For those friends and industry colleagues who may not be aware, former HMV employee Mike Donaghue sadly passed away recently following a short illness. Mike died peacefully at his home in the early hours of 27th March 2017. To say that Mike was a loyal company man would be a gross understatement. Mike joined the small… Read more »
Pioneering British Engineer and Inventor of Stereo, Alan Dower Blumlein to be Posthumously Honoured with the Recording Academy® Technical Grammy® Award The ground-breaking work of British engineer Alan Dower Blumlein, inventor of stereo sound recording, is to be posthumously honoured by The Recording Academy® with the Technical Grammy® award at a special ceremony to be held… Read more »
The EMI memorial, Cherry Lane Cemetery, which is both a grave marker and commemorative stone for 37 workers from The Gramophone Company, Blyth Road, Hayes killed when a V1 flying-bomb hit a factory surface air-raid shelter on 7 July 1944. Restored by EMI Archive Trust in 1994 by and again in 2009.
Unique is an overused word but if there was a day that changed popular music forever, July 6, 1957 was that day! By David Hughes Not that anyone knew it at the time, or probably for the next five or six years. In the late 1950’s British music world, skiffle was King. Skiffle was a… Read more »
A “doyen” is defined as a senior member of an establishment and, if discography is – or discographers are – an establishment, then Alan Kelly who died in December 2015 was certainly a doyen of discographers. Alan was born in Girvan on the Clyde in Scotland. He took his MA at Glasgow in 1948 and… Read more »
EMI are inviting former employees at the Old Vinyl Factory in Hayes, to come back and share their memories of the iconic site. The factory was a major employer for the town and produced records by some of the world’s best-known artists, including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Cliff Richard. The reunion will take… Read more »
I had that weird feeling when I came across this crowd shot whilst scanning Don McLean images for Universal (Music Group) I remembered going to this free concert at Hyde Park (though I didn’t remember that it was May 1975, or that I’d recently turned 17). I thought ‘wouldn’t it be funny if I could… Read more »
“Our famous, Jewish orchestra, you remember, four violins, a flute and a double bass” (Gayev in Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, 1904) Renair records are proud to announce the fourth of their series of issues exploring the story of Jewish recorded music. Produced by Julian Futter and with a 40 page booklet written by the… Read more »
Hayes Past, Present and Future There will be a special screening from our ‘Memories of EMI’ project, Sunday 22 June 2014, as part of this year’s ‘Calling the Tune Film Festival’ This session also includes a presentation from Hayes students of their projects on the history of Hayes, followed by a screening of ‘At Your Service (1962)’, a… Read more »
In early 1940, Alan Blumlein and his team at the EMI Central Research Labs began work on the technology behind the Capacitance Altimeter. This device works by measuring the differences in charge between a low lying aircraft and the charge at earth’s surface, therefore enabling aircraft and other vehicles to fly at night and in… Read more »