Thursday, November 29, 2012

The first records with labels. Johnson's "Improved Gram- O - Phone" record of 1900




I have talked here before about the early Berliner Gramophone records and the efforts of his assistant Eldridge R. Johnson to take over after the Berliner Gramophone Company was forced out of business. I will write more in the future about some of the early record labels that would come out in the first five years of the 20th century. But today I wanted to show you what the very first records with a label looked like.

 These were the first attempt by Johnson to survive after Berliner's end. The company that Johnson first came up with was called the "Consolidated Gramophone Company". It was based in Philadelphia. Today there are precious few examples of that first type of label. But it stands as the first of it's kind.