Tuck's Gramophone Record Postcard .... an amusing and interesting innovation
Hans Koert
Since the early 1990s, when I started to research the 1930s US flexible, unbreakable card board records, published by Durium ( like the Hit of the week and numerous Durium labels), people asked me if the rare Tuck's Gramophone Records: post cards with a small playable gramophone record on it, were made of "durium" too - an acetate. I've never found any direct proof for that, but found out that in both "stories" the British record company Worldecho could have been the missing link.
Since my teens I'm fascinated by recording sound .... although we didn't had a gramophone player in the 1950s, I collected those free soundsheets sent by companies like Reader's Digest with ads for lp-albums we never could play ( or even couldn't affotd). My uncle in Rotterdam had a 78rpm gramophone player where my brother and I loved to play his records with popular music. When I was 15 years old I bought my first gramophone player and the 25 cm Columbia album Jazz Session with Bobby Hackett; my first record .... the starting point for a lifelong fascination for jazz and early recorded sound .....
In the 1990s I started to collect and research the rare 1930s card board Hit of the Week records; a quest for records and information which was crowned with a full Hit of the Week-Durium Discography and four two-cd albums with the Complete Hit of the Week Recordings, released by Archeophone records. Later my collection was enriched with Goodson Records, Filmophone and other rare late 1920s flexible records.
Tuck made post cards in a period that it was very popular to send this kind of messages. Isn't it great that I found an old Tuck post card in my family archive, sent to my grand mother, from the Marble Arch in London. It's a pity that the stamp ( or other marks to date the card) have disappeared, but the salutation Mejuffe ( ( = young lady) suggest that she wasn't married at that time, which means that the card must have been sent somewhere between 1910 and 1918. A small search on internet learned me that the photo itself must have been made early 1900s. ( first issue 1906).
I knew, of course, that making photos early 1900s was a complete other process then nowadays, but I didn't realize that Tuck didn't make a complete "new" photo after a decade when the series should be renewed, but "updated" the already existing glass negative and "photoshopped" ( the word didn't excist in those days) with extra pedestrians and "modern" cars. Have a look at the 1918 version with the 1900 pedestrian at the right in front and the 1918 car at the left.
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I told about some rumours that Tuck and the Durium cardboard record might have things in common ..... I found out that the material of the Tuck Record ( the actual record) seems to have been made from the same material as the "Durium" record.
In 1929 Tuck started to produce Gramophone Record Post Cards. It was made by Worldecho and this small short-lived record company has been suggested as a company that used a kind of Durium-like acetate to cover its (thick) cardboard records. In a previous blog about the 80th birthday of the Durium record I posted some information about this obscure record label: Durium Records 80 years old (1930 - 2010)
- It is said that the Durium acetate was developed in Europe during the First World War, to protect aeroplane noses agains dust, heat, cold and moist and it seems that after the war new uses were found - I saw once advertisements for rain coats and garden furniture made of Durium. During the 1920s it seems that the durium acetate was used to make unbreakable gramophone records, like Worldecho - a rather stiff cardboard layer with a durium surface, produced in England. These records were produced for only six months and then it was withdraw from the market, as the records easily split into two halves if you dropped it.
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| Hal T. Beans demonstreert de buigbare Dutiumplaat (ca. 1929) |
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My copy is one of those "cornet solos" and I played it once at my 1930s portable Columbia gramophone. Its sound is rather low-fi and it plays for almost one minute.
There is one remarkable point to mention. Like I told you before about the "updating" of the regular post card with the London Marble Arch photo from early 1900s which were still used during the late 1910s, Tuck liked to recycle .... And even the postcards, used to stick on the small gramophone record, were published before and might have been dead stock for years. I found a copy of the original post card, entitled Watching for Father, a painting of the Scottish artist Scott Rankin, who was active in Scotland as a painter late nineteen century.
Watching for Father - Scott Rankin. (Tuck's Post Card ca. 1910)
Hans Koert
editor
author of the Hit of the Week-Durium Discographies
An almost complete survey of all Keep (it) Swinging blogs can be find at http://keepswinging.opweb.nl/weblog.htm and in the menu at the right of the http://keepitswinging.blogspot.nl/ My concert blogs can are linked at my concert blog: http://keepswinging.opweb.nl/concert.htm en http://jazzconcertlog.blogspot.nl/
Hope to see you back in a few months ......
Keep (it) Swinging
This final blog has also been posted at the the Flexible Records blog and the Hit of the Week blog
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This contribution might be one of my last blogs. Due to severe health problems I'll have to stop publishing. Since February 2006 more then 1800 Keep (it) Swinging blogs have been published. Thanks for reading it. Hope to see you back later if the recovery brings me health and energy.
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n It Up - a record that was meant to have that dancing spirit, that groove-to-the-music, turn-it-up vibe.
