad paid
for purchase of the business but he told me that he was not
included in his father’s bequests inasmuch as he'd already
acquired his father’s business.
Herbert too was left out of the
will, but obviously for a different reason. (When Milton
Rackmill founded Decca Records in 1934, Compo became
their Canada licensee and increased its importation of
American product.) Emile’s daughters, Louise and Alice,
stayed in touch with Herbert, but no one else in the family
did. Though he'd married in Canada and produced a daughter, she was not his only offspring. Cathy Berliner had been
born out of wedlock in Washington during Herbert's "mis-
spent youth".
Making and Shipping Gramophones in Canada
Trade-mark model
Berliner gramophones had been produced
in Camden, New Jersey, but were assembled in Canada
With the erection
of the first factory and its annex, many
gramophones were now made in Canada, mainly the cabinets. My father told me that one batch of motors received
from Victor, each bearing an inspector's stamp, didn't work.
Examination revealed that the gears didn't mesh. Another
hazard lay in the shipping process, which was by rail to the
various distribution
warehouses. Because there’s never been a freight
classification for unheard- of devices such as gramophones, the railroads gleefully classified these products in the
catchall category... explosives... which paid the highest
freight rate. Eventually, my dad was able to persuade the carriers to put the products in the musical instruments category
and shipping cost plummeted.
Oliver Berliner views a colour painting made from a circa 1915 photograph of his grandfather, Emile Berliner, examining a disc record,
Studio Victor, Montreal, 2009
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A funny occurrence took place when the Company
hired as night watchman one Moses Moldowsky who'd virtually just gotten off the boat from Poland and whose English
was... minimal. My father had given instructions that the
watchman was to telephone him personally at home at any
time of the night when there was an emergency. One night a
call came. "It’s coming immense, Mr. Berliner, it's coming
immense," cried Moldowsky. With visions of the St. Lawrence
River overrunning its banks, my dad called the police, then
rushed down to the plant only to discover that there'd been a
burglary, and what the watchman was saying with heavily
accented and halting English was, "Is coming in mens."
Amalgamation with Victor and RCA
As is well known, my father felt that an amalgamation with
Victor was the best course for both companies. In 1924 he
exchanged Berliner Gramophone shares for Victor's and
became president of the "new" Victor Talking Machine
Company of Canada Ltd. About this time he discovered that
his secretary, who'd also been Herbert’s, had been sending
copies of his correspondence to Herbert. The woman was
fired and immediately went to work at Compo.
Her replacement, a shy, Russian-born with a German name, Fannie
Heillig, replaced her. In 1928 Fannie married the boss and
went on to give birth to me. Interestingly, mother always
thought she'd become a Canadian citizen but a dozen years
later, she learned that she'd always been a naturalized
American, though shed resided in Canada since the turn of
the century, and had told everyone that shed become a
Canadian.
In 1929, RCA, having been required by government to be
spun off from its owners Ge and Westinghouse, needed manufacturing and distribution facilities for its line of radios.
Eldridge Johnson had retired from the Victor presidency and
sold his shares to Seligman and Company two years before.
Prior to his departure, Mr. Johnson would hold directors
meetings on his yacht, the Caroline, which sailed the
Delaware River with a crew of 13. My father attended these
meetings and remembered that one day after lunch in the
salon the steward passed cigars. Before anyone could light up,
Mr. Johnson had the men put away the cigars
for later because he wanted to continue the meeting on deck where an
"outdoor" cigar would be more appropriate. The cheaper
outdoor havanas were Corona Coronas, selling then for a
princely dollar apiece! (Mr. Johnson could afford any cigar.
One year his extra dividends had been over a million dollars
from the world’s greatest record company that was earning
more money than it knew what to do with.) My father was
required to sell his Victor shares to RCA and his cheque for a
million u.s. dollars was the largest deposit made by an individual at Washington's Riggs National Bank.
And so my father progressed to his third presidency...of
all three manifestations of the original Berliner Gramophone
Company...that of RCA Victor Company of Canada. With
the Company, RCA acquired ownership of the world’s most
famous trade-mark. Eventually, World War II, RCA’s bad
planning and mismanagement would see the fall of Victor
from its domination of the world’s recorded music industry
to the point where it’s lucky to be rated today as No.
5 spot and where Coca-Cola has overtaken "HMV" as the world’s
most famous trade-mark. Had my father stayed until age 65
instead of retiring at 45, things might have turned out differently...in Canada, at least.
Oliver Berliner is the only grandchild of Emile to
enter the recording or the audio products business.
After spending a year in England shortly before
World War 11, he and his family returned briefly to Montreal,
then moved to California where Oliver's father, Edgar, died
in 1955 at age 69. That same year Oliver began producing
records for his own label and others, simultaneously entering
the music publishing business which continues today. In
1966 he started a distributorship of broadcast studio equipment, selling the firm 18 years later. Simultaneously, for a
decade he designed and manufactured his own brand of
industrial audio and video products. Today he limits his
gainful activities to music publishing. He's chairman
of theHollywood Sapphire Group of audio engineers and is a
member of the creative commission of the Hollywood
Entertainment Museum and is expected to head its historical
sound recording section when it opens in 1995. He's author
of twenty-dozen lectures, speeches and published articles on
music, audio and video, but today confines such writing to
stories about his grandfather and the history of the record
business. Oliver is a member of CAPS.
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