Not Philly but close

Ohio Owns the Rock Hall of Fame? We’ll see.

Victor Records, Camden NJ, just across the way from Penn’s Landing

Yeah, we’ll get to the Phifties and Sixties, but it’s a journey. That stained glass window you can’t make out above is a rendering of this:

 Where the record industry was born, from classical to country.

History. I know. Boring boring boring. Via Wiki:

Victor Records

[Via Wiki]

“The Victor Talking Machine Company was an American recording and phonograph manufacturer headquartered in Camden, New Jersey. It was the largest and most prestigious firm of its kind in the world, probably best known for its use of the iconic "His Master's Voice" trademark and the production, marketing and design of the popular "Victrola" line of phonographs. After its inception in 1901, Victor rapidly became the dominant recording company in America for over six decades, retaining its status after merging with the Radio Corporation of America in 1929 and becoming RCA Victor; the company continued with the manufacture of phonographs, records, radios and other products…

The Victor Company was founded by machinist Eldridge R. Johnson, and inventor and businessman Emile Berliner, whom Johnson had been manufacturing gramophones and disc records for since 1896. After a series of legal wranglings, The Victor Talking Machine Co. was incorporated officially on October 3, 1901, shortly before an agreement with Columbia Records to share their various disc record patents. In early 1929, the company was sold to the Radio Corporation of America.”

They were as much a technological leader as Facebook and Sony in their day. Suffer through this description of breakthrough innovation as if your contemporary life depended on it. Because it does. Without Victor, no iTunes:

[via Wiki]

Before 1925, recording was done by the same purely mechanical, non-electronic "acoustical" method used since the invention of the phonograph nearly fifty years earlier. No microphone was involved and there was no means of electrical amplification. The recording machine was essentially an exposed-horn acoustical record player functioning in reverse. One or more funnel-like metal horns was used to concentrate the energy of the airborne sound waves onto a recording diaphragm, which was a thin glass disc about two inches in diameter held in place by rubber gaskets at its perimeter. The sound-vibrated center of the diaphragm was linked to a cutting stylus that was guided across the surface of a very thick wax disc, engraving a sound-modulated groove into its surface. The wax was too soft to be played back even once without seriously damaging it, although test recordings were sometimes made and sacrificed by playing them back immediately. The wax master disc was sent to a processing plant where it was electroplated to create a negative metal "stamper" used to mould or "press" durable replicas of the recording from heated "biscuits" of a shellac-based compound. Although sound quality was gradually improved by a series of small refinements, the process was inherently insensitive. It could only record sources of sound that were very close to the recording horn or very loud, and even then the high-frequency overtones and sibilants necessary for clear, detailed sound reproduction were too feeble to register above the background noise. Resonances in the recording horns and associated components resulted in a characteristic "horn sound" that immediately identifies an acoustical recording to an experienced modern listener and seemed inseparable from "phonograph music" to contemporary listeners.

From the start, Victor innovated manufacturing processes and soon rose to pre-eminence by recording famous performers. In 1903, it instituted a three-step mother-stamper process to produce more stampers than previously possible. After improving the quality of disc records and players, Johnson began an ambitious project to have the most prestigious singers and musicians of the day record for Victor, with exclusive agreements where possible. Even if these artists demanded high fees or royalty advances which the company could not hope to immediately make up from the sales of their records, Johnson shrewdly knew that he would get his money's worth in the long run in promotion of the Victor brand name. These new celebrity recordings bore red labels, and were marketed as Red Seal records. For many years, Victor Red Seal records were only available single-sided: not until 1923 did Victor begin offering Red Seals in more economical double-sided form. Countless advertisements were published, praising the renowned stars of the opera and concert stages and boasting that they recorded only for Victor. As Johnson intended, the majority of the record-buying public assumed from all this that Victor Records must be superior.

What Victor used its advantage for:

In the company's early years, Victor issued recordings on the Victor, Monarch and De Luxe labels, with the Victor label on 7-inch records, Monarch on 10-inch records and De Luxe on 12-inch records. De Luxe Special 14-inch records were briefly marketed in 1903–1904. In 1905, all labels and sizes were consolidated into the Victor imprint.[8]

The Victor recordings made by world-famous tenor Enrico Caruso between 1904 and 1920 were particularly successful and were often used by retailers to demonstrate Victor phonographs; Caruso's powerful voice and unusual timbre highlighted the best range of audio fidelity of the early audio technology while being minimally affected by its defects. Even people who otherwise never listened to opera often owned a record or two of the great voice of Caruso.

Victor had many of the world's finest classical musicians under contract, including Jascha Heifetz, Fritz Kreisler, Victor Herbert, Ignacy Jan Paderewski and Sergei Rachmaninoff in recordings at its home studios in Camden, New Jersey and in New York. Rachmaninoff, in particular, became one of the first composer-performers to record extensively; he recorded exclusively for Victor from 1920 to 1942. Arturo Toscanini's long association with Victor also began in 1920, with a series of records conducting members of the orchestra of the La Scala Opera House of Milan. Toscanini recorded for the company until his retirement in 1954.

The first jazz and blues records ever issued were recorded by the Victor Talking Machine Company. The Victor Military Band recorded the first recorded blues song, "The Memphis Blues", on July 15, 1914, in Camden, New Jersey. In 1917, The Original Dixieland Jazz Band recorded "Livery Stable Blues", and established jazz as popular music.