December Records

In the rebirth of the U. S. phonograph-record industry, whose sales climbed from 10,000,000 discs in 1932 to a possible 100,000,000 this year, manufacturers made one remarkable discovery: that people will buy cheap records of good music, even if the records are indifferently performed by anonymous musicians. Last week, on the heels of cheap symphonies for newspaper promotion, a new series of anonymous discs was on sale, the cheapest yet: 29-c- for a ten-inch disc. The records were issued by Musicraft Records, Inc. of Manhattan.

Musicraft's "Masterpiece" records, competently performed and well recorded, are largely familiar: the Schubert Serenade, the Brahms Lullaby, Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, etc. What makes them notable is that they are sold in drug and chainstores. Musicraft's Vice President Paul Puner began experimentally in Manhattan last September, by last week had his platters in 800 stores throughout the land--with sales topping 50,000 a week. Last week Musicraft made a deal with a promoter (anonymous) to sell at least 1,200,000 Masterpiece discs next year in credit furniture and jewelry stores. The records will be sold, like silver or china, in packages of a dozen or two, on tick.

Musicraft, an outfit which hitherto specialized in high-brow discs, got into the chain-store trade by merest chance. Last summer Eli Oberstein's U. S. Record Corp. (TIME, Feb. 19) petitioned for reorganization. Its record-pressing plant, in Scranton, Pa., was owned by Scranton industrialists, who extricated it from the U. S. corporate setup. Musicraft saw its chance, contracted with the Scranton group to press the anonymous Masterpiece recordings.

Other records of the month:

POPULAR

Leafing back through its own catalogue and those of Okeh, Vocalion and Brunswick (which it controls), Columbia reissued 40 discs of oldtime hot stuff--Trumpeters Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke, Fletcher Henderson's band, Singer Bessie Smith, et al. Further Columbia reissues will enable latecomers among the jazz collectors to plug gaps in their libraries.

SYMPHONIC, ETC.

Sibelius: Symphony No. 2 in D Major

(New York Philharmonic-Symphony, conducted by John Barbirolli; Columbia: 10 sides; $5.50). The great Finn's most popular symphony, full of surging tunes and brassy patriotics, tooled energetically by the Philharmonic, but less polished than the older Boston Symphony recording (Victor).

Sibelius: Belshazzar's Feast (London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Robert Kajanus; Victor: 4 sides; $2.50). Incidental music to a play by Sibelius' friend Hjalmar Procope, Finnish Minister to the U. S. Finnish Orientalism is queer, but pleasing.

Rachmaninoff: Concerto No. 3 in D Minor (Sergei Rachmaninoff, pianist, with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy; Victor: 9 sides; $5). Composer Rachmaninoff puts one of his war horses through its paces, in Victor's second offering of a Rachmaninoff cycle. First: his Symphony No. 3, with the composer conducting the Philadelphians.

Schubert: Fantasia in C Major ("The Wanderer") (Edward Kilenyi, pianist, with orchestra conducted by Selmar Meyrowitz; Columbia: 6 sides; $3.50). Based in part on a Schubert song, expanded into a concerto by Franz Liszt, this glittering romantic work here gets its best recording to date.

Early American Carols and Folk Songs (John Jacob Niles, ballad singer; Victor: 8 sides; $3.50). Strumming a dulcimer, Kentuckian Niles croons ancient carols, rousing ditties like The Frog and the Mouse and The Carrion Crow.

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