The Gramophone Company was founded in London in 1897 by William Barry Owen as the European branch of Emile Berliner’s enterprise, the inventor of the disc and the gramophone. It soon became a key player in the emerging recording industry, investing in international subsidiaries and technology. Its first emblem was the “Recording Angel”, and from the early 20th century it also adopted “His Master’s Voice”, which by around 1909 became the company’s iconic trademark. In 1903, it acquired Zonophone (est. 1899, USA), which was incorporated into the group. In 1917, the Columbia Graphophone Company Ltd. was founded in the UK as a subsidiary of the American Columbia Phonograph Company. In 1922, Columbia UK became fully independent, and in 1926 it acquired the multinational group Carl Lindström A.G., which included the labels Parlophone, Odeon, and Beka. In 1931, Columbia (UK) merged with the Gramophone Company, giving rise to EMI.

The Gramophone Company engaged early with Greek-language repertoires. As early as 1903, recordings of Greek interest were made in Constantinople, followed by sessions in Athens (1907), Thessaloniki (1909–1911), Smyrna (1911), as well as in studios in Vienna and London. These recordings were produced either by mobile units or in facilities abroad, while most records were pressed in London; there was also a production unit in Hanover operating even before the First World War. Releases were distributed internationally, either through subsidiaries or partner companies.

In the Greek context, distribution was organised through local agencies. From 1909, the firm of Abravanel, Capouano & Benveniste in Thessaloniki coordinated repertoire management in Macedonia and Epirus. In the 1920s, Karl Friedrich Vogel, general agent of the Gramophone Company for the Eastern Mediterranean, played a central role from Alexandria. After his death in 1929, the company assigned exclusive representation for Athens to Dimitrios Kissopoulos. In 1935, the task was taken over by the Lambropoulos Brothers, who managed the Columbia factory in Rizoupoli—a facility completed in 1930 and equipped with a recording studio in 1935. Their collaboration with EMI continued until the late 1970s, when operations were transferred to EMIAL, a subsidiary founded in 1961. In 1991, EMIAL merged with Minos, the company of Minos Matsas, forming Minos-EMI.

The historical trajectory of the Gramophone Company in the Greek-speaking world reveals how local recordings became embedded within transnational networks of production and circulation—networks that not only transcended the local, but also redefined it. In this context, the Gramophone Company was not merely a channel of distribution, but a catalyst in the shaping of the “Greek sound” of the 20th century.

According to the musical score titled "Ela mazi mou (I kastania)" and "Ela mazi mou", published by Z. Veloudios Editions, the piece is a composition by Napoleon Lambelet with lyrics by Ioannis Polemis.

As Aristomenis Kalyvliotis also points out (2002: 83), the present recording includes the spoken interjection: “Geia sou Bloumberg! Kerase ton Tsanaka!” (“Cheers, Blumberg! Buy Tsanakas a drink!”), from which the researcher concludes that Paul Blumberg was present during the session.

“Paul Blumberg was a Franco-Levantine of German descent. His shop, which initially sold optical instruments and watches, was one of the oldest in Smyrna. Its founding year is cited as 1884. Numerous references to it appear in the literature as well as in advertisements in Smyrna’s newspapers of the time. [...] In (photo 38), we see an ad for the shop in the Armonia newspaper dated 5 June 1900. In (photo 30), another ad appears in the Smyrni newspaper dated 5 March 1905. Notably, the shop advertised ‘grammophones – zonophones’. The term ‘zonophones’ referred to Zonophone-brand gramophones, a subsidiary of the Gramophone Co. Ltd., for which P. Blumberg was the Smyrna agent.

In this capacity, he played a key role in the company’s recording activities in the city. [...] From the above, it appears that ‘phonographs’ or ‘talking machines’ begin to appear systematically in commercial directories from 1909 onward. Therefore, they had become a widely consumed commodity after 1905” (Kalyvliotis, 2002: 56–57).

For more information on the "Minore Manes", also known as "Smyrnaic Minore" or "Minore tis Avgis" (Minore of the Dawn), see here.

Research and text: Leonardos Kounadis and Nikos Ordoulidis