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
^ abSpottswood, 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, 1305โ1306, 1335, 1362โ1363, 1464, 1472, 1483, 1525. ISBN0-252-01718-8.