Record Revival

More than a year ago the New York Post, as a promotion stunt, sold albums of symphonic records, at $1.93 per set of three or four, to coupon-clipping readers.

The records (made by RCA Victor), of standard works by Bach. Beethoven, Schubert, etc., were competently but anonymously performed. The idea, and the same albums, spread to Washington, whence a National Committee for Music Appreciation spread it to other cities (TIME, July 3). By last week the records, now priced at $1.49 to $1.98, were still going great guns. In 50 cities an estimated 1,000,000 discs had been distributed, usually through newspapers, which got nothing from the deal except good will. In Indiana and Texas the record-selling was conducted as a State program. The National Committee swears that four out of five record-purchasers are men.

In Manhattan, the Hearst Journal-American is now distributing a series of 24 single discs at 59-c---popular classics played (again anonymously) by a CBS orchestra under Howard Barlow. Distribution to date: 250,000 discs. This series was launched by an organization called Music You Enjoy, Inc., formed by John H. Alderton Jr. Promoter Alderton has refrained from trying to sell his series to other newspapers. Publishers Service Co., Inc., which launched the original Post scheme, is suing him for $250,000 for cribbing its idea. "Just as if Henry Ford tried to sue Walter Chrysler for putting a rival car on the market," said Mr. Alderton with an air last week.

Such sales of cheap records by last week had helped along a significant price change in the U. S. record industry, which until recent years had kept its prices stiff and proud. In the early 19305 radio competition cut U. S. disc sales to 10,000,000 a year. While total U. S. sales rose to some 60,000,000 last year, Victor began hearing crescendos of competition. Decca Records, which invaded the popular field with Bing Crosby and a 35-c- disc, also repressed, at 50-c- to $1, a great many foreign recordings. Columbia, most of whose twelve-inch symphonic discs remained at $1.50, began improving its product mechanically, lately signed up such topnotchers as the Minneapolis Symphony under Dimitri Mitropoulos, the Chicago Symphony under Frederick Stock, the Cleveland Orchestra under Artur Rodzinski. Likewise U. S. Records (run by Eli Oberstein, onetime Victor executive) produced a collection of classical recordings, not of the best mechanically but attractively priced at 75-c- and $1.

Last week RCA Victor bowed its lordly head, issued the first of a series of re-pressings, at 75-c- and $1. Some were new to the U. S.: the Schubert Unfinished Symphony by Bruno Walter and the Vienna Philharmonic ($3.25 in an album); the Tschaikowsky Nutcracker Suite by Eugene Goossens and the London Philharmonic. Some, like the Mozart G Minor Symphony by the Chicagoans under Dr.

Stock, were made almost a decade ago but are still excellent. Among numerous single $1 discs, at least one--Pianist Paderewski's performance of Chopin's Polonaise in E Flat Minor--suffers from surface noise, low recording volume. With its catalogue of 7,500 matrices from which to repress, Victor could claim that it had the edge on Decca in quality; that it can now fill what seems to have become an enormous U. S. demand for low-priced discs.

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