Jazz Orchestr Vesela Vdova Merry Widow Rare Czechoslovakia 1932 Hot Jazz Pre-War

Description: Jazz Orchestr Vesela Vdova Potpourri Merry WidowEsta E 790 1932 Esta 1930-1948 A Czechoslovak company which, together with Ultraphon, "survived" to nationalization. Although it was the dominant company in our market during the war years, it was not the best economically and on recordings made in these years it is obvious that it was saving on the quality of the material. It is mentioned as the first record company established by Czech capital, the name is derived from the company for ESTA. The Esta company established in 1928 formed part of the Melanrich publishing. n the mid twenties, electrical recording along with economic growth expanded the market and gave birth to two big Czech companies: Esta and Ultraphon. From the beginning, Esta was rather oriented on popular repertory and therefore was targeted at the rural population. Ultraphon, a formerly Czech branch of a German company, became independent after the spectacular crash of the parent company Küchenmeister in 1931. In contrast to Esta, Czech Ultraphon focused on a more polished repertory and higly regarded performers. Esta and Ultraphon entered a highly competitive market. The market leader was Parlophon. Despite its history reached far back to the beginning of the century, the label appeared in Czechoslovakia only in 1929 when a distribution deal was made with Novitas. The label was owned by the legendary music business pioneer Diego Fuchs who managed to negotiate record deals with some of the most prominent artists of the time. A usual price of Parlophon discs was 27 Kc in 1930 – slightly above the average. Due to a top rated repertory and high profiled artists, business went well for Parlophon and initially the market entry of Esta and Ultraphon did not affect its supremacy. However, when world economic crisis also severely hit Czechoslovakia Parlophon completely stopped recording new Czech repertory. Many artists, which were formerly signed with the label, changed to Esta and Ultraphon. In 1936, Parlophon released its last Czech records and mutated into a distribution company of imported records from Britain. The second main player in the Czechoslovakian market was Homocord. Homocord was a sublabel of the Lindström conglomerate. It entered the market already in the early twenties and even established a pressing facility in Prague. Homocord’s heydays, however, began when Otto Fischl was replaced by Emil Schmelkes in 1929. Schmelkes was the former head of the Vox record label, which went bankrupt in 1929. Under his guidance Homocord aggressively gained market share but eventually fell victim of its rampant growth. It had to file bancruptcy and was deleted from the registry of companies in 1935. Despite Schmelkes was responsible for two bancruptcies he was still considered a competent manager. After Homocord had gone out of business, he was immediately asked to head Esta. In this context, it should be mentioned that the deep economic depression was exacerbated by the protectionist policy of the Czechoslovakian government in the early 1930s. In order to protect domestic production during the worst years of the world economic crisis government imposed high duties on all imports that also negatively affected the recording industry, which mainly relied on imported records. Initially import duties on imported records were imposed in 1931. In 1933, however, the tariff was increased six-fold (Kotek 1998:21). This was a death blow to almost all foreign companies that eventually had to leave the Czechoslovakian market. Story of Esta The concept of establishing an indigenous Czech record company was formed by a group of businessmen in Prague, who were involved in the wood trading company Foresta. In 1930, Josef Bursik, vice-director of the Commerce Bank in Prague, real estate agent Egon Bondy (who contributed a great deal of the equity but already left the enterprise in 1933) and businessman Rudolf Hajek (the company’s later director) set up office in a modest one-floor building in Holesovice – a then village nearby Prague. The newly formed company was called Esta and initially should release its catalogue on unbreakable, elastic discs made from celluloid which was the technological state-of-the-art. Esta started licensing and pressing Kalliope matrices, but the celluloid records were of poor quality and it soon became obvious that celluloid would not be the future of recording industry. At the end of 1930, Esta reported that they would start manufacturing usual shellac discs instead. However, this strategic shift was almost to late. In 1931, the record company was faced with serious financial troubles. Jan Valentini of competing Ultraphon label later remembered that Esta’s debt had totaled up to 9 million crowns in 1931 (Kotek 1998: 21). Esta’s first own recording (made from their own matrices) was supposedly a disc with two songs from the popular movie C. a K. polni masalek. They were released in a Czech and a German version on the day when the movie premiered in October 1930. Struggling with the economic downturn and heavy-weight competitors, which had launched cheap labels such as Slavia, Nolaphon, Sortima, Lido to name only a few, Esta started to distribute its records to foreign markets (Poland, Hungary and Germany) and bought up cheap matrices of bankrupt German Ultraphon. However, two major events eventually helped Esta to survive. On the one hand the Czechoslovakian Sokol Club (a popular sport’s club) ordered large quantities of Esta records and on the other hand the German Crystalate company licenced Esta records for its Kristall discs. In addition, the Czech Academy of Sciences commissioned Esta to press historic Pathé discs and to record new folkloristic material in 1933. In 1934, the most turbulent period in Esta’s history came to an end. Nevertheless its economic situation was very strained and therefore Esta entered into merger talks with main competitor Ultraphon. In 1935, however, Rudolf Hayek who initiated the merger talks was replaced by Emil Schmelkes as the company’s director. Schmelkes, who was the former head of Homocord, immediately stopped the negotiations with Ultraphon. He restructured the company and started to press licenced discs of Brunswick and Polydor. When in 1937 the financial situation had not substantially improved, the two remaining owners, Hajek and Bursik, agreed to sell their shares to the biggest creditor, the Czechoslovakian Bank of Commerce for a symbolic Czech Crown. A year later, Esta was bought up by the far biggest book and magazine publishing house in Czechoslovakia, Melantrich. In fact, Melantrich, did not only buy Esta but even the entire Bank of Commerce. Gössel believes that Melantrich may have realized the economic potential of the recording industry already in 1935 when it commissioned Ultraphon to release seven records with hiking songs to support its youth magazine Ahoj na nedeli. The records turned out a huge commercial success. The new owner decided to raise the prices and also confined the rebate policy for retail and wholesale. Melantrich successfully relaunched Esta and owned the label until 1946, when the Czechoslovakian music industry was nationalized. Closely connected to Esta was the German Polydor label. Polydor was the export label of Deutsche Gramophon Gesellschaft (DGG), and was distributed in Czechoslovakia apart from DGG’s representation in Prague by Christl & Schmidt, which operated in a small town called Cheb. Due to the economic depression in Germany, DGG had tried to expand to the Czechoslovakian market in 1932. The Polydor label mainly released records with Czech repertory, which were recorded and pressed in Esta facilities. From 1935 to 1943 DGG used Esta plants also for Czech releases of Brunswick jazz – or so called “dance music” – records and Esta and Polydor even issued a shared Czechoslovakian catalogue in this period.

Price: 249.99 USD

Location: Utica, New York

End Time: 2025-01-22T14:56:56.000Z

Shipping Cost: 6.5 USD