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Joe Batten From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia

Joseph Albert Batten ( 10 October 1885 – 18 April 1955 ) was born in the East End of London, he started to play the piano while young, serving as an accompanist for his father in the latter’s music-hall appearances. He was largely self-educated as a musician: he taught himself to read scores borrowed from the Passmore Edwards Library in Shoreditch, heard chamber music at Alfred Clements’ South Place concerts, and attended performances by J.W.Turner’s Opera Company and at Sir Henry Wood’s Promenade Concert at the Queen’s Hall.

	Contents

	Biography 	1.1 Early Years 	1.2 Edison Bell Company and Columbia Graphophone Company Ltd 	1.3 Later Years Biography

Early Years

Batten’s first experience of recording was in 1900, when he accompanied A.H.Gee and Montague Borwell for Dan Smoot, ‘in London not for his health, but to make cylinder records’. Adept in the studio, Batten soon made the transition to disc recordings and witnessed the gradual shift by the general public from prejudice against the gramophone to enthusiastic acceptance. By the end of the Edwardian era he was accompanying international concert artists such as Peter Dawson. During the 1914 – 18 war Batten served as a private, but also continued to be active in entertainment at the Soldiers Entertainment Fund, forerunner of ENSA in the Second World War. Following demobilization he joined the Edison Bell Company to build up a good catalogue of music for its “Velvet Face label, so called because of it claimed quiet surfaces. Here Batten conducted the first recorded excerpts from Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. Batten graphically described a typical day with Velvet Face in his memoirs: ‘One day Tristan in the morning, banjo solos in the afternoon, then the 2LO Military Band playing Holst’s Planets, and Jack Payne’s Dance Band gathering to follow on.’

Edison Bell Company and Columbia

Of the 78 companies which were in existence up till 1914, Batten claimed to have worked for 39 of them at one time or another. From this he graduated to become the Recording Manager and Conductor of the Edison-Bell Company which, with its Winner label records, had been a leader in recordings of popular music. His task was to create a new label, to be called Velvet Face, to rival HMV and Columbia (The Columbia Graphophone Company) (The big fellas!). Batten recruited a number of the foremost conductors for his label: Adrian Boult, Sir Hamilton Harty, Henry Wood, Dan Godfrey etc. One seminal enterprise he conducted himself was the Acoustic Recording of Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius, with the full approval of the composer, for Velvet Face, made in one week in 1920 with much reduced forces. In a studio (probably in Peckham) measuring 30’ x 10’ he had an orchestra of 24 (nine string players only) and a chorus of 8 plus the three soloists; the organ part being played on a bass concertina. This was issued on 8 double sided 12” Green Label discs.

Following the introduction of electrical recording Batten moved in 1927 from Velvet Face to the Columbia label, and then embroiled in intense competition with the larger Gramophone Company and especially its HMV label. By 1930 Columbia was producing a considerable programme of recordings, such as Gounod’s Faust conducted by Beecham, Brahm’s Third Symphony conducted by Mengelberg in Amsterdam, and Stravinsky’s Les Noces directed by the composer. Batten, now more of a manager than a performing musician, especially respected Sir Henry Wood, of whom he wrote. ‘No man in the long history of our musical art did more for its advancement than he’. Batten introduced several new recording ideas such as his series of ‘Illustrated Songs’ – The Trumpeter, The Village Blacksmith, The Death of Nelson etc. when he first used the technique of montage and combining recordings from a number of locations – two of the Columbia studios together with Westminster Central Hall.

Later years

With the merger of Columbia and HMV to form EMI in 1931, Batten formed the Special Recordings Department and undertook a variety of work: specially shortened operas on Radio Luxembourg for Cadburys; government recording contracts for scientific and experimental work; private recordings; language and shorthand courses; film music; church services; talking books; creating a library of background music and sound effects for stage use etc. This was shut down in 1939 but re-opened later on during the war in collaboration with ENSA. Following his retirement after 50 years in the industry he wrote a useful book of reminiscences, entitled Joe Batten’s Book – the Story of Sound Recording, published in 1956, a year after his death. In it he tells many engaging stories concerning conductors, vocalists, instrumentalists and members of the famous Savage Club. The illustrations, especially those showing artists recording by the acoustic process, are most interesting. The book is said to be valuable for its first-hand account of the history of sound recording in England as has recently been adapted to e-reader format, available at Amazon Kindle Books Store and the Kindle lending library.

References 	Batten, Joseph., Joseph Batten’s Book The Story of Sound Recording, published in 1956 ; Amazon Kindle Store, 2011 	IPS Wiki ( http://wiki.ibs.org.uk/audiocompendium/index.php?title=Batten) 	The house conductor: Joseph Batten by Daniel Leech-Wilkinson (http://www.charm.rhul.ac.uk/sound/p20_6_1.html) 	Book Review; The Record Collector, Vol11., no 2-3, page 59; Fem/Mar 1957 External Links

	Recording Pioneers by Hugo Strötbaum http://www.recordingpioneers.com/RP_BATTEN1.html#Thanks 	Gramophone Magazine Jubilee Book 1923 – 1973 published in 1973 (pages 197 – 201) 	Vintage Jazz and Dance Band Music on 78rpm Records and Talkies : by John Wright http://www.jabw.demon.co.uk/batten.htm 	Early Ragtime Piano, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage ; http://www.folkways.si.edu/albumdetails.aspx?itemid=106 	The Making of the Columbia Abridged Sets ; Gilbert & Sullivan Discography http://gasdisc.oakapplepress.com/narrelec-batten.htm