Early British disc record labels 1898-1926

General site information

Technical words on this page are explained in ‘Glossary of Terms used re. 78s’. Find it under the ‘Articles about 78s’ tab.

1. Unless otherwise stated, all the disc records illustrated are 10″ (25cm) diameter, double sided, lateral cut and start at the edge.
2. Other diameters are given in inches and, usually, centimetres. Vertical cut records are seldom encountered,  but are noted when they occur. The only alternative to edge start is centre start, and this is confined to earlier Pathé discs. Just to add to the general festivities, those Pathés are also vertical cut!
3. S/s = single sided.
4. A date such as 09-1914 or 07-10-1923 is the dd-mm-yyyy the record is known – or thought – to have been issued. The recording date would generally be a few weeks earlier, but there are many examples when it might be a long time, or even many years before, so please bear this in mind.
5. A known recording date is given in the same format, but prefixed R. For example: R 14-07-1924. If it’s an estimate, C. (circa) is put before the date.
6. Do not depend on dating a record merely by its label. This is often reliable, but major companies would often keep a disc in catalogue for many years. So each time they re-pressed it, it would bear the then-current label. For an example of this, go to Zonophone and read about the 12″ (30cm) disc Zonophone A-16.

Sources

Each label has brief notes or explanation. Usually, it begins with a reference to an article giving more information on the label. Indeed, we have based most of our brief sketches on these articles.

Unfortunately, many of those magazines and journals are not easy to find. It is hoped they may eventually be brought together in a complete body, and made available once again, perhaps in digital or on-line format. A good start has already been made: the first 220 issues of the ‘Hillandale News’ are available on CD-ROM as stated below.

Above all, you will see the name Frank Andrews occurring again and again in these pages. His indefatigable work, over many decades, is the heart and soul of our knowledge of early British record labels – not to mention a good many later ones! A tribute to the late Frank Andrews, plus a selected bibliography by Bill Dean-Myatt, M.Phil. may be accessed here.

Besides articles, very many complete label listings have been published in book form, mostly by the CLPGS (the British National Society for these matters), and in such cases, a link is given to the CLPGS site, where you will find more details of these valuable publications.

Indeed, if you are at all interested in early phonographs, gramophones, and/or cylinder and disc records, you may consider joining the CLPGS.

Authors, Periodicals and Books most often cited

• FA = Frank Andrews
• HD = “Hillandale News” – Journal of the City Of London Phonograph & Gramophone Society, 1960 – 2001
• A CD-ROM containing issues 1 to 220 of “Hillandale News” 1960 – 1998 is available from the CLPGS
• FTR = “For the Record” – Journal of the City Of London Phonograph & Gramophone Society, 2002 to date
• TMR = “Talking Machine Review” – Ernie Bayly 1969 – 1989; John Booth 1989 – 2001
• BRI = The British Record Industry During the Reign of Edward VII: 1901-1910 by Frank Andrews. CLPGS Reference Series No.3, 2010
• NR = ‘Nicole Record’: a Discography and history by Michael Kinnear. Pub. Michael Kinnear, Victoria, Australia, 2001
• E78PB = The English 78 Picture Book. Don Taylor. Artemis Publishing Consultants, Hobart, Tasmania, 1993.

Images

The images for each label are in a gallery. Scroll through the galleries to see each label.