United Hebrew Disc and Cylinder Company

The United Hebrew Disc and Cylinder Company, sometimes abbreviated as UHD&C, was an American record label who made about 150 records of only Jewish-Hebrew nature beginning in 1904 with last known recording taking place in 1906.[1][2]

History

UHD&C was formed by Pierre Long and managed by H.W. Perlman.[2] It was incorporated in Brooklyn, New York in 1904 with a capitalization of $20,000.[3] It was an outgrowth of Perlman's piano manufacturing business and operated out of the same building that built pianos.[2] The recordings were dubbed from master cylinders to disc in a crude process that made for noisy, audibly inferior recordings.[2] Discs by the United Hebrew Disc and Cylinder Company were pressed by at least two companies, the International Record Company and Leeds & Catlin.[4] Most of UHD&C's promotional activity took place between January and November 1905.[5] Facing intense competition from much larger companies for the Jewish record market and with an inferior product, UHD&C folded by the end of 1906.[6] Nevertheless, the company holds its place in history as the first ethnically owned and operated producer of recorded sound in America.[2]

Output

United Hebrew Disc and Cylinder Company's first issued record was a recording pirated from The Gramophone Company.[2] The output of UHD&C was strictly Hebrew and announced as such in a 1905 press release.[2][7] Some of the Yiddish artists who recorded for this label include Louis Friedsell, Kalman Juvelier, Regina Prager, and Solomon Smulewitz.[1] UHD&C announced an agreement to record Abraham Goldfaden, but no records were issued.[2] It released the earliest known klezmer accordion recordings.[8] The output of UHD&C has been largely documented in Ethnic Music on Records by Richard Spottswood, Greenwood Press (1990).[4] Some record titles and catalog numbers :

Artist Title Cat Number
Rosinkes Mit Mandlen Kalman Juvelier 1003
Ribone Scheil Ojlem Cantor A. Minkowsky 1064

References
  1. Spottswood, Richard K. (1990). Ethnic Music on Records, a Discography of Ethnic Recordings Produced in the United States, 1893 to 1942; Vol. 3 - Eastern Europe. Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press. pp. 1299, 1305–1306, 1335, 1362–1363, 1464, 1472, 1483, 1525. ISBN 0-252-01718-8.
  2. Sapoznik, Henry (2010). Klezmer!: Jewish Music from Old World to Our World. Schirmer Trade Books. ISBN 9780857125057 – via Google Books.
  3. "Corporations". The Brooklyn Citizen. Brooklyn, New York. July 8, 1904. p. 7 – via newspapers.com.
  4. Sutton, Allan (2021). The International Record Company Discography (PDF) (2 ed.). Mainspring Press. p. 13.
  5. Andrews, Frank (2005). Hoffmann, Frank (ed.). Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound. Taylor & Francis. p. 2222. ISBN 9781135949501.
  6. Sapoznik, Henry (1988). "From Eastern Europe to East Broadway: Yiddish Music in Old World and New" (PDF). New York Folklore. Vol. 14, no. 3–4. p. 122.
  7. Ethnic Recordings in America: A Neglected Heritage. American Folklife Center, Library of Congress. 1982. p. 45. ISBN 0-8444-0339-3 – via Google Books.
  8. Miller, Malcolm (2001). The Accordion in All Its Guises. Harwood Academic Publishers. p. 137.

See also


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