Christmas 1909 with Clara & Bertie

The recent broadcast of the earliest known Christmas records by the BBC a few days back has stirred me to put something up that was Christmassy too, but more to thank  Buster's Big 10-inch Record blog for all the Christmas stuff he has managed to upload.

With love and best wishes for
A Merry Christmas
from 
Clara [Butt] and Bertie [Kennerley Rumford, with Joy, Roy and Victor]

The Gramophone Co. Ltd 

03168
[matrix 3793f]

Recorded Monday 1st November 1909

1 Flac , Here at Mediafire. [ 10Mb]

The work can also be streamed as mp3 @ 192 kbps

Clara Butt together with her husband the baritone Bertie Kennerley Rumford and their three children went down to the London Studios of The Gramophone Company Ltd on the Monday 1st of November 1909 and cut two waxes. The recording ledgers as transcribed by Alan Kelly lists these as follows -

CLARA BUTT and children (VICTOR, JOY, ...)

3793f    1-11-09  03168  Private record - no title

Mrs KENNERLY RUMFORD (CLARA BUTT) and FAMILY

3794f    1-11-09   Private Christmas Greetings (Private record)

The matrix 3793f was assigned an issue number 03168, whilst matrix 3794f was probably made as a backup, presumably a test pressing was also made of this but most likely rejected and soon destroyed. By some quirk of fate the original metal part survives at Hayes for 3793f and David Mason (an indefatigable discographer, collector of spoken word recordings and board members of Historic Masters)  had a very few vinyl pressing made a number of years ago. David also happens to own an advanced copy of this disc which may well have been the copy forwarded to Clara Butt to vet before final pressing.

Until a couple of months ago we had no idea that a label was specially printed for 03168. As you can see from the illustration this label uses the same blue that was specifically designated for Clara Butt's other discs, but here altered for this special Christmas issue. I have also illustrated at the very foot of the page an example of a standard Clara Butt label from the same period. These records, as with most celebrity records from the Gramophone Co. stable of artists, retailed at 12s 6d.

The wording on the label  'Manufactured by The Gramophone Co. Ltd. (and Sister Companies) especially for Mr. and Mrs. R. Kennerley Rumford' may point to the company taking up the manufacturing cost of this special disc as a inducement for future records. Having a label printed and the pressing  accounted for in the company books meant it had to be assigned an issue number; properly speaking this number should have been in the 04000 series as it is a concerted record with several singing, but then who really bothered to worry about such a thing when it was a produced as a private issue and not for public consumption.

The recording was made for Clara's brother Warwick Gladstone Butt and his wife Lila Millian (née Livingston). Warwick married Lila on the 28th of April 1909 and was at this time working for the Santa Fé Land Company of Argentina. The company was a among other things a major exporter of frozen beef to the UK. As my maternal grandfather was the Chief Purser of the Royal Mail Lines, which did the Argentinian beef run to the UK, I can make the thinnest of claims to a connection! 

The whole reason for the record was simply to send them a special Christmas present. The record had to be recorded, pressed and then sent to Buenos Aires before being transported up the river Plate in time to be heard by Warwick & Lila for Christmas.  I would think that a tiny number of these discs would have been pressed – this copy has come my way from the estate of Bertie's niece Cicely Murray. That the record may have been via Clara Butt's own record collection is quite possible for a sample copy of another disc, the title inked in by Bertie, happened to came together with it. Cicely Murray was proficient enough as a pianist to be asked by Clara and Bertie to be their accompanist on their tour of 1931 that encompassed India, Japan, Australia and South Africa.

What of the record - Clara speaks first, probably from a prepared script. The relative faintness of her voice may have been due to her head facing downwards to read rather than speaking directly into the recording horn. This script could account for the rather late interjection of the word 'both' as she suddenly remembered Warwick's new wife!  Bertie follows with a hearty 'What ho!' and then each of the children Joy, Roy and Victor give their party piece. 

A photograph survives of the family group that would have been taken, I think at the end of 1909 or early in 1910, roughly around the time of the recording, so we have a pretty good idea of how this well to do musical family then looked.

Clara Butt - Bertie Kennerley Rumford
Roy - Joy - Victor
7 Harley Road, Hampstead, London

Joy is the first to sing, luckily Bertie plays a D chord faintly on the  recording studio piano somewhere close by  from which I have been able to pitched the record at 80.80 rpm. This is fortuitous for we have here a good idea of the pitch of Clara's speaking voice in relation to her singing voice.

These first two songs I do not know but have transcribed what I can make out. Are they family songs, does anyone know these for I have been unable to pin them down, or indeed can you make out the missing lines?

Awaken little dreamers, 

Shake sleep from now your eyes,

The stars are quickly fading,

The sun is in the skies.

Wake up! Wake up!

The cuckoo calls you up!

Cuckoo! Cuckoo

The cuckoo calls you up! 

Joy & Roy then do a duet, unfortunately it is difficult to make out the first lines -

We are the..............

..... orchard we'll be round,

But when the golden autumn comes,

They'll bring you apples, pears, and plums.

Victor then give his own rendition of Harry Lauder's song, I have transcribed this as Victor sings it -

I love a lassie, a bonnie bonnie lassie, 

She's as sweet as a lily in the dell, 

She's as sweet as the heather, the bonnie purple heather, 

Mary, my Scots bluebell.

Of the children, who give their all in this recording, I have some short biographical details. Joy Clara Kennerley Rumford (1901-1976)  married Major Claude Harold Cross (1882-1944) in 1928 but I don't think they had any children; Roy Kennerley Rumford (1904-1923) had a promising career as a cricketer but died young from meningitis; and Victor Ian Kennerley Rumford (1906-1934) emigrated to Salisbury, Rhodesia in the late 1920s to make his living in farming, he sadly took his own life there.

Label from October-December 1909