Odeon Records

Odeon is the 1903 the Berlin commercial register brand name founded by the American Frederick M. Prescott in the Weissensee district in the same year International Talking Machine Company for the production of gramophones and records.

History

The name was from Prescott, who had previously been Managing Director of the International Zonophone Company in Berlin, and his chief clerk Richard Seligsohn chosen with regard to the French capital, the music instrument maker Charles and Jacques Ullmann and refers to the famous Paris Odeon Theatre. A characteristic feature of a different color depending on the price class label was the " Odeon Temple ".

The company launched in 1904 the first two-sided disc playable out, for which it sought in vain to enforce exclusive rights, and enlarged the records of 18 centimeters diameter of 25 and 30 centimeters. This game lives were achieved of up to five and a half minutes. Odeon developed into a major player on the international market and sales records also recordings with non-European music. Already in the founding year traveled engineer John Daniel Smoot North Africa, Greece and Turkey to make there shots. Field trips to Latin America and India followed. 1906 saw the Odeon repertoire over 11,000 titles with "world music".

At the International Talking Machine Company were next to the Odeon brands Fonotipia, Jumbo and Jumbola. Because pirates copied the plates by decreased galvanic means pressing tools, the International Talking Machine Company protected their plate brands with a trick: Approximately in the center of each plate she cut a groove at a greater distance. So Odeon and various panels were indistinguishable even from the outside.

In 1911 the company became a subsidiary of the Carl Lindström AG, which in turn was merged in the EMI Group. Odeon was preserved as its own brand by the end of the record as a mass recordings. Among the most famous artists, the Odeon took them under contract, one of the tenor Richard Tauber, Zarah Leander and the Emperor of the Yiddish Song Leo Fuld. The Comedian Harmonists brought out her first records at Odeon, before they closed an exclusive contract with Electrola. The Beatles appeared temporarily to the Odeon label.