BEKA RECORDS IN THE UNITED KINGDOMThe information contained on this disc is the result of many years research by
Frank Andrews aided in later years by me. He scoured gramophone trade
publications, archival material at the British Library and surviving catalogues and
supplements that were in the hands of collectors. This method whilst giving basic
details of the performer and the material recorded gave no other information apart
from a catalogue number and, in some cases, the master (single face) number.
Thus, in order to obtain the other discographical material essential for a catalogue
reconstruction it was necessary to enlist the help of record collectors everywhere,
as well as noting information from any Beka record that we happened to see.
In its earlier years the Beka record company allocated a different number to each
‘take’ of a master record and it is not unreasonable to assume that many of the
missing numbers from the master sequence could be unissued ‘takes’. However,
we know that some masters were issued only on ‘client’ labels and not on the
parent one. It therefore seemed sensible to look for the missing numbers on
those other labels in order to try and reconstruct, as far as possible, the whole of
the British 40000, 35000 and 9000 master series. We have now expanded this
concept to include any record issued in the United Kingdom that used a Beka-
Lindstrom master that was not issued on the parent label.
Early issues on the Scala and Coliseum labels used Beka-Lindstrom masters but
the relevant number has nearly always been suppressed and replaced with a
control number. We have tried to list all those issues that probably used Beka-
Lindstrom masters that do not seem to have been issued on the parent label in
the hope that a careful examination may reveal some more information.
Whilst investigating the EMI Archives Frank Andrews discovered a number of
Beka master records, he listed all these and we have now been able to trace
many of them to issued records, however, that still leaves a number that appear
to have remained unissued. We have listed these titles in italic script and would
urge readers to examine ‘client’ labels to see whether or not they appeared on
any of them. There are blank catalogue numbers in the listing that may account
for some of the Afrikaans material (highlighted in green), but as we have never
seen any, we cannot confirm or deny this. |
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