Guest
Who Walks In When I Walk Out [Polish title: Kto tu chodzi?] Fox Trot (Al Freed, Ralph Hoffman, Al Goodhart) -- Orkiestra Harry Roy, Odeon 1933 (Polish re-pressing from the original matrix, 1945) NOTE: Let me tell in a few words the interesting history of this recording. Odeon label was one of the largest and most influential record companies in interwar Europe. Polish Odeon was installed in Warsaw in place of Beka Records, which was liquidated in Poland in the mid-1920s. Warsaw Odeon was a branch of the Berlin main company, but it had a wide artistic independence and software and superbly prospered until the 2nd World War. Polish Odeon's independence increased when the label started producing in Warsaw its own shellac of a pretty good quality. This greatly reduced the price of Odeon discs, equating them with relatively cheap Polish records Syrena-Electro, Melodja-Electro and Lonora, and forcing other foreign record labels: Columbia, Homocord and Parlophon to close their branches in Poland in the early 1930s. Odeon had its own well-equipped recording studio and very professional artistic directorship, by the superb Polish composer and conductor Jerzy Gert. Alas, in September 1939, the whole of Polish staff was dismissed and Odeon was re-profiled into exclusively German production, failing to wax own recordings in Warsaw and merely pressing discs from matrixes transported from Berlin. Yet, during the last stages of war even that limited production practically ceased. In 1945, when Germans withdrew from Poland, Odeon was nationalised and the record industry as well as other Polish media, became a strategic tool in hands of the new communist regime in Poland. However, in 1945-46, before Stalinist terror accelerated to its full speed -- Odeon's production was still relatively uncontrolled. Its director was an experienced engineer from Poznań, Mieczysław Wejman (who simultaneolusly was developing his own recording studio in Poznań: Melodje). He managed to save a big part of Odeon's prewar archives, moreover -- he started re-pressing many of them into the new series, and that's how many historical recordings of Aston, Maria Modzelewska, Chór Dana, Janusz Popławski and other artists were saved. Also, and probably for commercial reasons -- he reissued many prewar recordings of the best European dance orchestras, including Dajos Bela, BBC Dance Orchestra, Harry Roy and some others. Ofcourse, this “pro-bourgeois“ activity could not go unnoticed by political control. In 1947, Mieczyslaw Wejman was fired, Odeon's name was changed to Muza, and the production went totally under the state control.
