Re: [ARSCLIST] Dating LPs ?

["Steven C. Barr(x)" <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tom Fine" <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> I think the Schwann is as close as possible for what you're trying to do,
unless you can acquire old
> sales catalogs, which I think would indicate exact release dates. I think
you'd have difficulty
> finding those catalogs from back in ye dayes because there has been so much
M&A activity in the
> record-company business. I notice CD reissues concentrate on recording
dates -- and sometimes rely
> on less-than-reliable discography books. I'm not sure why the LP release date
is important enough to
> go through the exercise of gathering the info.
>
Well, what I found when creating my Guide was that during the first
few decades of 78's, there was a fairly close correspondence between
recording and issue dates, with only a very few sides held back
for whatever reasons. In the late thirties, when both album sets
and reissues of important historic recordings first appeared,
that correspondence ceased to apply in many cases. I suspect that
this would apply to a lot of LP's, particularly those that were
vinyl versions of shellac "album sets!"

There will also be another problem...the vast number of LP labels
that issued only a handful of records (in many cases ONE!) but do
turn up in thrift stores, at yard sales, usw. Also, there are all
the various discount labels that deliberately stayed "under the
radar," since their ownership of any rights to the material they
issued was quite often somewhat questionable!

Now, when we add the practice of creating different catalog-number
series based on record size, list price, type of material included,
and so on... (which were usually changed every so often as well!)...

Steven C. Barr