Music Lovers' Phonograph Monthly Review (PMR) was an American magazine for record enthusiasts founded in Jamaica Plain, Boston, by Axel B. Johnson.[1] The first issue was dated October 1926 (Vol., no. 1)[a] – three years, six months after the first issue of Gramophone, a similar magazine founded in London by Compton Mackenzie.[2][3] As put by George Wilson Oman (1895–1947) – an Edinburgh-born Chicago-based telegraph operator and organizer of the Phonograph Art Society of Chicago[4] – "This magazine is to the United States what the Gramophone is to Great Britain and bids fair in its splendidly edited pages to rival the Gramophone."[5][6] The magazine ran for 66 issues – six and one-half years – ending March 1932 (Vol. 6, no. 6), under financial duress during the Great Depression.[7] Although, the suspension of the April and May 1932 issues has been attributed to, according to Gramophone magazine, "a misfortune of which we have only just heard from an American reader." "He says that the Editor, Mr. Axel Johnson, was kidnapped late in March, 'robbed, beaten unconscious and thrown from a speeding automobile.'"[8]PMR – through the succession of Music Lovers' Guide (1932–1935) and The American Music Lover (1935–1944) – is considered the forerunner to the American Record Guide.[9][10][11]
History
The magazine launch occurred (i) one year, three months after Columbia (May 1925) and (ii) ten months after Victor (November 2, 1925; "Victor Day") debuted their new systems – orthophonic (electrical) recording technology[12] – electronically-amplified sound developed by Bell Labs-Western Electric in an effort to replace the limited properties of the acoustic recording horn. The mid-1920s was also the beginning of the Golden Age of Radio and prior to the introduction of the new technology, consumer demand for old-style phonographs waned in favor of radios.
Reviews of recordings were first published in 1906 in Berlin by Phonographische Zeitschrift(de);[11] but, The Gramophone, in England, and the Phonograph Monthly Review, in North America, were the first non-record label periodicals that focused primarily on reviewing musical recordings.[13]
In 1932, Axel B. Johnson and R.D. Darrell purchased the Music Lovers' Guide.[9] The magazine ran monthly for 31 issues, from September 1932 (Vol. 1, no. 1) through March 1935 (Vol. 3, no. 7).[14][15][b]
New art deco cover, designed by Emma Cartwright Bourne (1906–1986),[16] featuring abstract images of discs and an acoustic tonearm with soundbox rather than an electrical pickup.
Axel B. Johnson (born around 1874)[18][19][20] – founder, publisher, and Managing Editor of PMR – had been for a brief time secretary of the Boston Gramophone Society.[21] He often signed his articles, "A.B.J." Robert Donaldson Darrell, Johnson's assistant and staff writer, took over as Managing Editor in 1930 after Johnson stepped down after his wife, Johanne (aka Johanna) Johnson (1877–1929), died in Jamaica Plain November 13, 1929. Their residence, at the time, was 47 Hampstead, Jamaica Plain.[22][23] Johnson had previously, from about 1922 to about 1926, been a barber in the Jamaica Plain area of Boston. Before that, in 1921, he lived in Pascoag, Rhode Island.[24]
Richard Gilmore Appel (1889–1975), Literary Editor and contributor, was head of the Music Division at the Boston Public Library.
Adolf Albert Biewend (1899–1953), born in Jamaica Plain, was Associate Editor and contributor since 1926. He was a 1925 graduate of Northeastern University. He became an attorney. His father, Rev. Adolf Heinrich Angelo Biewent (1814–1919), founded in 1871 the German Lutheran Church in Roxbury, and was its pastor until 1914. His mother, Elizabeth H. Biewend (1869–1941), had been an instructor at Wellesley College.
Emma Cartwright Bourne (maiden; 1906–1986), born in Norfolk, Connecticut, a painter and etcher, designed a new cover for PMR, beginning with Vol. 5, no. 1 (October 1930),[25] issued days after marrying – on September 30, 1930, in Arlington, Massachusetts – PMR's managing editor, Robert Donaldson Darrell. They divorced in 1936. Bourne was a 1927 graduate of Vassar College, the alma mater of her mother, Edith Louise Hunter (maiden; 1877–1950) (class of 1900).[26] Emma had studied art with Richard Andrew (1869–1956) of the Massachusetts School of Art.[16] Her cover design, in an art deco style, features abstract images of phonographic discs with an acoustic tonearm and soundbox, rather than an electrical pickup. Bourne also, in April 1932 drew a sketch of Isaac Goldberg for Disques magazine.[27]
Henry Cantwell Cox (1890–1954) – who, beginning in March 1925, became President of the newly organized Columbia Phonograph Company, Inc.
Robert Donaldson Darrell (1903–1988) – a former student at Harvard (1922) and composition student at the New England Conservatory (1923–1926) – became editor of the PMR. He took interest in jazz after hearing Ellington in 1927 and wrote positive reviews of his and other artists' work.[28][29][30][31][32] In 1939, Darrell received a Guggenheim Fellowship. Darrell, who also wrote for Disques, by 1927, in PMR, was writing jazz reviews. According to James Lincoln Collier, for the "Jazz" entry in the 1994 edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, "Darrell was the first writer on jazz to make judgements in print that generally hold up today." And, "he was the first writer to single out Ellington's "Black and Tan Fantasy" for extended comment."[33]
George Clarence "Clare" Jell (1881–1955), Ontario-born and naturalized U.S. citizen, known for his connection to the Columbia Masterworks Library.
Alfred Henry Meyer (1888–1944), music critic for the Boston Transcript for about 10 years. He was a faculty member of Boston University since 1929 and, in 1941 until his death, served as Dean of its School of Music. He was an authority on American modern music. He was a graduate of Oberlin College and studied at had studied also at Harvard and the New England Conservatory of Music.[36]
George Wilson Oman (1895–1947) – an Edinburgh-born Chicago-based telegraph operator and organizer of the Phonograph Art Society of Chicago.[4][37]
Rev. Herbert Boyce Satcher (1890–1966), Episcopal clergyman and, at the time, Vicar of St. Aidan's Chapel in Cheltenham, Pennsylvania, founded, in 1928, the Cheltenham Phonograph Society, the first known clergyman in America to found a record society. He also contributed to PMR. He was regarded an authority of hymnology.[38][39] He compiled Indices to Volumes I, II & III of the Phonograph Monthly Review, which was published in 1930 by The Phonograph Publishing Company.[40][41]
William Henry Seltsam (1897–1968), who, early in 1932 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, founded the International Record Collectors' Club, and, among other things, persuaded American and foreign record labels to issue special editions of historically important recordings. He wrote about early opera recordings. He went on to become curator and bibliographer of the Metropolitan Opera.[42]
Edward Earl Shumaker (1882–1949), President of RCA Victor from 1925 to 1931, wrote an article titled "Television" for the December 1930 issue.
Moses Smith (né Moses Smithkins; 1901–1964), a 1921 graduate of Harvard College, was Associate Editor and contributor. He flourished in Boston as a music critic, first, in 1924, at the Boston American, then, beginning around 1934, at the Boston Transcript. After the demise of the Transcript, he became an executive at Columbia Masterworks in New York.
Walter Leslie Welch (1901–1995), who, in 1959 with Oliver Read, co-wrote From Tin Foil to Stereo,[44] discusses cylinders in a letter in the October 1930 issue.
Bibliography
Annotations
^The first issue of Music Lovers' Phonograph Monthly Review, dated October 1926 (Vol. 1, no. 1), was issued September 15, 1926. (Talking Machine World; September 15, 1926. p. 75)
^As of November 2022, only one digitized issue of Music Lovers' Guide (March 1934; Vol. 2, no. 7) was fully accessible online. (Music Lovers' Guide. Vol. 2, no. 7. March 1934 – via Internet Archive → uploaded February 27, 2022, by Shellackophile).
The author, David Hall, was the founding Editor of the ARSC Journal, and, from 1980 to 1982, President of the ARSC. He was the founding curator of recorded sound at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, which grew into a division known as the Rodgers and Hammerstein Sound Archives. He also had been a record critic for Stereo Review.
Hughes, Rupert Raleigh (ed.). Music Lovers' Encyclopedia. Completely revised and newly edited by Deems Taylor and Russell Kerr (né Russell Master Knerr; 1898–1975).
1939 ed (877 pages; 8°). Garden City Publishing Co., Inc. December 5, 2023. LCCN39027032.
Milligan, Stuart (December 1980). "Music and Other Performing Arts Serials Available in Microform and Reprint Editions". Notes. 37 (2). Music Library Association: 239–307. JSTOR939494.
For 18 years, Lindahl was an assistant professor and reference librarian at the Eastman School of Music.
Read, Oliver Hebert; Welch, Walter Leslie (1976) [1959]. From Tin Foil to Stereo: Evolution of the Phonograph. Howard W. Sams & Co., Inc. & The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc.
Satcher, Rev. Herbert Boyce (1930). Indices to Volumes I, II & III of the Phonograph Monthly Review. Boston: The Phonograph Publishing Company (publisher).
Shellackophile (The) – 78 RPM oriented blog, since 2010, of Walter Bryan Bishop, a musician – pianist, harpsichordist – record collector, and music educator from the Atlanta area. Re: Music Lovers' Guide, March 1932 – via Blogspot. (The Shellackophile)
Note: Prescott, was responding to contributor, George Wilson Oman (1895–1947). Prescott, a recording pioneer on various levels, had been affiliated with International Zonophone Company, which incorporated in Jersey City March, 7, 1901. His brother, Frederick Marion Prescott became managing director and J.O., himself, was one of the shareholders.
