Dennis,

Sorry for not getting back to this sooner. There may be some reason to hope
when it comes to UMG's classical artists, and this may also explain their
absence from the casualty rolls. Back in 1998, an exec from the newly
reorganized classical division of Universal just after it acquired Polygram
told me that "all of the classical has been sent to Germany."  I understood
that by "all of the classical" he meant masters of releases that had parity
with the consolidated DG/UK Decca structure and were mostly active at the
time, so that would include Segovia, Heifetz, some Westminster titles, NY
Pro Musica Play of Daniel/Play of Herod, etc. And when I was working at LC
I saw some Decca NY Pro Musica masters on shelves that were in processing,
which excited me because all of the masters of the Esoteric recordings they
made were destroyed in the Northridge Earthquake of 1994 --  different
disaster, unfortunately.

However, what concerns me about UMG, classical and the Monkey Fire is that
facility's reputation as "deep storage" -- holdings of things for which no
plans were made for reissues. 'So I worry about Sylvia Marlowe, Marjorie
Mitchell, Frederic Waldman, Cincinnati SO/Pops (though I believe the
Ellington was still active in '98), Kapp's modest classical program etc.
And I also worry about pop artists not prominent enough to make these lists
-- the electronic group Silver Apples, Dusty Springfield's US-based
recordings for Philips and some other names I'm not seeing listed.

Dave Lewis of Sperryville, VA


On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 10:42 AM Dennis Rooney <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> As I read the posts on this catastrophe, I note the absence of the names of
> Decca's classical artists — admittedly, not many — whose masters were
> surely destroyed. Jascha Heifetz, Andrés Segovia, Rudolf Ganz, Percy
> Grainger, Robert Goldsand et al. all recorded for Decca in the forties,
> which were mastered on 16.5-in. lacquers cut vertically. Like Columbia,
> approved takes from the lacquers were dubbed to produce the released 78rpm
> shellac discs. Heifetz's preserved some extraordinary performances of
> encore pieces in which virtuosity was explored to the utmost. Due to the
> dates, those lacquers were all glass-based, and were either broken in
> transit or burned up in the vault fire. A similar fate befell the others.
> It is perhaps a small part of what was destroyed, to be sure, but as
> grievous a loss our cultural patrimony as anything else.
>
> DDR
>
> On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 1:44 AM Jeff Willens <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/25/magazine/universal-music-fire-bands-list-umg.html
> >
>
>
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