When I opened my very first and short lived store in the early 80s, an old gent came in and told me that he had worked for Brunswick and Columbia records back in the 1920s through the early 60s and he brought me in some great catalogs.
He said he remember the set back in the record industry "when radio came in" in the mid 20s!
And he also said that during the Depression when he was with either Brunswick or Columbia in Los Angeles that sales were so deadly slow that there was much joy in the warehouse when an order for something actually came in.
First he had to see if they actually had the records in stock, then he had to check if they had the labels that they would affix to the front of the album, because in those days classical 78 rpm records came in a very generic cover with a text-only label pasted to the middle of the cover.
If all is well, they boxed up the records and would personally take a street car and hand deliver the records to the retailer.
Another world.
Tales of the Record Business
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