Information/Write-up
Few men accomplished more than Emile Berliner (1851-1929) in the field of recorded sound. Berliner invented the phonograph, the microphone and the flat disc and founded no less than three major record companies: EMI, Deutsche Grammophon, and Victor. The Berliner Gramophone Co. was Canada’s first record company. Emile Berliner started making records in Montreal in 1900. The recording business which at first sold a few thousands discs went on in a short time to sell millions. This disc features major recordings of the Canadian Berliner and RCA Victor and the booklet includes the history of the company, the evolution of sound technologies and a social history of the milieu in which the company operated.
Page 45
A word from the producer
Why choose the Berliner - RCA Victor Company to chronicle the development of the record industry in Canada? Because Berliner was the earliest Canadian record company, pressing its first records in Montreal in 1900. Emile Berliner invented the modern phonograph, lateral cut disc records, the 78-rpm and the microphone. He came to Canada to protect his patents, and with his sons, Herbert and Edgar, he is the father of sound recording in Canada and Quebec. And son Herbert was beyond a doubt the greatest producer of Canadian records. From the start he made recordings of Canadian artists, both French- and English-speaking. RCA Victor was the most influential Canadian label from the 1930s up to the 1960s. The history of Canadian and Quebec popular music — of divas, of crooners, of singing cowboys, of fiddlers, of jazz musicians and rock and roll pioneers — is closely linked to the history of this record company. And it’s a fascinating history, punctuated by technological discoveries, mergers, crises and new start-ups, all of it outlined below. To this we have added capsule biographies of the company’s more prominent artists and included their seminal recordings.
In 2008, the Emile Berliner Museum of Montreal presented the exhibit Montreal, Cradle of the Recording Industry. Gala now releases this recording to commemorate the exhibit and complete its research on the history of sound recording in Canada. Several important pages of the history of the industry were written in Montreal and, in particular, the St-Henri district. It is here, in fact, in the block bordered by Lacasse, St-Jacques and Lenoir streets that three important companies prospered on Canadian soil. First came the Berliner Gramophone Company of Canada, followed by the Victor Talking Machine Company, and later the RCA Victor.
Jean-Pierre Sévigny
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Page 46-47
WHERE ART AND SCIENCE MEET
In few if any other fields of entertainment do art and science so combine as in the recording of music. Into the production of a musical work that you enjoy on a record are blended the talent of the artist, the ability of the recording engineer, the skill of the technicians. Here in our Montreal studio is shown the actual recording of a current hit tune by Alys Robi.
Upon the construction of the studio itself a great deal of the quality of the sound depends. Sound waves are reflected by the rounded wooden surfaces instead of being absorbed as in the old type draped studios, giving a “live” effect. This studio is unique as it is the only one that has gone all the way in this new scientific design.
Numbers to be recorded are selected by A.H. Joseph to fit the talents of the artist. A special arrangement is written if necessary. Ray T. Evans, A.H. Joseph and Lucio Agostini discuss the arrangement before rehearsal.
Following a further conference, the Conductor checks over each part of the orchestra in turn. Earphones tell him exactly how the music will sound through the microphone. Here he is checking the woodwind section, carefully following the score at the same time. Finally he is satisfied, everything is set to go.
Alys, accompanied by the orchestra, runs over the number while I. DeMotte and A.H. Joseph “listen in” in the control room following the score throughout. If the music or the performers make which they discuss with the artist and orchestra leader. A trial recording is made exactly as the music is written and then played back to artists and recording personnel.
Two buzzer signals bring the orchestra into playing position. These are more and they are ready for the down-beat. The light flashes in the studio, the orchestra strikes up, and the recording which will last about three minutes has begun. Alys says “Symphony.”
Meanwhile in the control room recording engineer DeMotte listens, carefully manipulating the controls, now bringing out little things — one note in the singer’s lower register, now modulating some of the orchestra’s highs.
The recording finished everyone is anxious to see just how it sounds. Alys listens carefully to the playback of her voice. Later a second recording will be made just in case.
Depth and width of grooves have been carefully adjusted prior to recording to ensure proper needle fit. The new recording is carefully scrutinized through the microscope by a technician to see that it has “taken” properly in the grooves.
Both “art and science”, the sound recording process described in RCA publication, 1946
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Page 48-49
His Master’s Voice
It was called Berliner of Montreal, Berliner Gram-O-Phone, His Master’s Voice, Victor Talking Machine of Canada, RCA Victor, Bluebird, RCA, BMG Musique Sony-BMG Music and, since 2008, Sony Music Entertainment. With its acquisitions and mergers, it is the only company with an uninterrupted presence in Canada lasting more than a century.
Berliner of Montreal
Emil Berliner was born in Hanover, Germany, on May 20, 1851, to a large family, and showed signs of inventiveness at a very young age. After emigrating to the United States in 1870 he held a number of small jobs before settling in Washington, D.C. Emile (he added an e to his given name) was fascinated by the telegraph and by electricity. In Philadelphia, Alexander Graham Bell had just presented his “telephone,” a basic apparatus capable of transmitting a week vocal signal over a short distance. Berliner developed a form of microphone that amplified the voice, and a transformer that increased tenfold the power of the signal, making it possible to send it over greater distances. In 1878 he sold his patent to Bell for what was then a substantial sum, and spent five years working for him. With his brother Joseph he opened the Telephon Fabrik Berliner in Hanover, which manufactured telephone sets. But already Emile Berliner was taking an interest in another invention, the “talking machine” introduced by Thomas Edison in 1878. Called the “phonograph” or the “gramophone,” this rudimentary device recorded sounds on a brass cylinder. The results were weak and tinny. The reproducing stylus quickly caused the recording to deteriorate, and mass production was not possible. Berliner saw right away that a flat disc would be a support much easier to produce industrially. But the development of the technique, the choice of materials and the search for financing would take a dozen years. After creating various prototypes, Berliner presented his first commercial model in 1893. One major obstacle: users had to keep the drive mechanism going at a constant speed by means of a crank! In 1896 he got in touch with Eldridge Johnson, a machinist from Camden, New Jersey, who designed a clockwork spring-wound motor that made it possible to play a record for three minutes before the spring had to be reset with a crank. The gramophone was born. Berliner went into partnership with Johnson.
To protect his invention, Berliner filed for patents in a number of countries, including Canada, which granted him one on February 24, 1897. That patent would be valid only if a certain production level was reached in Canada within five years. Emile Berliner knew nothing of Canada or its culture. Good friends of his at Bell suggested Montreal, which at the time was Canada’s metropolis and where Northern Electric, a Bell subsidiary, owned an important factory at 367 and 371 Aqueduc St. (today Lucien-L’Allier St.). Berliner rented a small space, installed a few presses in the fall of 1899 and signed an agreement with a local cabinetmaker for the production of the cabinets. In January 1900, under the name Berliner of Montreal, he introduced to the market the first records pressed in Canada. Also, he opened a retail outlet at 2315-16 Sainte-Catherine St. West to sell records and playback machines.
These first records were about fifteen centimeters in diameter and were cut on just one side. They revolved at a nominal speed of 78 revolutions per minute (rpm), and the material used also went into the manufacture of telephones. Playback was done by means of a metal needle, and the weight of the stylus would soon cause damage to the records. Recording took place through a method known as “acoustic.” Channeled through a horn, the sound caused a diaphragm to vibrate; attached to the diaphragm was a metal stylus that left an impression on a wax matrix. Electroplating produced a metal negative that could be used to process about 300 discs before it deteriorated beyond use and a new recording had to be made. Towards the end of 1902, Johnson and Berliner had the idea of creating, based on the first “negative,” a positive molded in copper that could be used to produce as many negatives as necessary. A new material also allowed for a substantial reduction in surface noise.
During the early years, Berliner of Montreal pressed only recordings that came from the U.S., France and England, where the Berliner companies were already well established. Work at the Montreal location was done by hand. Emile Berliner was above all an inventor. Record production interested him hardly at all, and when in the fall of 1902 his friend Eldridge Johnson founded the Victor Talking Machine Company, he stopped producing records in the U.S. and became a shareholder in the new firm. Victor gave the pressing contract for all his Canadian production to Berliner’s plant in Montreal, which suddenly found it needed to expand. It moved to 201 Fortification Lane, to premises that had been used as a warehouse.
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Page 50-51
Herbert Samuel Berliner
Eclectic and groundbreaking in spirit, Emile Berliner had already turned his attention to aviation (he designed one of the earliest helicopter models) and acoustics (he invented tiles to reduce reverberation in concert halls). He would also lead a large-scale national campaign for the pasteurization of milk, aimed at reducing infant mortality rate. He owned shares in Victor Talking Machine, the Gramophone Company in London, the Compagnie française du gramophone and in Deutsche Grammophon, which he had founded in 1898 with his brother Joseph. He came rarely to Montreal, and left day-to-day administration to Emanuel Blout and his eldest son, Herbert Samuel Berliner.
Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the greater Boston area, on September 13, 1882, Herbert began taking an interest in sound recording at an early age. As a teenager he studied in Germany and specialized with his uncle Joseph at Deutsche Grammophon. In 1901 he joined the Montreal concern. Highly gifted but less eclectic than his father, Herbert Berliner would devote his whole life to sound recording. In the fall of 1903 he rented space at 138-A Peel St., where he set up a small recording studio. He recruited Robert Price, the manager of the Berliner retail outlet on Sainte-Catherine St., to make recordings of English-language songs most in fashion. Very sensitive to the French-language market, he also called on local artists to record songs that were in vogue at the time. Henri Cartal, Hector Pellerin, Victor Occelier, Alfred Fertinel and René Harmant were French artists who had been performing in Quebec for a number of years. Although little is known about Joseph Perrault and E. Loiseau, their accent leaves no doubt that they were Quebecers. The year 1904 saw the addition, on the English-language side, of Beckie Kellert, Courtice Brawn and Bernard Sullivan and, among French-language artists, Auguste Aramini, Léo Méry and above all Joseph Saucier, a baritone who had acquired a certain following in Canada.
It seems that Victor considered Canada its private preserve, and the company took a dim view of the “competition” generated by the eldest son of one of its major shareholders! The intervention of Emile Berliner to stop local production marked the beginning of tensions between father and son that would grow more pronounced over the years.
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Page 52-53
In 1906 Emile Berliner sold his shares in Victor and turned Berliner Gram-O-Phone over to his son Edgar Maurice and to Emanuel Blout. The two new owners built a factory at the corner of Lenoir and St-Antoine streets, but bad economic conditions forced them to hand the company back to Emile Berliner in 1909. Herbert became vice-president of the company once again, which was renamed Berliner Gramophone, with his brother Edgar serving as secretary-treasurer. Herbert very efficiently set up the vast His Master’s Voice distribution network across Canada and hired highly competent people for the principal sectors.
A budding industry
In 1910, commercial sound recording was just over twenty years old. It had been a device for the office and a curiosity, but it found its true vocation with music. There was competition between two technologies: the cylinder, used above all by Edison and Columbia, and the record, by Emile Berliner. The record’s ease of duplication gave it a clear industrial advantage over the cylinder, which little by little lost ground until it finally disappeared around 1915. In 1901, seventeen-centimeter Berliner records sold for fifty cents each, and 25-centimeter records for a dollar, more or less the equivalent of a day’s salary for most people at that time. The price of playback machines ranged from $40 to $200. Sound recording in other words was not yet a popular product, but sales were quickly picking up. In 1902 the Berliner companies sold more than two million records worldwide. At Victor, record sales climbed from $579,000 in 1902 to $1,389,000 in 1905. In Canada, Berliner and Victor issued nearly 10,000 records during that decade, but less than one percent of them featured Canadian artists. All the recordings were made outside the country, except for the hundred or so produced by Herbert Berliner in Montreal in 1903-1904. There were hardly more than a dozen Canadian artists, French- and English-language together, who recorded before 1910. The situation would have to wait for 1915-1916 to change. Globally, sales of flat discs, the technology invented by Emile Berliner, soared from 4 million in 1904 to 103.4 million in 1921.
A new era
Herbert, Emile Berliner’s eldest son, did not forget his dream. In 1916 he created the His Master’s Voice (HMV) 216000 series, which presented only local artists, French- and English-language, and two years later the 263000 series, which was devoted to French-language artists, including the renowned Hector Pellerin. For the first three years production was all things considered rather limited, but beginning in 1920 he tripled his English-language output. The Montreal plant was no longer pressing Victor products, except for the classical Red Seals. Under pressure from Victor, which was the world’s most important record company and Berliner Gramophone’s sole customer, Emile Berliner presented another ultimatum to his son, who this time refused to yield, and left the family business in April 1921.
The patent protection period secured in 1897 on the lateral cut method for records and on the phonograph was to come to an end in 1917. Foreseeing that a number of American companies would set up in Canada to take advantage of the expired patents, Herbert Berliner had the idea of using the great capacity of the Montreal plant to press records from those companies. But because of the patents, Victor and Columbia accounted for ninety percent of the Canadian record market, and were hardly inclined to ease the way for an invasion by the new competitors. Herbert Berliner was nevertheless not prepared to let up.
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Pages 54–55
Edgar Maurice Berliner
Edgar Berliner took over management once again of the Montreal plant in circumstances that were hardly more positive than in 1906. He quickly had to replace the specialized and highly capable personnel that had followed Herbert to Compo at the very same time that the company was opening a modern 250,000-square foot factory on Lenoir St. in Montreal.
In forty years, since Edison’s first machine, sound recording had not progressed very far. The human ear can hear frequencies from 30 to 15,000 Hertz, whereas acoustic recording was generally reproducing only those between 200 and 2,000 Hertz. No bass or high frequencies, a tinny sound and surface noise that, although less obvious than it once had been, remained very much in evidence.
On November 11, 1920, Lionel Guest and Horace Merriman, two former Royal Air Force officers, carried out the first “electric” recording. Using a condenser microphone and a tube amplifier, they could record frequencies between 50 and 6,000 Hertz, clearly a step forward compared to the acoustic system. Settled in Montreal since 1918, the Italian Guglielmo Marconi launched CFCF in September 1919, the world’s first radio station. Using the microphone from its inception, radio was able to broadcast with a sound quality that was superior to the record’s.
After the First World War, industry in the U.S. had to convert back to a civilian economy. Incurred debts had to be paid, and the early 1920s were marked by a slowdown that hit the leisure sectors first, including records. The end of Berliner’s patent protection brought a number of small companies onto the market, which reduced the prices that Victor and Columbia — in a virtually monopolistic position for twenty years — had kept artificially high.
In 1922 Emile Berliner sold his Montreal company once again to his son Edgar, but the Berliner Gramophone Company situation was worrisome. In 1923, the postwar slowdown led to the bankruptcy of a company as important as Columbia. In the fall of 1923, Eldridge Johnson made Edgar Berliner an offer he couldn’t refuse. In the spring of 1924, Victor Talking Machine took control of Berliner Gramophone and of its subsidiary His Master’s Voice in all of Canada. With an important block of shares, Edgar Berliner remained chairman of the board and his partner Bernard Gardner was appointed vice-president, but all administrative decisions were now made in Camden, New Jersey.
Victor Talking Machine of Canada
The new administration undertook some major changes. First, the name Victor appeared three times as big as His Master’s Voice on record labels. Production of the 216000 and 263000 series was radically reduced, to ten or so records a year each.
With the dazzling increase in the sales of radios, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was flying high. Its president, David Sarnoff founded in 1926 the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) radio network and lusted after Victor. The two firms had collaborated on bringing the Victrola to market, a combination radio / electric record player that met with considerable success. In order to give their industry a boost, Victor, Columbia (in its new version) and Brunswick finally all converted to electric recording. In early 1926, Victor began to market its “V.E.” (Victor Electric) discs, but without advertising it, so that dealers would have the time to sell off their stock of acoustic records. At the start of 1927, the first V.E.’s made their appearance in Canada (beginning with number 263500, in the French-language series).
Before 1925, rotation speed was not standardized on playback machines. American Victor records turned at 76 rpm, Berliners at 78 and Columbias at 80, just like the Canadian Pathés — which in Europe turned at 90 rpm. All these companies also produced turntables, which were designed so that records from competitors could not be properly played on them. The Pathé machines, in Europe, even had a central spindle that was bigger than normal, which prevented anything but Pathé records from being played on them! But in that year, 78 rpm became the new standard for electric motor rotation speed (78.2608, to be precise), the standard in fact that Emile Berliner had created thirty years earlier.
In December 1926, Eldridge Johnson sold his RCA majority shares to some Wall Street bankers. They in turn asked Edward Shumaker — who knew the Canadian market well — to carry out an assessment of Victor Canada. He determined that the French-language market was experiencing excellent growth. The Columbia, Starr and Brunswick companies were very much a presence. In 1927 Victor produced ten records and Starr, ninety-five! That production did not enter into competition with American products, so why do without? Shumaker therefore found a young administrator, Hugh Joseph, and commissioned him to rectify the state of affairs.
Hugh A. Joseph
Born in Quebec City on May 25, 1896, Hugh Alfred Joseph had studied chemistry at McGill University and worked with Herbert Berliner. He had taken part as a technician in the first recordings of the Melody Kings. Appointed head of promotion, sales and signing up artists in 1927, he admirably redressed the situation, pushing production up to 89 records in 1928 and to 110 in 1929. He hired among others Conrad Gauthier, who had been drawing crowds for years at the Monument-National in Montreal with his “Soirées du bon vieux temps” (Good-old-days evenings).
Joseph however did not obtain relaxation of the quotas for English-language Canadian production, which remained at roughly one record per month. And he never would, throughout his long career of more than thirty-five years with Victor. As we shall see further along, he was allowed on occasion to launch and promote English-Canadian talent.
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Page 56-57
RCA Victor
David Sarnoff got what he wanted on January 4, 1929: the new entity took the name of RCA Victor and Sarnoff would be its president for close to forty years. In Montreal, Edgar Berliner and Bernard Gardner sold their shares and Hugh Joseph became the local man in charge at RCA Victor, but the future had dark clouds in store…
The crash
In early November 1929, the stock exchange collapsed on Wall Street. RCA Victor shares plummeted from $144 to $20 in the space of a few weeks. Columbia, Brunswick and Edison closed their doors, like a great many other companies. In the U.S., record sales, which had reached over $105 million by the end of the 1920s, dropped to $46.2 million in 1930, to $17.6 million in 1931, to $11 million in 1932 and to around $5.5 million in 1933. Records were being marked down by sixty percent. Thanks to its radio division, RCA Victor survived the economic depression, as did Compo, its main Canadian rival, which however had to convert part of its Lachine installation to press floor tiles.
At RCA Victor, Edward Wallerstein became general manager of the record division. In 1933 he created the budget-price Bluebird series (three records for a dollar), which sharply increased sales. The concept was exported to Canada. Hugh Joseph put Wilf Carter under contract, a country singer originally from Nova Scotia who began his career at a radio station in Calgary, Alberta, under the pseudonym Montana Slim. His success was immediate. Joseph then signed up the country band George Wade and His Cornhuskers, who included the violinist Jean Carignan. Joseph also had the intuition to record Hank Snow, in 1936, another country singer, who would prove to be one of RCA Victor’s biggest stars for forty-five years.
On the French-language side, Joseph launched the Bluebird B-4800 series in early 1936. It featured mainly folk-music stars, including Conrad Gauthier, fiddlers Joseph Allard and Isidore Soucy and harmonica player Henri Lacroix. Joseph introduced the B-1100 series the following year. He recruited Jean Lalonde, a crooner who enjoyed great success on the radio program “Chantons en choeur” on CKAC. In 1938 he signed an agreement with the priest Charles-Émile Gadbois, who had just launched the movement La Bonne Chanson. Albert Viau, Jules Jacob, François Brunet, Les Grenadiers impériaux and other artists associated with that movement made some sixty records over eight years, which sold very well and made Montreal’s RCA Victor a profitable concern once again.
In 1939, the outbreak of World War II put a damper on this modest revival. Rationing slowed record sales, and even affected the quality of the materials used in pressing them. From June 1942 to November 1944, a musicians’ strike gravely undermined the production of new records and enabled new companies, among them Decca and Capitol, to become serious competitors in the market. During this period, RCA’s Quebec production became almost nonexistent, while that of its competitor Starr skyrocketed.
But as soon as the strike was over, Joseph brought the young Alys Robi into the studio in New York. Robi was enjoying excellent success on CBC radio in Canada. “Tico-Tico,” her first record, became a classic. Joseph also had the idea of transplanting to the French-language market the country vogue that had served him so well previously. First, in 1944, he recorded Granby’s Paul Brunelle. Then in 1946 he banked on Willie Lamothe from Saint-Hyacinthe, who in 1947 had a smash hit with “Je chante à cheval” (I Sing on Horseback) and became “king of the Quebec cowboys.”
The radio years
Radio had its golden age during the 1940s. Stations on the air in every corner of Quebec and Canada were now linked in networks, which contributed to the speedy creation of “national” stars and busier record sales. It was therefore on radio that Hugh Joseph found most of his French-language headliners in “variety” song: Robert L’Herbier, Fernand Robidoux, Muriel Millard, Lucille Dumont, Jacques Normand, Lise Roy, André Rancourt and several others.
Making the most of radio, Canadian big bands ruled the airwaves from 1930 to 1945. Saxophonist Mart Kenney formed a group in Vancouver he called the Western Gentlemen and which became one of the most sought-after Canadian bands. Under exclusive contract to RCA Victor beginning in 1938, Kenney recorded a number called “The West, a Nest and You, Dear,” which was a huge success. In 1945 Hugh Joseph struck gold again when he signed a contract with Oscar Peterson, a pianist who was performing with Johnny Holmes’s band in Montreal. The young man with magic fingers would become a legend in international jazz.
The postwar resumption
The conclusion of the Second World War opened the door to a number of technological changes. To begin with, Decca launched the first Full Frequency Range Recording (FFRR) record, which could at last reproduce the complete audible frequency range. The end of rationing also brought with it a marked improvement in the quality of pressings. In the late 1920s, to meet the needs of talking motion pictures, several companies had tried to develop a long-playing record. In 1931, RCA Victor had even begun to market the Victrolac, a 331/3-rpm, which was rapidly withdrawn because of the economic crisis.
In 1938, Wallerstein left RCA Victor to join Columbia, and he was quick to revive the concept. The Union Carbide company had just invented Vinylite, a highly malleable substance that made it possible to cut a very fine groove — a microgroove. But most of the product was requisitioned by the armed forces during the war. In the spring of 1948, Columbia finally and with great ceremony launched the “L.P.” (long playing record), a thirty-centimeter Vinylite product boasting much reduced surface noise compared to 78s. Its very fine groove and its rotation speed of 331/3 rpm allowed for about eighteen minutes per side. For the first time, an entire symphony could be presented on a single record. RCA Victor wasted no time reacting. Also using Vinylite, the company launched a small eighteen-centimeter record with a great big hole in the middle. Turning at 45 rpm, it presented just one piece per side and was intended for the quickly expanding pop-music and hit-parade market. In that year, 1948, everything was in place for the coming of the record industry’s golden age.
The golden age
Penetration of these two new supports was slowed by their incompatibility with 78-rpm record players. It would be several years before a sufficient number of fans acquired new machines. Neither Victor not Columbia could apply for patents for these new products, whose origins went back to the 1920s. Several other companies therefore began to market 45s and 33s, while Columbia and Victor went to great expense to impose their new product. This multiplicity of supports of varying dimensions also put pressure on retailers, who spent a lot of time ordering 45s and 33s.
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Page 58-59
Debts contracted during the war weighed on the economy, which sagged in the late 1940s. Record sales followed the same curb. Recently created Canadian record companies, including Musicana and Maple Leaf, ceased operations in 1951. Alouette, founded by Rosaire Archambault in Montreal in 1950, stopped production in 1952, resuming activities only five years later. London, which had introduced a French-language series in 1949, interrupted production until 1954. Starr was sold to Decca in 1950, but record production, country and folk especially, continued at the same pace.
At RCA Victor, the country and folk repertoires on its Bluebird label also were unaffected. It should be pointed out that these types of music were listener favorites, in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada. Under contract with Victor, Canadian country singers Hank Snow and Wilf Carter enjoyed sensational sales figures, as did their Quebec counterparts Willie Lamothe and Paul Brunelle. In 1949, the recording of the folksong “Les fraises et les framboises” (Raspberries, Strawberries) by Isidore Soucy’s trio reached the magic number of 100,000 copies sold. In Canada and Quebec, radio stations aired country and folk-music shows that reached large audiences. Although looked down on by urbanites, these two styles of music became the driving force of the record industry for a few years. But at the end of 1951, production of popular music and variety ceased completely in Quebec, not to be resumed until two years later.
The era of cabarets
Since the end of the war, cabarets were also enjoying a golden age, primarily in Montreal and Toronto. Hugh Joseph once again showed great astuteness in taking advantage of the competition “Monsieur MC,” whose objective was to elect the most popular cabaret master of ceremonies in Montreal. It was Jen Roger, a twenty-five-year-old variety singer, who carried the day. In September 1953, Joseph had him in the studio to record “Toi ma richesse,” a French version of Tony Bennett’s “Rags to Riches.” Sales quickly reached 75,000 copies and boosted production of variety at RCA. It was in cabarets that Joseph also discovered Les Three Bars, Guylaine Guy (a protégée of Charles Trenet), Les Jérolas and several other artists who returned the company to its role as industry leader. The American parent company found a gold mine when it purchased the contract of Elvis Presley, a young singer from Memphis who would become the king of rock and roll.
Hugh Joseph retired in 1960, after doing the Canadian record industry immense service for nearly forty years. RCA Victor continued to be a leader in popular music in Canada and in Quebec throughout the 1960s. As it grew, it opened in 1964 a new recording studio on La Gauchetière St. in Montreal at the cutting edge of the techniques of the time. At the start of the 1970s, David Sarnoff finally gave up direction of the company, which abandoned the name “Victor” because of the diversity of its interests outside the record world. In 1972 the company moved its Canadian head office to Toronto and closed its Montreal recording studio. Production of Canadian artists would remain at a high level during the decade.
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Page 60-61
Sign Post to a Busy Future
Radios’ Richest Experience… THE SOURCE OF TOMORROW’S BEST SELLERS IN RADIOS, RADIO-PHONOGRAPHS AND TELEVISION RECEIVERS
A 1946 photograph of the RCA Victor plant in Montreal
RCA Victor advertisement, Montreal, 1946
For over 47 years RCA Victor has served Canadians. More than any other organization RCA Victor (as a part of RCA) has its work deeply embedded in every phase of Radio… Communications… Broadcasting… Research… Television… as well as in home instruments. Collectively the accomplishments of RCA Victor represent Radio’s Richest Experience… a priceless asset reflected in the prestige and good-will enjoyed by every RCA Victor product.
In the market of tomorrow, experience will count far above all else. You can be more sure of your plea on your side than Radio’s Richest Experience. It’s your assurance that Radios, Radio-Phonographs and Television Receivers bearing the RCA Victor trademark will be best sellers… with the features and performance your customers will be looking for — and buying!
Crisis, sales and mergers
In the early 1980s, a new crisis in the record industry brought with it a marked decrease in local product. In 1985, RCA was sold to General Electric, who in turn sold the music section to the consortium Bertelsmann AG, headquartered in Gütersloh, Germany, on April 15, 1986. The BMG Music of Canada label (Bertelsmann Music Group) brought out its first Canadian recordings the following year. In 1990, Musique BMG du Québec was created in response to the French-language market. In July 2004, the merger of the music divisions of BMG and Sony was approved by the courts. Sony BMG thereby became the world’s second biggest multinational, behind Universal Music. And finally, in 2008, Sony acquired Bertelsmann.
Digitization and dematerialization
Beginning in the 1950s, the use of magnetic tape revolutionized record quality. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, magnetic tape competed with the 33-rpm and 45-rpm supports, first in the form of bigger cassettes (eight tracks) and then smaller ones (four tracks). At the start of the 1980s, the development of computer processing led to the creation of the digital recording, called the compact disc. In the space of ten years this led to the disappearance of the small cassette and vinyl records (33 and 45 rpm). And at the beginning of the 2000s, expansion of the Internet network allowed for the transmission by telephone line (or cable) of musical pieces in compressed format (MP3). This new way of bringing artists’ works to consumers today occupies an important share of the music market.
In an industry where new technologies come every thirty years to dramatically change recorded-music sales and consumption habits, the little handicraft record company founded in Montreal in 1900 by Emile Berliner is the only one to have remained active without interruption in Canada for more than a century. As Emile Berliner himself pointed out in an interview for the Canadian Music Trade Journal in September 1918: “It was a matter of protecting patents…. But you never can tell what is going to become of a baby.”
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Page 62-63
Seminal Artists of Berliner / Victor / RCA Victor
E. Loiseau
Little is known about E. Loiseau except that in the early twentieth century he performed in the cafés-concerts (cafés with live music) of Montreal. In addition to acting, he recorded about fifteen songs for Berliner in Montreal, including “Les montagnards.” All hockey fans will recognize this refrain, probably without knowing where it comes from.
Robert Price
Robert Price, of whom we possess no photo, was the manager of Berliner’s retail outlet on Sainte-Catherine St. in Montreal. In less than a year, he recorded some sixty songs for Herbert Berliner, covering some of the English-language hits of the day.
Hector Pellerin (1887-1953)
With more than 300 songs recorded in a fifty-year career, Hector Pellerin was the most popular Quebec artist in the first half of the twentieth century. He recorded for His Master’s Voice throughout the 1920s.
Henry Burr (1885-1941)
At the age of nineteen, Henry Burr (pseudonym of Harry McClaskey) left St. Stephen, New Brunswick, to settle in New York. There he made a living recording for the principal record companies of the time — Columbia, Victor and Edison — under the pseudonyms Henry Burr and Irving Gillette, among others. Burr recorded several songs in Montreal for HMV, including the unforgettable “When You and I Were Young, Maggie.” Its success was enormous, and he recorded the song with variations for twenty-two different labels. According to the catalogs of record labels, Burr’s record production totaled more than 6,000 titles, counting his vocal solos, duets and quartets, all of it spread out over 108 different labels.
Conrad Gauthier (1885-1964)
From 1920 to 1940, Conrad Gauthier organized the “Soirées du bon vieux temps” (Good-old-days evenings) at the Monument-National theatre in Montreal, folk-music shows that attracted huge crowds. Between 1924 and 1931 he made fifty recordings for His Master’s Voice.
George Wade & His Cornhuskers (ca. 1895-1975)
A folkdance caller by vocation, George Wade performed in the 1920s and 1930s in Ontario and Quebec with his Cornhuskers. In 1933 he hired Jean Carignan, one of the most gifted Canadian fiddlers, and made his first records for RCA Victor.
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A PERSONAL NOTE from HUGH JOSEPH, Director of Artists & Repertoire, RCA Victor — Montreal
When Wilf Carter first visited our Recording Studios in 1933, neither he nor I could have guessed that it would be the beginning of a close and happy association extending well over a quarter of a century. At that time he was a comparatively unknown singer from Nova Scotia, but he was destined to become one of Canada’s top performers of Country and Western music. However, it was not only his ability as a performer that made Wilf so successful; it was also his prowess as a writer. Most of his best-loved recordings were original compositions, and these possessed a “homey” quality — sweet sincerity and undertakings — that appealed to people in all walks of life, and which has caused the popularity of these songs to live on through the years.
To meet the countless requests received for the original recordings of Wilf’s interpretations, we are offering the album: “REMINSICIN’ WITH WILF CARTER.” This is a collection of a dozen songs, the majority of them written by Carter. At least four of these old favourites include Wilf’s famous yodel which, over the years, he developed almost to the point of perfection. As an example, the selection “ECHOING HILLS YODEL BACK TO ME” shows how he could use his voice to suggest an echo in distant mountains.
The album contains recordings made by Wilf from 1933 to 1958, and so provides an opportunity to follow the changing style of his voice over that period. “MY SWISS MOONLIGHT LULLABY” was the first number Wilf ever recorded for RCA Victor, and I produced it in our Montreal Studios in December, 1933. The most recent recording in the group, on the other hand, is “BLUE CANADIAN ROCKIES” which was made in 1950. Also included in this album is the popular selection “THERE’S A BLUEBIRD ON YOUR WINDOWSILL,” written by a Vancouver nurse, Elizabeth Clark. This song was an overnight success both in Canada and the United States, and Wilf’s version, first issued in 1949, immediately became a best-seller.
This is a “personal note.” I would like to add the high regard I have felt for Wilf Carter as a friend during these many years will always be one of the highlights of my long connection with the record business in Canada. Wilf’s frequent letters starting with “Hello There Pal” and ending with “Your friend, Wilf”, will be cherished as a mark of this friendship, and I hope this album will serve in some small way to symbolize, for Wilf’s many admirers across the country, the accomplishments of these years.
(Signed: Hugh Joseph)
Wilf Carter (1904-1996)
Influenced by yodeling, Carter began singing at a young age. After working as a lumberjack, he became a cowboy in Alberta in the early 1920s while playing at dances and performing for tourists traveling in the Rockies. In 1930 he made his debut with radio station CFCN in Calgary, as well as on local station CFAC and nationally on the CRBC. In December 1933 he recorded “My Swiss Moonlight Lullaby,” his first 78-rpm produced by Hugh Joseph, with RCA Victor in Montreal. His first two influences can be heard: Tyrolean yodeling and American country singer Jimmie Rodgers. In 1935 Carter moved to New York, where under the name Montana Slim he hosted a country music radio show on the CBS network until 1937. He then returned to Canada and settled back in Alberta.
Jean Lalonde (1914-1991)
Nicknamed the “Don Juan of song,” Jean Lalonde was very popular on radio from 1934 to 1954. His recording career however was limited to the twenty-five singles he made for RCA Bluebird between 1937 and 1940.
Lucille Dumont (1919- )
After her debut with a dance band on radio in 1935, Lucille Dumont hosted a good number of radio and later television programs until the 1980s. She opened a school for singers, which she ran into the twenty-first century. The woman known as “the great lady of song” recorded nineteen 78-rpms for RCA Victor.
Mart Kenney (1910-2006)
A saxophonist and clarinetist in dance bands in Toronto, Mart Kenney founded a band called The Western Gentlemen in 1931 in Vancouver. He became known across Canada thanks to radio, and made his first recordings on RCA Victor (His Master’s Voice) in 1938. Kenney would be in demand until his retirement in 1969.
Wilfrid Pelletier (1896-1982)
First a pianist, Wilfrid Pelletier was engaged as a rehearsal pianist at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1917 on the recommendation of conductor Pierre Monteux. But his interest in conducting led him to a position at the Metropolitan in 1929. In 1934 he agreed to head the Société des concerts symphoniques de Montreal, which would become the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, and he was central to the activities of the Montreal Festivals. Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem was recorded by RCA Victor in June 1940 by the Montreal Festivals Orchestra with the choir Les Disciples de Massenet. The influence of Wilfrid Pelletier on musical life in Canada was decisive. The large concert hall at Place des Arts in Montreal today bears his name.
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Page 66-67
Oscar Peterson (photo caption)
Bright Young Star Records for Victor
The name is Oscar Peterson. Watch for it in the headlines of the future! He’s young... just eighteen... He’s big... even if he couldn’t play the piano he could probably pick it up... He has a tremendous pair of hands... his left is solid and will send you out of this world... His feeling for music is inborn and flows out as naturally as his smile... At a piano he “gives” with an authority and a virtuosity that is breath-taking, foot-shaking and ear-tinkling. His rhythm is hot, his boogie-woogie terrific, his stylizing sparkling, original and fresh as the flowers in Spring... In a word he’s Oscar Peterson and really something! He’ll have a new Victor record out next month. Watch for it!
First advertisement of the “new recording artist” in RCA publication, 1945
Alouette Quartet
Roger Filatrault (1905-1973), baritone, Jules Jacob (1906-1969), tenor, Émile Lamarre (1886-1963), bass, André Trottier (1901-?), bass
Formed in 1931, the Quatuor Alouette / Alouette Quartet presented its repertoire of folk songs in America and in Europe for over thirty years. They recorded for RCA Victor from 1942 to 1948.
Alys Robi (1923- )
Born Alice Robitaille, she began her career at the age of thirteen in a vaudeville troupe. Noticed by conductor Lucio Agostini, she experienced success on CBC radio and performed in renowned cabarets in Canada, the U.S. and Europe. She was barely twenty-five when illness nearly ended her career. She recorded twenty-eight singles for RCA Victor between 1944 and 1948.
Fernand Robidoux (1920-1998)
The first true Quebec crooner, Fernand Robidoux enjoyed a brilliant career on radio for some fifteen years. He made twenty-three records for RCA Bluebird between 1945 and 1949.
Paul Brunelle (1923-1994)
In the lineage of Jimmie Rodgers, Paul Brunelle formed a country and western group while still a teenager. The first French-language artist in the genre signed to a contract by Hugh Joseph, in 1944, he would make forty-nine records for RCA Victor up until 1958.
La Bonne Chanson
Founded in 1937 by the priest Charles-Émile Gadbois, Éditions de La Bonne Chanson published tens of millions of copies of sheet-music songs of all kinds. The program Le Quart d’heure de la Bonne Chanson aired from 1939 to 1952. Between 1938 and 1948, RCA Victor released some sixty 78-rpm singles. Beginning in 1959, vinyl albums were released up to the 1980s.
Willie Lamothe (1920-1992)
Attracted at first by the music of Tino Rossi and Charles Trenet, Willie Lamothe discovered country music during his military service from 1941 to 1945. In 1946 he presented his first songs to Hugh Joseph and quickly became the “king of the Quebec cowboys.” He made thirty-seven records for RCA, until 1955.
Oscar Peterson (1925-2007)
Oscar Peterson had his first piano lessons with his sister Daisy, and gave evidence of incredible dexterity when he performed with Johnny Holmes’s band from 1944 to 1947. In 1946 he made his initial recordings for RCA Victor in Montreal. In 1949, American producer Norman Granz opened the doors to a fabulous international career.
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Page 68-69
Music in the Mold
Day after day in the Record Division the presses are turning out a continuous stream of records of every type, from symphony to swing, for the music-hungry people of Canada. Here at work are some of the busy people of Record Division carrying out a few of the many steps in the manufacture of records.
The original recording which comes from the studio as a wax-like disc is metalized, then passes through a copper bath to become a “rough” (or negative) to be used for electroplating. The copper bath is seen (top left) where records are finished by electroplating. The original for making records is made in the Montreal Plant. Armand Gauthier (top right) grinds the “rough” by automatic lathes. Coated, polished and rolled flat, it operates the press which prints the record labels. One of the lines of presses, where Raoul Dupuis (right) and Arthur Daignault can be seen at work. Biscuit are pressed into discs at a pressure of 200 tons per square inch. The stamper receives labels and in 20 seconds a record is made from the master. Each matrix is tested to make sure it is flawless before it is sent to the pressroom. Labels are pressed right into the record.
At regular intervals samples from each pressman are tested both visually and electrically. Lucille Caron (top) is seen checking a record just off the press. The edge of each new record has to be buffed and polished as shown by Gisèle Giguère (edge right). Lucille Robert (bottom job) is seen inspecting records visually before packing them in envelopes. Marc Blute (bottom right) is checking, and packing records in cartons before they are shipped to Record Stockroom.
RCA Victor’s manufacturing process from start to finish
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Raoul Jobin (1906-1974)
After taking music lessons in Quebec City, the young tenor went to Paris where he continued his studies, eventually obtaining a contract in 1930. During his thirty-year career, Raoul Jobin was acclaimed on all the world’s stages as one of the great tenors of his time. In the late 1940s, Hugh Joseph invited him into RCA Victor’s studio in Montreal for a memorable session with the choir Les Disciples de Massenet.
Le Trio Soucy
Isidore Soucy (1899-1963), violin, Fernando Soucy (1927-1975), violin and voice, René Alain (1921-1968), accordion
After a solo career that began in the 1920s, Isidore Soucy formed a trio in 1948 with his son Fernando and accordionist René Alain. The trio would later be joined by other members of the Soucy family. The band made sixty-eight singles for RCA Victor and Bluebird between 1936 and 1959, in addition to three albums.
Jacques Normand (1922-1998)
Jacques Normand, who was born Raymond Chouinard, enjoyed such success on radio and in cabarets beginning in 1941 that Hugh Joseph had him make ten records between 1948 and 1951. Jacques Normand later enjoyed a brilliant career on television into the 1970s.
Hank Snow (1914-1999)
His association with RCA Victor began in 1936. A star of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee, he introduced Elvis Presley to RCA Victor’s management. The young Memphis singer would soon become the company’s biggest money maker. A member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, Hank Snow collaborated with RCA for forty-seven years, one of the longest contracts in record history. Snow simply couldn’t have conquered the U.S. market without the staunch support of Hugh Joseph, RCA Victor’s Canadian director. Joseph made numerous efforts to get RCA in the U.S. to promote Snow, who was already a star in Canada, and set dates for recording sessions. In those two sessions of 1949 and 1950, Snow recorded twice the seminal I’m Movin’ On, which became one of the greatest country songs of all time.
Jen Roger (1928- )
Roger Marcotte performed in cabarets beginning in 1949 and he changed his name to Jen Roger when he signed a contract with RCA Victor in the summer of 1953. His success revived RCA’s Montreal production. He recorded fifty-eight singles (78s and 45s) and close to a dozen albums in the course of a productive association with the company.
The Three Bars
Raymond Berthiaume (Montreal, 1931-2009), voice and clarinet, Fernand Thibault (1920-1967), bass, Roger Gravel (1934- ), piano
Beginning in 1951 the Three Bars quickly attracted a huge audience in cabarets thanks to their lounge style of music and to the mellow voice of crooner Raymond Berthiaume. Until they broke up in 1959 the trio recorded nineteen singles and two albums with RCA Victor.
Les Jérolas
Jérôme Lemay (1933- ), voice and guitar, Jean Lapointe (1935- ), voice and piano
Formed in 1956, the duo Les Jérolas were the most popular entertainers for over fifteen years in Quebec, performing in most of the province’s cabarets and show venues. They recorded thirty singles and a dozen albums during their fifteen-year association with RCA Victor.
From Tanneries to Technologies: the History of Saint-Henri
Over a century ago, the Berliners chose Saint-Henri as the site of their factory and Canadian centre of operations. They launched the recording industry in Canada. Here is a brief history of this working-class borough located in the Montreal’s South-West.
From a village of tanners to the present day, Saint-Henri has gone through various transformations in the course of its 300-year history, a history that begins well before the construction of the Lachine Canal, that goes through the golden age of industrialization and that is followed by the decline brought about by the closing of the canal.
Well before the canal
The history of Saint-Henri can be traced back to 1685, when the second leather tannery in New France was granted to Jean Dedieu and Jean Mouchère. Since it was prohibited, because of the strong odors it produced, to set up a tannery within the fortified walls, they chose an area called Coteau Saint-Pierre, in a location that was fed by a stream coming down from Mount Royal. The tannery also served as a stopping place for fur traders on their way to Lachine, a day’s walk from Ville-Marie (the original name of Montreal).
Throughout the eighteenth century the tanneries multiplied. A small village, which took the name Tanneries-des-Rolland after its most prominent family, grew up along what is now Saint-Jacques St. between Côte Saint-Paul Rd. and Place Saint-Henri. In 1810 a chapel school called Saint-Henri was established in the tanners’ borough, and as of 1825 Saint-Henri-des-Tanneries was an important village, in which the occupations of tanner, shoemaker and harness maker were practiced. Two-thirds of the jobs there were in vocations involving leather. That same year, the digging of the Lachine Canal led to the hiring of hundreds of workers, many of which would settle nearby.
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RCA Victor’s site during the War years (Montreal, 1943)
From village to city
Twenty years later the Lachine Canal was widened. Since it offered both a means of accessible transportation and water power, mills and factories were built next to the locks. In 1847 the first railroad was built on Montreal Island, running through Saint-Henri in an east-west direction, parallel to the canal. Several times a day the Lachine & Montreal Railroad train left Bonaventure Station, made a stop in Saint-Henri to take on passengers and freight, and then continued on its way to Lachine.
Small villages sprang up as a result of the arrival of new industries on the northern bank of the canal. The old village of Saint-Henri-des-Tanneries, a centre for leather work and a much appreciated rest stop, began to grow in 1850 with the appearance of streets cutting across the main road, on the land of Philippe Turcot. In 1859 the village of Saint-Augustin welcomed the first industrial tannery on the banks of the canal, Moseley & Ricker. In 1860 the village of Delisle was born with the establishment of the Rolling Mills foundry (which would become Stelco), the Cantin shipyard and the Brest sawmill.
In 1875 these villages amalgamated to form the new city of Saint-Henri. One year later, the area that went by the name Village Delisle broke away to create the neighboring city of Sainte-Cunégonde.
In just a few years, many men and women, attracted by job offers, settled with their families between the railroad track and the canal. From 1850 to 1890, industries and housing units grew greatly in number, and Saint-Henri became increasingly prosperous. The further widening of the Lachine Canal and the passage of the Montreal-Lachine and Grand Trunk railways (the latter from Victoria Bridge) through Saint-Henri were factors in the city’s tremendous expansion. Industrial activity led to a quick population increase, from 3,000 residents to 30,000 in the space of 30 years. For 100 years the banks of the Lachine Canal would enjoy the most important industrial activity in the country.
The first high-tech park in Montreal
At the turn of the last century, Saint-Henri was in a state of full industrial development. Unlike its rivals at the time, Saint-Henri offered the railway, the Lachine Canal, a working population in place and access to the Montreal market. In addition, to ensure the presence of industry, the city of Saint-Henri introduced a policy of financial assistance for businesses.
The companies that located there were diversified. Leather and food accounted for roughly fifty percent of businesses between 1876 and 1901, but things changed soon after. In 1900, as we have seen, engineer/inventor Emile Berliner (1851-1929) founded a record pressing plant, today considered the birthplace of the Canadian record industry. That factory was located on Aqueduc St. (now called Lucien-L’Allier St.).
Saint-Henri can be characterized as the first high-tech park in Montreal, with the presence of firms like Berliner, Bell and Marconi. In the early twentieth century, Montreal was a true hub for the recording and communications industry. Around 1900, the Merchants cotton mill, the Tooke clothing factory, the Lang biscuit plant and Johnson Wire Works all started up their operations. The year 1908 witnessed the arrival of the Imperial Tobacco plant, which would become an important employer in the area. But in 1905 Saint-Henri was annexed to Montreal, becoming the neighborhood of Saint-Henri.
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A neighborhood in difficulty
People worked, but by the sweat of their brow. Hours were long and salaries low. Women and children were part of the workforce. The colossal industrial growth required a pool of cheap labor. Workers lived in unhealthy dwellings and in an environment sullied by smoke from the factories and trains.
The industrialization period did not go perfectly smoothly. The years between 1871 and 1903 saw more than thirty strikes. True trade unionism appeared in 1882 with the Knights of Labor, primarily active where the greatest industrial concentration of people was located. Towards 1908 the Berliner Gram-O-Phone Co. put up a first brick building on Lenoir St., and a few years later an annex to the south of it. That building, very modern for its time, four stories tall and made of reinforced concrete, provided broad opportunities. A billboard positioned on the roof featured the dog Nipper along with the words “The home of the Victrola.” As of 1916, thanks to Emile Berliner, Canada was one of the world’s biggest record exporter. In 1924 the company became the Victor Talking Machine (Nipper the dog and “His master’s voice”). In 1929 it was acquired by RCA and became RCA Victor. That company specialized in record and phonograph production.
The crash of 1929
The crisis that followed the crash of 1929 brought with it an intense wave of business closings and unemployment. Direct assistance and the multiplication of public-works programs helped compensate for the lack of jobs, however. Thus it was that in Saint-Henri the Atwater Market was built, as well as the fire station on Place Saint-Henri and tunnels under the canal and the railway tracks. But these measures could not bring total relief to the misery being experienced by families. It would take the outbreak of the Second World War to resurrect economic growth. At the peak of war production, the RCA Victor complex employed more than 1,000 workers. When the war ended, Saint-Henri once again became one of Canada’s biggest industrial centers. It was against that backdrop that Gabrielle Roy set her famous novel Bonheur d’occasion (The Tin Flute), with its characters struggling in the Saint-Henri neighborhood.
The Victor Studio
In 1943, RCA Victor built a recording studio in a building adjoining the factory at 1050 Lacasse St. That studio, designed by the architect Gordon Lyman, was the first in Canada to be endowed with polycylindrical acoustic treatment. Some of the greatest performers recorded there, including Bing Crosby and Oscar Peterson. In 1958 the RCA Victor studio closed its doors to make way for the manufacture of the first Canadian satellite in the greatest secrecy. It resumed its activities in 1985 under the direction of a new owner. With its outstanding acoustics, the Victor Studio remains a much in-demand recording site.
The opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959, the development of the suburbs, the growing use of the automobile and the aging of the factories meant the beginning of the end for Saint-Henri’s industrial vocation. In 1970, the closing of the Lachine Canal sparked an exodus of businesses.
With the departure of the big companies, poverty became rife among the families that had decided to stay in the neighborhood.
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Factory of the Berliner Gram-o-Phone Co., Montreal, in the 1910s
A revival around the canal
Eventually the old community tradition of people in the area revived with even greater strength and led to a new prosperity. People organized, together with adjoining neighborhoods. A new industry made an appearance: culture. In large buildings the Merchant (Dominion Textile, then Coleco) and the Simmons, designers, artists and craftspeople set up shop, while antique dealers and other new businesses settled on Notre-Dame St., taking the place of old businesses that had gone bankrupt.
The definitive reawakening of Saint-Henri arrived with a colossal revitalization program of the banks of the Lachine Canal. Governments injected millions to give the canal a unique appeal. In 2002, the reopening of the canal to navigation saw Saint-Henri and the entire southwest of Montreal regain its place with a new vocation in leisure and tourism. Construction of upscale housing was an entirely new feature. Saint-Henri became a destination once more — no longer for finding work, as had been the case at the start of its history, but for experiencing an urban setting that was growing steadily more pleasant and alluring.
Sources:
Nicole Mousseau, Portrait de quartier, CLSC Saint-Henri, 1999.
Adaptation, Guy Giasson, Société historique de Saint-Henri, 2002.
Nicole Cloutier, Rapport historique sur le complexe industriel RCA Victor, Maître d’œuvre de l’histoire, 1991.
Jean-Pierre Sévigny
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Emile Berliner Time line
Emile Berliner invented the gramophone
1851 — Birth of Emile Berliner in Hanover, Germany, on May 20.
1865 — Year of his last formal schooling.
1870 — Emigrated to Washington, D.C. Spent three years working in the dry-goods store Gotteilf, Behrend and Co.
1875 — Worked as a cleanup man in laboratory of Constantine Fahlberg in New York City. Became interested in laboratory experimentation.
1876 — Invented the loose-contact telephone transmitter. Began to work for American Bell Telephone Company.
1881 — Married Cora Adler. Became an American citizen.
1886 — Began work on the gramophone.
1887 — First gramophone patent.
1888 — Successful lecture-demonstration at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. Began to produce experimental disks stamped out in celluloid, then in hard rubber.
1889 — Went to Germany to demonstrate gramophone and while there made agreement with toy firm of Kaemmer and Reinhardt (K&R) for the production of little toy disks and hand-turned players.
1890 — The first commercial discs were recorded in Washington (including Emile’s "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"… the first commercial disc recording) and shipped to K&R for sale with the toy gramophones.
1893 — Formation of the United States Gramophone Company of Washington, D.C., to enter the commercial market.
1894 — United States Gramophone Company began business in the D.C. area.
1895 — Establishment of the Berliner Gramophone Company of Philadelphia. First disks from Duranolid.
1896 — Establishment of the National Gramophone Company of New York. Eldridge Johnson’s machine shop in Camden, New Jersey, became the main supplier of gramophone playback machines.
1897 — Dispatch of William Barry Owen to England. Loss of Washington laboratory in powerhouse fire. Formation of the Gramophone Co. Ltd. established in London.
1898 — Emile founds Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft, to be operated by his brothers Josef and Jacob in Hannover.
1899 — Appearance of illegal competitors Vitaphone and Zonophone. Berliner composed "Columbian Anthem."
1900 — Court injunction in June effectively shut down Berliner’s business. He turned over his patent rights to Eldridge Johnson of Camden, New Jersey. Eldridge Johnson founds Consolidated Talking Machine Co. in Camden, New Jersey to manufacture gramophones and discs, but without the legal authority to do so.
1901 — Consolidated shuts down and to commemorate the Berliner court victory, Johnson and Berliner form and name the Victor Talking Machine Co. as assignee of Emile Berliner’s disc recording patents and of the soon-to-be famous "His Master’s Voice" trademark.
1906 — Berliner began work on helicopter.
1909 — Berliner’s helicopter lifted two men from the ground. New building at the Starmont Tuberculosis Sanatarium dedicated to Berliner’s father.
1913 — Berliner awarded the Elliott Cresson Medal by the Franklin Institute. He obtained a patent for a revolving cylinder motor.
1919 — Berliner very active in field of health and hygiene. Took part in production of book Muddy Jim, for which he wrote all the rhymes. Devoted much time during this period to the Zionist cause.
1924 — Bureau of Health Education established in new building built by Berliner.
1926 — Development of the acoustic tile.
1929 — Death of Emile Berliner on August 3 at the age of 78.
Sources: Oliver Berliner
From Berliner to RCA Victor, The Birth and Rise of the Recording Industry in Canada
Edited and produced by: Jean-Pierre Sévigny, Gala Records, 2009
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