EDISON RECORDS ALPHABETICALLY ARRANGED (1928) Catalog

Orange, NJ: Thomas A Edison, Inc., 1928. Vintage original 7 1/2 x 5″ (19 x 13 cm) catalog. Color printed wrappers, 242 pp. Slight dust soiling at extreme top of outer back wrapper, basically an exceptional example. Near fine.

By 1928, the Edison Phonograph and Record company was on its last legs, suffering with dismal sales… Edison himself stubbornly stuck with the vertical (aka “Hill and Dale”) technique of recording, which made for the very thick disk pressings, as opposed to the lateral cut method employed at the time by all other record companies, major and minor. And the cumbersome heavy disks could only be played on Edison machines with the Edison pick-up mechanism.

In 1929, Edison finally started offering lateral cut pressings of most new issues, but it was too late and Thomas  pulled the plug on Edison Records at the end of the year, not long after the great stock market crash. (Wikipedia)

This catalog really represents the last gasp of what had once been the foremost record company in the land. Although all the current popular tunes are covered, along with older tunes, opera, classical orchestra, etc., you will see very few notable names among the artists. Edison was a notorious cheapskate who paid his artists very little; they instead gravitated to Columbia, Brunswick and especially Victor.

This is a very scarce book. OCLC shows only five copies in libraries, none offered for sale online.