The Ginn & Company Music Appreciation 78-rpm records

Appreciating Music:
The Ginn & Company 78s

Ginn's Music Appreciation/Music Education record label Ginn & Company's Music Education Series of the 1920s sometimes rose above the level of a prosaic "school" label. The two companies that produced these pioneering educational records for Ginn employed prominent concert artists and recorded some unusual fare that the commercial labels had passed by. Production of Ginn's series took several interesting twists and turns before the label disappeared in the depths of the Great Depression.

In the mid-1920s, Ginn & Company, a Boston-based educational publisher, introduced a line of phonograph records to accompany its popular music appreciation texts in schools. Ginn's advertising claimed that the new record series was nothing less than "a complete course in music education for the elementary schools of America." Series editors were Thaddeus P. Giddings, Will Earnhardt, Ralph L. Baldwin, and Eldridge W. Newton. The records were keyed to a Ginn teachers' manual, Music Appreciation in the Schoolroom.

Ginn's records were sold in sturdily boxed sets, neatly packaged in individual sleeves that outlined lesson plans and provided historical and musical background for each piece. The tone of the lesson plans was decidedly stilted and often condescending. Teachers were instructed to play Ethel Barnes' "Swing Song" and watch their students' reaction: "If during the playing of the record the class, or the greater part of the class, show by their expression that they enjoy it, this indicates that they take pleasure in the charm of the music as a whole... It is to be hoped that eventually all the pupils will respond to all these cultural influences." In many cases, the notes were simply unhelpful. The sleeve to record G-2, for example, informs us that Alexander Glazunov "was a noted composer," but nothing more.

The Gennett Series
Ginn initially contracted production of its series to the Starr Piano Company, manufacturer of Gennett records. The Talking Machine World for February 15, 1925, reported that "The New York laboratories of the Starr Piano Company are making a series of 120 records for an educational course being prepared by Ginn & Co., publishers, of Boston, Mass. Philharmonic orchestras are making the recordings, with Theo Carle [sic], Frederick Baer, and Inez Barbour as soloists."

Although most of Starr's masters appeared exclusively on the Ginn series, a few (primarily those by Karle, Baer, and Barbour) might have been issued previously on Gennett's Art Tone or green-label classical series. The Gennett series was recorded acoustically, under the direction of Henry Hadley, and members of his New York Philharmonic Orchestra appeared anonymously on many issues. Sleeves credited production "The Gennett Record Division of the Starr Piano Company, Richmond, Indiana."

Starr, better known for its pioneering jazz records and cheap Sears Roebuck pressings, was singularly ill-equipped to produce such a series.

The Columbia-Gennett Hybrids
Production of the Ginn series shifted abruptly to the Columbia Phonograph Company in early 1926, suggesting that Starr had signed only a one-year contract or otherwise failed to live up to Ginn's expectations. The immediate result was an intriguing series of hybrid issues, pressed by Columbia from Gennett's masters. Sleeves from the transition have the Gennett imprint struck over, with Columbia's imprint added below.

The Columbia-Gennett issues offer a rare opportunity to hear Gennett masters in Columbia's virtually noiseless laminated pressings. Details lost in the original gritty Gennett pressings are strikingly clear in the Columbia's "Silent Surface" re-pressings. The earliest hybrids still show Starr's master numbers, but these were neatly effaced by Columbia on slightly later pressings. Like the earliest Starr releases, the Columbia- Starr hybrid issues are fairly scarce.

The Later Columbia Issues
In time, the Starr masters were replaced entirely by electrically recorded Columbia remakes. Columbia's series, more common than the earlier Gennett and hybrid Gennett-Columbia issues, again was produced under the direction of Hadley. Of the Gennett-era vocalists, only Karle seems to have been retained. Several different sets of records were announced, with corresponding changes in label color. Columbia's issues show the circled-W logo (indicating a Western Electric system recording) but, unlike most other Columbia products, they do not show master numbers.

Much of the Ginn series consisted of pedestrian renditions of overly familiar snippets by Bach, Handel, Mendelssohn, and other popular composers, but in the later 1920 Columbia offered some rarely recorded pieces, including MacDowell's "Of a Tailor and a Bear," Poldini's "Dance of the Dolls," and Levitt's "Way of a Boy Suite."

Ginn's Music Education Series survived at least into the early 1930s. Later pressings, made in Columbia's Royal Blue shellac after December 1932, are rare today.

References
Ginn & Company. Record sleeves and teachers' materials from the Music Education series.
(c. 1925–1932)
"Starr Makes School Records." Talking Machine World (2/15/1925)