Volume 16 , Issue 23

RCA Victor's Red Seal Label

The Red Seal label began in 1902 by the Gramophone Company in the United Kingdom, which was quickly adopted by the United States affiliate, the Victor Talking Machine Company.

Some music records are pressed on colored vinyl or with paper pictures embedded in them (picture discs). These discs can become collectors' items in some cases. Certain 45-rpm RCA or RCA Victor Red Seal records used red translucent vinyl for extra Red Seal effect. During the 1980s there was a trend for releasing singles on colored vinyl.

RCA Victor's Red Seal series continued its pre-eminence from the 1930s through the 1950s due partly to the recorded output of three of the leading conductors of the time: Serge Koussevitzky, Leopold Stokowski, and Arturo Toscanini. Nearly all of Toscanini's recordings were issued on Red Seal, most of them with the NBC Symphony Orchestra (NBC was a subsidiary of RCA until 1986). Conductor Eugene Ormandy made his first recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra for Red Seal, and returned to the label in 1968, after spending many years with Columbia Records. Leonard Bernstein also made his first recordings for RCA. Another best-selling RCA Red Seal conductor was Arthur Fiedler, who made many recordings with the Boston Pops Orchestra for the label.

In 1949, RCA Victor released the first 45rpm single, 7-inch in diameter, with a large center hole to accommodate an automatic play mechanism on the changer, so a stack of singles would drop down one record at a time automatically after each play. Early 45 RPM music records were made from either vinyl or polystyrene.

The commercial rivalry between RCA Victor and Columbia Records led to RCA Victor's introduction of what it had intended to be a competing vinyl format, the 7-inch (175 mm) /45 rpm disc. For a two-year period from 1948 to 1950, record companies and consumers faced uncertainty over which of these formats would ultimately prevail in what was known as the "War of the Speeds."   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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