The cover of Jorge Bolet's recording of Prokofiev's Opus 16. 

The excellent recording of Liszt's Concerto No. 1 and Totentanz (archaic Todtentanz), Variations on Dies Irae, played by Edward Kilenyi.

The first pressings on the Musirama label are thick and do not have the groove guard.

Later pressings on the red and blue Musirama labels are generally of less quality compared to the first black Musirama label because different electronics were used.

Violinist Ossy Renardy is accompanied by Eugene List in the Violin Sonatas of César Franck and Maurice Ravel on R-199-148.

Ossy Renardy plays Paganini Caprices with Eugene Helmer at the piano.

Remington R-199-184

In 1995 I wrote an article about Remington Records and called it "Obscure Adventure", indicating that for a long time hardly any fact was known to me and to many other collectors about the owner of the label, the way the recordings were produced and manufactured, and that only a few details about just a few artists were available.

In "Ideas that became big business", written by Clinton Woods (Founders Inc., Baltimore, 1959), many brands like Coca-Cola, Black & Decker, Goodyear, Hertz, Singer and Steinway, and pioneers like Bell, Otis and Schaeffer are well documented. The only Remington brand names are those of the typewriter manufacturer, and of course of the rifle industry which in time of war speeded up their production. But the author does not deal with phonographic patents and successes. Columbia's invention of the long playing record is never mentioned. Apparently the general perception was that the record business was not a big business at all.

Image taken from a High Fidelity Magazine issue from the early 1950s.

So I had to be contented with a few record magazines from the nineteen fifties that were available in Europe. Most of the time there was hardly any information on the back of the LP covers, except for the listed titles and reference numbers. Only in a few encyclopedia there were entries about conductor Kurt Wöss and violinist Michèle Auclair and it was mentioned that these performers had recorded for the Remington label. Even Harold C. Schonberg, writing the paragraph on Jorge Bolet in his book "The Great Pianists", never mentions the recordings Jorge Bolet made for the Remington label in 1953. And the local public library had practically no reference books on artists and orchestras and the recordings they had made. When I started researching further on the internet in 1999, chances finding details were very rare. Only the Library of Congress had files showing names and numbers, but most disappeared already a few years later when the LOC restructured their filing system and reviewed what would be on the net and what not. Wikipedia did not exist yet.

Only gradually more names of artists were being mentioned on general pages, on homepages of pupils who studied with pianists and violinists, on pages of scholars who had done some research in a specific field. And when Wikipedia came into being more info could be found, often triggered by the existence of The REMINGTON Site.
For quite some time there were records released by Tom Null on the Varèse Sarabande label. But these were not available in Europe. Later APR issued old recordings of a few artists like Edward Kilenyi and Simon Barere, but only much later CDs of more original recordings have been issued by Bearac Records, APR and Re-Discovery.

It is as if the artists concerned forgot about the Remington recordings they once made. And if they were still alive, they probably did not recall that they recorded for the label as this could be considered by some a false step in their careers, or they were not even aware of the fact that their performances were being released on a cheap American label. The information I read about Michèle Auclair at the time provided by Coupe d'Archet does not mention a single Remington recording.

Maybe a few artists would still be alive and could provide more information. So I started writing letters, searching the telephone directories and just called and spoke to several of them on the phone already in 2000 and 2001.
Most musicians I contacted were responding positively, except for Gérard Poulet, and also for Michèle Auclair, after writing many letters and many telephone calls to Boston and Paris, and leaving messages on the answering machine of the late violinist.
At the time the only web site that mentioned Frieda Valenzi was the one of duo-pianists Krassimira Jordan & Thomas Kreuzberger. Kreuzberger had studied with Frieda Valenzi. They forwarded my e-mail to conductor/pianist Roswitha Heinze and from her I received information about Frieda Valenzi and we started a correspondence.

I talked very shortly to Laszlo Halasz and extensively to his wife, cellist Suzette Forgues. She was still active as a teacher at the time.
I called up Alexander Jenner in Vienna one Sunday afternoon and he gave me important details and images sent by his son. I spoke to Conrad Hansen in Hamburg on the phone as well.
Dominique Chailley, grandson of pianist Céliny Chailley-Richez, send me an extensive article he had just finalized from which I could use several details.
Violoncellist Ursula Erhart-Schwertmann, daughter of pianist Hermann Schwertmann, sent biographical notes and pictures of her father.
With pianist Felicitas Karrer I corresponded and had several telephone conversations. She was managing the garage her father had built. After she had seen the page she sent me a Sachertorte, the Viennese chocolate cake, to express her appreciation. It arrived well packed in its original wooden box.
Graphic artist Alex Steinweiss sent me an overview with data of his career.
Esa Haapa-Aho from Finland send me a few photocopies of old photographs and of a few newspaper clippings which were all printed in a book from way back. They dealt with the history of the Helsinki University Chorus (Ylioppilaskunnan Laulajat).

These and more were contacted at one time or another and generally they responded in a positive way. Right from the start in 1999 the pages invited anyone, who had a reminiscence or knew specific facts about the label and its creator Don Gabor, to contribute. The basic layout was designed then and the design of the pages has changed only in minor details. That was before Wikipedia started with its global concept encompassing a multitude of encyclopedic subjects and created a professional basic layout.

Several pupils and acquaintances of pianists, violinists, conductors and teachers responded positively, directly themselves or through colleagues. I also had a few telephone conversations with record producer Tom Null of the Varèse Sarabande label in California. He gave me a few details and he suggested that I find and call up Mr. Laszlo Halasz.
Violin teacher Patricia Jaeger from Seattle sent me details and a comment on the Young Violinist's Series and stressing the importance of such an instructional series.

Many others supplied details as well, about a record cover or a name, they wrote a personal recollection, or a more extensive contribution, as Ryan Barna did about Polka King Frank Yankovic. Lory Wallfisch responded to the Enesco page. Regina Resnik wrote about how her carreer started under maestro Fritz Busch.
Timothy Gaspar sent me an interesting article written in 1951 by journalist Cecil Smith published in The New Republic.
Stéfanos Theodoridis from Greece saw the page about Alice and Theodore Pashkus and send me photographs owned by his teacher Yorgos Manessis who had studied himself with Alice Pashkus, and Stéfanos added a few details.
Professor Dr. Marco de Vries visited Helen Airoff in London and later founded the Helen Dowling Institute in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He gave me copies of a letter written by Yehudi Menuhin and two photographs of Helen.
These people submitted valuable information. They are all listed on the previous page.

It is not surprising that information is scarce. First of all the label existed only for eight years in the early days of the LP era. Secondly: the quality was far from first rate. And thirdly many labels did not like the competition they got from Remington because the releases were low priced. Remington was ignored by the other big labels, yet at the same time the other labels wanted to make life rather difficult for its owner, Don Gabor.
Robert Angus told me, that if somebody would ask the proprietors of a local record shop to stock, or at least to order more Remington titles, without exception they all refused. They already had been told by the sales representatives of the distributors of Victor and Columbia that if they would continue to do business with Don Gabor, they would lose their franchises for these quality labels .

 

Personnel of Remington's Webster pressing plant in Massuchsetts and their relatives at the 1957 Christmas party.

This position may have strengthened Don Gabor in adopting less common ways of recruiting artists and acquiring taped performances: "He would take anything he could lay his hands on", discographer David Diehl told me. And that was certainly the case when the label was discontinued and Don Gabor released all sorts of music on his other budget labels.

There are only a few Remington recordings which had been released by other record labels first, like excerpts from Bach's Christmas Oratorio conducted by Hans Grischkat which was released on R-199-155, but had been issued by Renaissance on SX 201. The plates of the complete performance were bought by Gabor from Renaissance. There is the recording of Symphony No. 3 of Anton Bruckner which was first issued on Concert Hall Society and later on Remington.

Gabor had his own ways of mass production and of stimulating sales. He used a cheap low quality substitute for vinylite named "websterlite", he continuously had the record covers restyled, suggesting that the releases were new recordings, and on top of that, he simultaneously issued a number of the same performances on other labels he created, Plymouth, Merit, Masque, Etude, Masterseal, Buckingham, Paris, Pontiac, Webster, etc.

The label of the 1956 release with works by Ward and Stein says: HIFI by WEBSTER. The words Living Sound were of course deliberately chosen. The record is pressed from the original plates of the Remington American Composers release R-199-185.

The competition he faced could have intensified certain less positive traits of his character. When I asked Mrs. Wilma Cozart Fine of Mercury Living Presence Records about Don Gabor and Remington Records, she said: "Oh, those people". This reaction is quite understandable. When Don Gabor started off with the Remington label it soon became the independent label with the largest turnover.

"Aiming at mass distribution, he persuaded Macy's to place a trial order for 20.000 records. They were sold in a single day(...)", Cecil Smith reported in the NEW REPUBLIC of April 23, 1951. Smith evaluated a batch of Remington releases in an article called Low-Priced Records. His conclusion: out of 21 records only 8 were more or less acceptable. The article clarifies how clever Gabor was in selling large quantities. See MUSIC: Low-Priced Records.

Yes, Gabor did not have a large network like the big labels had (though he had representatives in important cities), nor did he have too much personnel (at least in the beginning of his enterprise, but the Webster pressing plant soon had a large number of workers), and the artists who recorded for him were not too expensive, although Viennese producer Marcel Prawy was paid generously by Gabor. Furthermore the works were mostly in the public domain. And as mentioned before: he used that cheap kind of vinyl.

By listening to the Remington releases one easily can hear that Don Gabor did not care much about the sonic quality of the product and that he had his own ideas of what a long playing record should represent. Nevertheless he can be considered as a kind of pioneer, not in microphone placement as C. Robert Fine of Mercury Records was, and not in tackling the problem of inner groove distortion as technicians of RCA did. No, Don Gabor was the man who turned Columbia's freshly invented LP more or less right from the start into a medium with Music for Millions. He quasi reinvented the LP.

Gabor's marketing strategy was probably reinvented every time the circumstances dictated a new move. And he acted along the lines 'not the quality of the cheese has to be improved upon, no, people have to eat more cheese', the common marketing strategy which was later described and attacked by Vance Packard in his book "The Hidden Persuaders" (1957).

We should not forget that in the early nineteen fifties records were generally played on gramophones with a crystal or ceramic pick up cartridge with a frequency curve which showed an early roll off. And the amplification was mostly provided by a simple radio or a tiny valve amplifier and a high efficiency loudspeaker or on a portable gramophone.

The fact that Don Gabor overlooked the importance of sound quality was an omission that kept him, regrettably, from establishing a label that withstood the changes of time. In hindsight however there are a few items in the original catalogue that should be seen as unique - in some instances because of the work that was recorded, but most of the time specific items have their importance because of the artists who were talked into performing for the label. Some artists played their last song like Simon Barere, or were of age, like pianists Etelka Freund and Ernst von Dohnányi, violinists George Enesco and Albert Spalding, singers Karin Branzell and Anne Roselle. There were also artists who tried to pick up their careers which were so brusquely interrupted by World War II, as was the case with pianists Jorge Bolet and Edward Kilenyi (both enlisted in the US Army during World War II). Or they were of the younger generation, artists who just stood at the beginning of their careers: violinists Michèle Auclair and Gérard Poulet, pianists Alexander Jenner and Jörg Demus, and conductor Wolfgang Sawallisch, just to mention a few.

The extraordinary thing about Remington Records is that there are quite a few artists on it, who show their early or late in life insights by just playing without the artificial splicing and the use of special techniques to embellish the recording, but with the relatively limited quality of the recording technique used in those days. Yet several Remington discs bear the impact of their art.

As a young teenager I grew up with records of Philips, English Decca and Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft. Philips was agreeable. Early Deccas had a rather dull sound. The perception of these qualities was caused by the playback equipment of which the frequency characteristic was not very extended. And I did not like the dark sound of the DGG LP's too much. One evening I attended a special demonstration of a Philips hi-fi set consisting of a big cabinet containing two full range 9710 AM 800 Ohm units connected to the Philips amplifier, in fact directly to the tube circuit without the interface of a transformer (OTL). The system also had two small boxes reproducing the upper mid frequencies and highs. They were hanging on the wall on each side of the big loudspeaker cabinet.

When listening to this system, I did not fail to tell the people from the store that the sound of the Deutsche Grammophon LP of Tchaikovsky's 2nd concerto played by Shura Cherkassky sounded much too "dark and boomy".
How did I, as a 14 year old know? Well, I visited the school concerts which were given in the concert hall of my hometown. My parents took me to recitals of famous pianists like Béla Siki, Clara Haskil, Cor de Groot and Stefan Askenase. And a few years earlier I had sung in the boys' choir in Bach's St.Matthew Passion performed at Easter conducted by Hans Brandts Buys. On top of that my brother played the violin.

I pretended to know what the sound produced by instruments, voices and an orchestra was like. My perception differed completely from what electronics and big loudspeakers reproduced. The second Decca series with prefix LXTs and subsequent series had already better dynamics. It all depended much on the applied playback characteristic and the equipment. In the early years no standardization was adopted and practically every label had its own playback characteristic with the (de-) emphasis in the curve to which the record was cut. Each and every record company had their own philosophy. So some records sounded dull, others warm, and again others lacked a firm midband and attack. In comparison the sound of the Remingtons had a more chiseled character.

And then there were the Remington Musirama records which were imported in our country already in 1955 but I got acquainted with many years later. That was when I came across Prokofiev's 2nd Concerto played by Jorge Bolet and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under Thor Johnson and was struck by the composition as well as the performance. The concerto was music to my ears and Jorge Bolet's way of playing the incredibly complex score with the varying moods and the changes in pace and presence, became one of my most cherished discs and served as an incentive to explore Remington's catalog further: Jorge Bolet playing the Four Scherzi of Chopin, Edward Kilenyi with Liszt's 1st Concerto and Totentanz (Todtentanz), Ossy Renardy with Paganini's Caprices, Alec Templeton in Gershwin's Concerto in F with the Cincinnati Symphony and Thor Johnson, Jonel Perlea conducting the RIAS Symphony Orchestra with Saint-Saëns' Carnival of Animals and excerpts from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, and a most captivating recording of the Helsinki University Chorus singing songs by Jean Sibelius and others.

Jorge Bolet performed Chopin not impeccably, though with drive. His interpretation was devoid of sentimentality. The recording had presence and undeniably showed the sound of a warm Baldwin piano. Alec Templeton's grand piano was clearly defined as well and the timpani in the Gershwin Concerto sounded impressive and it had zest. The sound of Edward Kilenyi's Liszt had weight and firmness in the lower register and strength and clarity in the top of the keyboard while the orchestral sound had space and the orchestra responded with quickness. Although these recordings sounded quite good when played on my simple record player (fitted was a Ronette crystal pick up) connected to a big valve amplifier with separate power supply which fed a full range speaker unit housed in The Boffle constructed according to the details given in "The Gramophone", I soon discovered that the bulk of the catalog was not on par with the standard of these LPs. 

The management of the record department of the renowned piano shop where I bought my Musirama treasures were anxious not to offer the lesser Remingtons from stock. They could be ordered. But I was more or less advised against the purchase of other releases. When I saw some items like Grieg's Concerto with Felicitas Karrer in the window of a general store and went in to have a listen, I discovered a prominent hiss which was then and there an obstacle, despite the wonderfully poetic performance given by Ms. Karrer and Kurt Wöss. The quality slogan printed on the cover read Factory Guaranteed, but had really no meaning. The lady of the store told me that the hiss would wear off after a few playings! She certainly could not convince me. She obviously had been instructed by her boss to tell such nonsense.
Yet the temptation to buy a few more of the label was always there.
First of all because of the price. Wilhelm Kempff with Beethoven's 4th Concerto conducted by Paul van Kempen on a 10" gatefold Deutsche Grammophon was quite an investment for which I could buy nearly two 12" Remington discs. That was quite an incentive for a school kid who collected also jazz and big band music.

There was another attractive aspect of Remington records: the distinguished design of the label and the covers. On first glance the art work may have looked a bit childish at times but in most cases had a high artistic quality which was appealing and did rise the curiosity of any prospective buyer who had some artistic taste. But the number of my acquisitions did not rise above the items mentioned earlier together with the LP of Chopin's Etudes Op. 10 played by Kilenyi.
In those days there were only a few Remington recordings which were praised in the specialized magazines and by a reviewer like Warren DeMotte in his The Long Playing Record Guide. And in our national record magazine a couple of Musirama discs got a good review: Symphonie Fantastique (George Sebastian), Gershwin (Alec Templeton), Dvorak 4th (Thor Johnson), Tchaikovsky's 2nd symphony (Thor Johnson), Aida with Ettore Bastianini and Franco Capuana.

Ever since I was a kid my curiosity about the label and its owner was aroused but not satisfied. When I published a book about audio and music in the mid nineteen nineties, I wrote the article about Remington Records. But when the world wide web became accessible, it presented the opportunity to publish an entire site about the label: The REMINGTON Site. It gives honor to many artists who would be forgotten and others who receive recognition anew, and it is a late tribute to its owner, Don Gabor, who in contrast to Eli Oberstein and his Allegro Royale bootlegged recordings, really wanted to produce Music for Millions. Also the label enjoys a sort of renaissance because of the increasing and new attention it gets since the publication of these pages which makes people discover that not every Remington disc is a find.

I wish you happy reading and browsing. Come back any time. You can check the names of artists on the previous page, or you just can go to the next page and go on reading.

Rudolf A. Bruil - Page first published in September, 1999 and updated.