Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Magic music machine bore many names

By Mary Ann Cook

Here's one age indicator: What word you use to describe the mechanical marvel that brings you music? I mean the one that's not the radio, nor the wireless, nor the TV.

My choice, my first choice, anyhow, is the word Victrola, as in "Put that on the Victrola and see how it plays." No, I really wasn't born at the turn of the century, nor do I go back as far as Thomas Edison and his first recording, a rendition of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" that he recited into the maw of his wondrous talking machine.

I have heard that record played, though, in the Edison Museum in Orange, N.J., housed in a former factory of his. The record was scratchy and hard to understand, but still and all it was an incredible invention, as we'd all vouch. Edison himself was such a marvel that he not only lit up our lives with the electric light but he also was a pioneer in motion pictures. The first western, the Great Train Robbery, was filmed outside his laboratory. And of course, the first talking machine also came into being there.

After describing the wondrous creation as a talking machine, people began to use the word Victrola to describe this newly marketed marvel. You had to crank it up via an enormous handle on the side. Otherwise it would run at a slower and slower sloowwwer speed. The old machine also had a sizable loudspeaker, tuba-shaped.

And one of the trademarks of the time was a dog with the words issuing forth, "His master's voice." It was the trademark for RCA Victor, and Victrola was probably a corruption of that. If any one artifact evokes an instant image of the '20s and '30s it's that phonograph with a Rudy Vallee megaphone attached.

To use the word Victrola to describe the electronic centers equipping homes these days is to be woefully out of touch with the times, of course. But still, that word continues to come to minds. Must be that our earliest impressions are the ones most firmly entrenched.

The next popular word to describe the phenomenon was the phonograph. Then came hi-fi (short for "high-fidelity"), turntable, record player, stereo. If you use one word per decade for the past 50 years you've got a tidy dividing line to tell which 10-year period you grew up in.

I'm told by more knowledgeable types than I that it's quite all right to use the word Victrola. That's so ancient that it's quaint, has a certain campy charm. It's right out of Art Deco, like Fiesta Ware or tasseled lampshades.

But if you use a word more recent, it simply marks you as out of step. You haven't kept up with sound business lingo. To use hi-fi, or even think about it, is decidedly tacky. Although there are experts who say hi-fi is as high as sound quality got. These folks call CDs and digitals backward steps.

All of which is to say if you can't gauge from the gait or the face someone's age, the thing to do is listen closely to how they refer to the magic music machine in their midst. That ought to give you the most telling clue.

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