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3 unusual facts about Vocalion Records


Broadcast Twelve Records

The label was a subsidiary of the British branch of Vocalion Records.

James G. Sterchi

Working as an agent for Vocalion Records, Sterchi Brothers paid to send early country musicians such as Uncle Dave Macon, Sid Harkreader, and Sam McGee to New York to make their first recordings.

Roll 'Em Pete

While in New York, Turner and Johnson signed with the Vocalion record company, recording the 12-bar blues "Roll 'Em Pete" on December 30, 1938.


Aeolian Company

Interestingly, in 1916 the Æolian Co. started making Vocalion phonographs and in 1917/8 started Vocalion Records, a maker of high-quality discs which in December 1924 was sold to Brunswick Records.

Charley Jordan

Jordan recorded numerous singles for Vocalion and Decca between 1930 and 1937, and also performed with some well-regarded bluesmen from the 1920s to the 1940s.

Charlie Bowman

At a Mountain City fiddlers' convention in May 1925, Bowman met Al Hopkins, who invited Bowman to join his band, the "Hill Billies." With Bowman on fiddle, the Hill Billies traveled to New York, where they recorded several sides for Vocalion and Brunswick and even played on Broadway.

Frank Luther

These included Babar Songs and Stories, an LP of retellings of Jean de Brunhoff's Babar the Elephant series he recorded for Vocalion Records in the early 1960s.

H. C. Speir

In 1926, through selling blues records in his store, he began working as a scout for the record companies producing the records, such as Okeh, Victor, Gennett, Columbia, Vocalion, Decca and Paramount.


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