H. Royer Smith Co.

[Rickiecat]

Do any of you Philadelphia posters or others know what happened to the H.
Royer Smith Co. and their record review "The New Records? I subscribed to
"The New Records" for at least 30 yrs and then one day it just quit coming. No
letter was ever acknowledged or returned.
I have been wondering for a long time and now with this unlimited resource
maybe at long last I can find out what happened.
They also left owing me the better part of a year's subscription.

John F. Cook
San Pedro, CA 90732
rick...@aol.com

[TransfrGuy]

In the mid-'80s, they closed their retail store on Walnut Street and became a
mail-order-only business. This only lasted for a year or so before they folded
completely. It was a shame, because they often had factory -sealed
out-of-print records, and sold private collections at reasonable prices.

To give you an example, I went there in the early '80s and they had just
started putting out in the bins a huge collection of LPs which came from one
source. They were pricing these all at about $0.99 per disc. One of them was
a Shaded Dog stereo copy, in excellent condition, of Reiner's 1954
"Zarathustra." I said to myself, "I already have this on Victrola," and passed
it up. I've been kicking myself ever since!

Mark Obert-Thorn

[PAP]

Rickiecat wrote:
>
> Do any of you Philadelphia posters or others know what happened to the H.
> Royer Smith Co. and their record review "The New Records? I subscribed to
> "The New Records" for at least 30 yrs and then one day it just quit coming. No
> letter was ever acknowledged or returned.
> I have been wondering for a long time and now with this unlimited resource
> maybe at long last I can find out what happened.
> They also left owing me the better part of a year's subscription.
>

> John F. Cook
> San Pedro, CA 90732
> rick...@aol.com

John:
What memories your request fired up! Some of those reviewers were
off the wall though. (Like David Hall is today in Stereo Review.
Retirement is in order!) One review began with this statement: "Old
Speed Demon Fricsay is on the podium again!"
The names of the reviewers were classic too. I don't remember any of
them.
Most likely the publication is history....too bad though. It was
fun reading.

PAP

[Raymond Edwards]

For those who may be intersted in the history of one of America's
oldest and long-lived record retail companies and its publication "The
New Records":
The H. Royer Smith Company was founded in 1907 at 10th and Walnut
Sts., Philadelphia. In March 1930 it began publishing "Disques" a
beautifully printed small review magazine (about 50 pages) which
featured articles and reviews by Lawrence Gilmore, Edward C. Smith,
Peter Hugh Reed, Richard Gilbert, Issac Goldberg, Nicolas Slonimsky,
Herbert Peyser, David Ewen, R.D. Darrell, Laurence Powell, Henry Cowell
andDaniel Gregory Mason, among others. Included in these issues were
articles about Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bax, Delius, Toscanini, Elgar,
Prokofiev, Cowell, Karl Muck, Furtwängler, etc. Record reviews were done
by some of the feature writers, but mostly by anonymous contributors.
The reviews covered all of the domestic releases as well as many
"imports" (mostly HMV, Polydor, Odeon, British Columbia, etc.)
Disques ceased publication during the Great Depression (February 1933)
and was replaced by a more modest publication "The New Records", a
stripped-down version which featured an editorial (unsigned, but
presumably by H. Royer Smith) and 15-20 pages of record reviews by staff
(signed with initials only or pseudonymously) and local contributors,
some of who were customers. The New Records which in later years was
published by Royer's son H. Royer Smith, Jr., ceased publication in the
late 1970's when the business was sold to a long-time customer.

I worked briefly (18 months) for this company in its original location
at 10th & Walnut St. in Philadelphia before it was forced by urban
redevelopment to re-locate at 20th and Walnut Sts. in the mid 70's. I
even contributed some reviews to the New Records. A visit to H. Royer
Smith was a visit into the past. In the front of the store, LP's were
kept in the same 5" wide pidgeon holes in whicht 78s were once filed. In
another room (the "collector's corner") you could still find remnants of
stock from the early days e.g. in one understock compartment I found 60
mint 78rpm copies of Alma Gluck singing "Home Sweet Home" . This room,
filled with 78's was cleared out one day by a customer who bought all
the remaining shellac records for $.05 each to be used for skeet
shooting! (by this time the 78s were quite picked over and were mostly
commom Victors and Columbias.) On the 2nd floor were the listening
booths, by this time dusty and no longer used, but still in perfect
condition. Old catalogs, new release sheets and display materials dating
from the early days were all stored on the upper floors. They had a
"locator service" which drew from their large stock of "new" LPs
(deletions were never returned) as well as used LPs from collections
that they purchased. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.
Raymond Edwards

[Matthew B. Tepper]

Raymond Edwards wrote:
>
[detailed reminiscence snipped for space]

Thank you for writing this. I had often wondered about _The New
Records_, chiefly due to its inclusion in the indexing of reviews in _ML
Notes_ and associated guides to record reviews. When I did turn up a
few old stray copies from the '60s, I wondered what the big deal had
been. Evidently inertia had kept them in those indexes long past their
prime, just as libraries in the early '80s continued to subscribe to the
cadavers of _High Fidelity_ and _Stereo Review_, whilst neglecting the
up-and-coming _Fanfare_. (Reaganomics, of course, essentially quashed
this question entirely.)

There truly have been some "great eras" of record review magazines. I
particularly think of _American Record Guide_ when it was still edited
by James Lyons (hardly the magazine it was to become when I wrote for it
in the mid '80s, or now with that maniac as editor), and _High Fidelity_
in its late heyday of the early '70s. What is there to compare with
what we had then?

(BTW, has anyone else noticed that, for the first time I can recall, the
current [January-February 1998] issues _Fanfare_ and _American Record
Guide_ have *exactly the same* number of pages?)

--
Matthew B. Tepper: WWW, science fiction, classical music, ducks!
My personal home page -- http://www.deltanet.com/~ducky/index.htm
My main music page --- http://www.deltanet.com/~ducky/berlioz.htm
And my science fiction club's home page --- http://www.lasfs.org/
To write to me, do for my address what Androcles did for the lion

[PAP]

Raymond Edwards wrote:
>
> For those who may be intersted in the history of one of America's
> oldest and long-lived record retail companies and its publication "The
> New Records":
> The H. Royer Smith Company was founded in 1907 at 10th and Walnut
> Sts., Philadelphia. In March 1930 it began publishing "Disques" a
> beautifully printed small review magazine (about 50 pages) which
> featured articles and reviews by Lawrence Gilmore, Edward C. Smith,
> Peter Hugh Reed, Richard Gilbert, Issac Goldberg, Nicolas Slonimsky,
> Herbert Peyser, David Ewen, R.D. Darrell, Laurence Powell, Henry Cowell

> andDaniel Gregory Mason, among others. (snip)

What about Enos E. Schupp, Jr ? Me thinks that was the name of
reviewer who said: "Old Speed Demon Fricsay is on the podium again!"

PAP

[Raymond Edwards]

Enos E. Schupp, Jr. did not contribute to "Disques" - his reviews appeared
later in H. Royer Smith's subsequent publication "The New Records".
Raymond Edwards

[davesc...@gmail.com]

ENos Schupp Was Active As A Reviewer For The Stentor, in-house Publication Of The Friends Of The Wanamaker Organ In The Store WhiCh Is Now Macys.

[harvard75]

My memory of the H. Royer Smith store at 20th & Walnut in the late 70's was of having to request specific records from the sales clerk at the counter, who would then go and fetch the records for you from stock. No browsing, just "I would like to buy DGG 2755 328, please." Even then, it felt like a walk into the past.

Does anyone miss the Coop Record Department as much as I do?

[Willem Orange]

On Tuesday, January 20, 2015 at 3:09:43 PM UTC-5, harvard75 wrote:
> My memory of the H. Royer Smith store at 20th & Walnut in the late 70's was of having to request specific records from the sales clerk at the counter, who would then go and fetch the records for you from stock. No browsing, just "I would like to buy DGG 2755 328, please." Even then, it felt like a walk into the past.
>
> Does anyone miss the Coop Record Department as much as I do?

They were at 10th and Walnut for years where you could browse and they had 78s in the back - classic old time record store and the monthly New Records was fun to read.

[Willem Orange]

On Tuesday, January 20, 2015 at 3:09:43 PM UTC-5, harvard75 wrote:

> My memory of the H. Royer Smith store at 20th & Walnut in the late 70's was of having to request specific records from the sales clerk at the counter, who would then go and fetch the records for you from stock. No browsing, just "I would like to buy DGG 2755 328, please." Even then, it felt like a walk into the past.
>
> Does anyone miss the Coop Record Department as much as I do?

I do

[R. Edwards]

There were a few browser bins with new & recent releases, but the vast majority of the inventory was kept behind the sales counters and filed numerically by record company. Since they never returned anything that was not defective, there was a fair amount of "old new stock".

[francis]

Fascinating piece,Ray! Thanks for writing it. Do you happen to know if an private or public library in the Philly area has reference copies of the full run of The New Records? Sounds like it should be a JSTOR digitizing project! F

[Willem Orange]

On Wednesday, January 21, 2015 at 8:25:44 AM UTC-5, francis wrote:
> Fascinating piece,Ray! Thanks for writing it. Do you happen to know if an private or public library in the Philly area has reference copies of the full run of The New Records? Sounds like it should be a JSTOR digitizing project! F

I wish but I doubt it - it was a small local booklet.

[Willem Orange]

On Wednesday, January 21, 2015 at 8:25:44 AM UTC-5, francis wrote:

> Fascinating piece,Ray! Thanks for writing it. Do you happen to know if an private or public library in the Philly area has reference copies of the full run of The New Records? Sounds like it should be a JSTOR digitizing project! F

The only thing I found on the net was this which pulls the text from the 1957-8 issues so at least you can read the articles

http://tera-3.ul.cs.cmu.edu/NASD/d23d381a-642a-4cb1-bd42-5373f518ed1d/lemur/195.sgml

[R. Edwards]

Although it usually ran to about 16 pages, it was published monthly for almost 50 years. It had about 2000 subscribers nationwide including libraries, with whom they did a regular business.

[Sol L. Siegel]

Willem Orange <ivanm...@gmail.com> wrote in
news:f1326bd8-4b1a-4745...@googlegroups.com:

Try the music department of the Free Library of Philadelphia. A few
years back I offered them my own nearly-complete run from mid-1968 to
the spring of 1986, which is about when it ended, and they only
accepted one issue (I forget which) that they said they didn't have.
But they could still be missing older ones.

BTW, the remainder of that collection is still in my closet,
available to anyone willing to pay to ship a package that
weighs something in excess of 10 pounds.

- Sol L. Siegel, Philadelphia, PA USA

[Willem Orange]

Sol I sent you a message

[t...@openfieldpartners.com]

I happened to find a year or so of back issues of The New Records in my basement, and here's a scan of the May 1971 issue.

https://www.mediafire.com/?zdtwag01334a6g3

The watchword is "quirky" - quirky selection of review items, odd format, etc. But too bad it's not around any more.

Tom Baker

[Edward A. Cowan]

This thread brings to mind my experiences with H. Royer Smith back when I was a graduate student at Penn (German major). I was already familiar with "The New Records" before going to Philadelphia. Just a few weeks after arriving in that city, I attended a "strike benefit concert" of the Philadelphia Orchestra, cond. Stokowski, with the following program: Diamond, Overture to Incidental Music for Shakespeare's "The Tempest", Beethoven's Sym. no. 7, Mussorgsky's Dawn music from Khovanschchina, and Stravinsky's "Petruchka" suite. I eventually made my way over to the H. Royer Smith store, where, in the room of 78rpm records, I met a young man who knew a lot about vocal musical recordings, and it turned out he was a singer, a baritone who, at one recital by pupils of Martial Singher, sang a beautiful performance of "Ah per sempre" from Bellini's _I Puritani_. This singer was one Edward Crafts, who eventually attended one of the first-year German classes I taught at Penn as a GTF. Later on I encountered him again as a singer in the Dallas Opera's performance of Rossini's _La cambiale di matrimonio_ and also as Donner in that same company's _Das Rheingold_. This baritone also appeared in the Dallas performance _Billy Budd_.

I did buy a few recordings at H. Royer Smith, and the experience was very gratifying, musically. The people there really knew their music, and they could speak with knowledge of what they were talking about. --E.A.C.

[ole.wil...@gmail.com]

On Saturday, January 31, 1998 at 3:00:00 AM UTC-5, Rickiecat wrote:
> Do any of you Philadelphia posters or others know what happened to the H.
> Royer Smith Co. and their record review "The New Records? I subscribed to
> "The New Records" for at least 30 yrs and then one day it just quit coming. No
> letter was ever acknowledged or returned.
> I have been wondering for a long time and now with this unlimited resource
> maybe at long last I can find out what happened.
> They also left owing me the better part of a year's subscription.

> Dear Sir,
My Dad was a reviewer for Mr. Smith. He went by the signature "wao" (without the quote marks) in [u]The New Records[/u]. It was his great joy in life to do that "side job". Mr. Smith gave Dad stipend and a price break on the records he reviewed but the best part for William was the publication of his criticisms. If I am not mistaken, Mr. Smith (the name Royer had been handed down for a good few generations) grew old with my Dad and the advent of the CD finally finished the company off. Alas, Dad and I didn't get along all that well - I wish he were here now ... The New Records, I am certain, had no intention of cheating you - it just sort of got old and had to stop.
Optimistically yours, Stephen Marcus Olsen-Gettz wms...@aol.com

>
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> John F. Cook
> San Pedro, CA 90732

> rick...@aol.com

[basicrep]

FYI there are some issues of The New Records and Disqus over at archive.org just search for Royer and you will find them. They are from the 1930's. Fascinating reading.

Jim

[Sol L. Siegel]

basicrep <jims...@gmail.com> wrote in
news:a22e5707-8238-45fe...@googlegroups.com:

> FYI there are some issues of The New Records and Disqus over at
> archive.org just search for Royer and you will find them. They are
> from the 1930's. Fascinating reading.

Thanks for this.

Amazing: The New Records's format didn't change in more than 50 years,
through advances from shellac to LP to stereo to CD, until the magazine
ceased publication and the store finally closed in the 1980's.