The Red Seal De Luxe Series: A Discography of RCA's Red Vinyl 78s

In the years immediately following the end of World War II, as the two major American record companies geared up for "The War of the Speeds," (1) Columbia was working full-steam ahead on the development of the long-playing record; RCA Victor, meanwhile, put its efforts and resources into building a better 78. Unlike Columbia's postwar 78s, which tended to be fairly noisy, RCA pressings improved markedly as wartime shortages of raw materials eased; the change of formulation coincided with the change of the company name on the label from "Victor" to "RCA Victor." Around 1949 there came another change of formula, the new pressings being identifiable by the discs' beveled edges; this shellac was so smooth that many collectors took to pasting felt "Slip-Nots" onto the labels to ensure that stacks of discs on automatic record players would not slide on one another. An intriguing chapter in this story involves a series of 78s RCA pressed beginning late in 1945 on translucent red vinyl--the same material the company used a few years later for its 45-rpm records; of course, virtually every manufacturer, beginning in 1948 with Columbia, used vinyl for LP records as well. Marketed under the name "Red Seal De Luxe Records" (a designation printed on the labels; Fig. 1), these discs were produced for about three-and-a-half years, the last item--Toscanini's recording of Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique" Symphony--being issued in May 1949. They were given their own series of set and disc numbers: V/DV (for manual and automatic sets) and 18-0000, and sold for $2.00 per disc, twice the price of their shellac equivalents. The albums were also distinctive, showing the bold autograph of the artist on the cover (Fig. 2). Only set V/DV-1, Koussevitzky's recording of Richard Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel, has the same album cover as the shellac issue; the autograph-style cover may not have been ready at the time of its release. Vinyl--more properly Vinylite--is a trademarked copolymer of vinyl chloride and vinyl acetate developed by Union Carbide in 1930. (2) RCA experimented as early as 1931 with a vinyl formulation it called "Vitrolac" for its early long-playing records; (3) this material was harder and more brittle than later vinyl formulations. These "Program Transcription" discs were a commercial failure, probably the result of a combination of economic and practical factors: during the Great Depression few collectors could afford the expensive new playback equipment they required, and the pickups of the day were too heavy, wearing out the records quickly; moreover, the sound of the new records was disappointing. Vinyl was also used during the War for V-Discs, which had to survive the rigors of overseas shipment, and thereafter for recordings mailed to radio stations; RCA issued black vinyl pressings of its regular classical 78s for this purpose bearing the notation "Special Purpose Record" on the label. These, however, were not made available to regular collectors, and will not be treated here. In addition, the authors have obtained a red vinyl pressing of a regular-series Victor 78 set, the Brahms Second Piano Concerto with Vladimir Horowitz, Arturo Toscanini, and the NBC Symphony (DM-740), that bears the album and disc numbers and the label of the standard shellac issue; we surmise that Victor must occasionally have pressed limited runs of some popular titles this way. There are also two special-issue, limited-edition sets that were pressed exclusively on red vinyl: sets LE-1 (discs 99-2001/03), comprising double bass recordings of Serge Koussevitzky, (4) and LE-3 (discs 99-2100/03), a collection of light-classical music conducted by Fiedler, Koussevitzky, and Toscanini. One final category of vinyl 78s that should be mentioned is RCA's "Heritage" series of pressings of historical vocal recordings. This series, also pressed on red vinyl and bearing gold labels, comprised discs numbered 151000 and up; it ran more or less contemporaneously to the Red Seal De Luxe 18-0000 series, and listed at the considerable price of $3. …