Thread!
a friend sent me this picture, asking me why a Chinese record has a 'made in India' marking. i told him the history behind this, and felt it might be of interest to Twitter.
busy day at office, will add to this thread through the day :)
a friend sent me this picture, asking me why a Chinese record has a 'made in India' marking. i told him the history behind this, and felt it might be of interest to Twitter.
busy day at office, will add to this thread through the day :)
the record was produced probably in the 1930s by the Shanghai Pathé Record Company, which was a subsidiary of the French Pathé Records. Pathé Records was founded by Charles Pathé, who also founded British Pathé (which did all the old news reels).
Pathé Records in France went under around 1930, but Shanghai Pathé continued and was taken over by British EMI. Shanghai Pathé in the 30s and 40s was THE recording company, with the rights to about 90% of Mandarin pop. the records (78s) were pressed at EMI's Asia HQ in Bombay.
when China went commie, Pathé in China stopped production and the torch went to Pathé Hong Kong - eventually become EMI Hong Kong.
masters (from which the pressings were made) were kept in Bombay. in 2003 when workers at Bombay's EMI were clearing out an old warehouse before demolition, they found a huge trunk with some 500 masters of these Mandarin pop songs from the 20s-50s.
this was pretty much the mother lode of the Chinese jazz-pop output. this was the sound of roaring pre-communist Shanghai, the old Paris of the East. the trunk was sent to Hong Kong, and the contents filtered, and eventually 5 cds were produced.
more details of this here thetyee.ca/Entertainment/…
what's the stuff sound like? utterly decadent and sultry. very 'modern' and 'western'. is one example of songs from a Pathé record of 1930s Shanghai. wouldn't have been out of place in Hollywood really.
one of the venues for Jazz in Shanghai would have been the Paramount: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramount…
here's an article on what's probably the world's oldest jazz band in Shanghai: scmp.com/culture/music/…
here's an article on what's probably the world's oldest jazz band in Shanghai: scmp.com/culture/music/…
what do they sound like? pretty good:
most music from the Shanghai Pathé archives. this song roughly translates to 'waiting for you to come home'.
this one's 'Plum Blossom'.
oh come on people, more likes than retweets? retweet! :p
