Resurrecting Victor legacy in SJ

Graham Alexander spends a lot of time holding vinyl records.

But when Alexander, 26, slips an unlabeled jazz recording from the early 20th-century on to a nearby turntable, he isn’t just spinning some tunes he wants to share.

He’s holding more than a hundred years of history in his hands.

“It isn’t labeled,’’ he says. “We’ll never know who is performing, which is a shame because it’s really good.’’

Alexander isn’t rooting through someone’s attic, marveling at dusty curiosities from another time. Rather, he’s contemplating one piece of a much larger legacy now being kept safe at The Vault, his new business housed in a former bank on the White Horse Pike in Berlin.

In this unlikely location, The Vault is not much to look at from the outside. You could easily drive right by. That would be a shame, though, because inside awaits a magical mystery tour of our musical past.

Midway through his 20s, Alexander already is an accomplished singer-songwriter, bass player, studio producer and Broadway veteran, having performed as Paul McCartney in not one, but two Beatles-inspired Broadway shows.

Growing up in Haddonfield, Collingswood and Merchantville, Alexander was surrounded by music and taught to appreciate its past.

Now, as president of the Victor Talking Machine Co., he and his partners are unlikely heirs to one of the most culturally significant companies in American history.

For that, he has a Manhattan doorman to thank.

At the time, while performing in “Let It Be,’’ Alexander owned a small recording studio in Pennsauken. He was looking to start up an indie label and was planning to stay in South Jersey.

When a doorman casually mentioned an auction taking place in the city, he went mostly out of curiosity.

“The doorman (of the theater) had an ad for a brand auction for intellectual material at the Waldorf Astoria,’’ Alexander recalls. “I looked it up, and one of the brands that they had on the docket was Victrola, and I also knew that Victrola was from Camden and was a record label, so we went there and we acquired the brand.’’

Victrola. The company launched by Eldridge R. Johnson in Camden in 1906, producing a new style of gramophone turntable. Alexander bought the rights to the trademark for “about a thousand dollars.’’

“We were just going to launch Victrola and it was going to be a record label and tender all our releases,’’ Alexander says.

But as Alexander more fully grasped the enormity of that move, the historic significance as well as the future possibilities, he pursued the other brands related to Victrola – Little Nipper, His Master’s Voice, Camden Records, and the Victor Talking Machine Co. (later, Radio Corporation of America), which was formed in 1901 by Johnson and Emile Berliner in both Philadelphia and Camden.

If Victrola practically fell into his hands, he had to hunt down the other brands, as well as the more than 10,000 masters, tests and acetates and other pieces of the companies’ history now housed at The Vault.

He went on to secure the umbrella company, Radio Corporation of America. The brands were all owned first by RCA, which got absorbed by General Electric in the 1980s and then were slowly sold off separately. So Alexander’s challenge was finding the scattered pieces, “in order to assemble them again.’’

Sadly, some of the history sleeps with the fishes. When it departed the city, RCA tore down buildings and bulldozed tons of masters and other archives into the Delaware River.

“The music history of Camden is … kind of floppy,’’ says Alexander, who recalls his mother pointing out various Victor company buildings to him as child, “but as we learned just how legendary it was, we were able to grasp how monumental it all was.’’

“After Victrola, we decided that was going to be the sub label at some point, and we were able to get Victor Talking Machine Co., which was the primary label, and Victrola would be an imprint as it was originally. We just wanted intellectual rights, and we wanted to be true to the legacy. We wanted to be as thorough as possible, and save as much as we could gather up. We wanted to bring it back to the Camden area."

That Victrola imprint will release new music, such as Alexander’s own recordings. His Master’s Voice is the label for historic material. The Victor Talking Machine group label may eventually include “additional labels acquired down the road. We want to expand into other sub labels that are regional.’’

Progress is being made on bringing some of those 10,000 masters on the His Master's Voice label to the listening public by way of a streaming service such as Spotify.

When Alexander first grasped the enormity of what he had acquired, he wanted to bring it home, not just to South Jersey but to the City of Camden.

When the second Broadway show shut down, he sold off property he owned in Merchantville to pay for some of his acquisitions and began hunting for space in the city.

It soon became clear, however, that the historic treasures in his possession needed to be in a bank vault to keep them safe. The only appropriate space in Camden lacked the parking he would need for a public space.

So, for now, he looked beyond the city’s borders and wound up leasing space from Keith Hohing, a musician and partner in the business whose father had once worked for RCA.

The Vault was born, but Alexander maintains office space in Camden, and that is where he wants the Victor Talking Machine Company and Radio Corporation of America to return.

For now, though The Vault is a suburban curiosity and a creation that is both astounding in its historic significance and visionary in a way that is becoming a hallmark of millennial entrepreneurs in the sharing economy.

Once you get past the Nipper dog statue guarding the door, The Vault first presents itself as a performance space, something like a very stylish coffee house. There is a professional-looking stage, high-top tables, and loads of musical memorabilia from Victor’s past.

Alexander frequently takes the stage, performing both his own music, and, in separate events, tributes to The Beatles. Upcoming shows include holiday performances, tributes to music of the '60s and '70s, and gigs by Alexander’s father, Fran Smith Jr., a member of Philly’s legendary band The Hooters.

Near the concert space, a cavernous bank vault keeps safe master recordings. The label recorded everyone from Enrico Caruso to Lead Belly, The Carter Family to Duke Ellington, Bing Crosby to Frank Sinatra. A sign on the wall mentions more than a dozen top hits that were first recorded in what is now referred to as Building 2 of The Victor complex: Ray Charles’ “Georgia on My Mind,’’ Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood,’’ Artie Shaw’s “All the Things You Are.’’ And the holdings extend beyond music to include presidential speeches and other sound recordings of American history.

Inside the Vault Victor Talking Machine Co. president Graham Alexander discusses the history behind the company and their plans for the future.

A small TV plays in an endless loop a scene from “Seinfeld’’ that features Enrico Caruso’s recording of “Pagliacci.’’ It is a quirky addition that also illuminates just how pervasive the Victor influence is on all pop culture.

Other parts of The Vault house a studio where Alexander and The Vault team press new vinyl, or play records on a prototype Victrola, a new state-of-the-art turntable that bears the Nipper logo and the historic name.

Spinning the recording of the nameless jazz band, Alexander looks pensive. Since he purchased the intellectual rights to the many parts of Victor, he feels a great responsibility to hold things together in a way everyone — music fans, historians, Camden residents, RCA/Victor retirees (the company employed 15,000 people in its heyday), school children — can access and appreciate.

The memorabilia that surrounds him — the old photographs, the masters, even the only known sound recording of a World War I battle – is flowing to him now from Victor/RCA buffs, historians and music lovers and former employees, who donate these treasures, or through finds on eBay and other online sites.

It is a lot of stuff. And it will need, at some point, a more permanent home.

Someday, Alexander hopes to once again produce Victrola turntables in Camden, bringing back some of the manufacturing jobs lost so long ago.

“It’s the birthplace of the recording industry,’’ he says of the city where he also envisions helping to found a National Museum of Recorded Sound. “It’s their vision, I just remembered it. If anyone deserves the title, it’s Camden and the greater Philadelphia area.’’

If a national museum and a new production line of Victrola’s on the Waterfront sounds ambitious, Alexander isn’t alone in his dream.

He knows Building 2 of the Victor complex, which turns 100 next year, is being used by the Camden Board of Education, may be for sale. It is one of only three buildings that remain of the 50 once built along the Waterfront by RCA/Victor.

It seems a perfect location for a future museum, in that an original Victor recording studio still exists on the eighth floor.

“It’s a beautiful building,’’ Alexander muses, as he eyes a glassed-in case of rare memorabilia he shows off during backstage tours of The Vault.

Reached a few days later at his office in the Camden County Historical Society in Camden, Chris Perks said he and others who work with him share Alexander’s vision for bringing Victor back home to Building 2.

“The Museum of Recorded Sound … if we had a site on the Waterfront, every musician who performs on the Waterfront, every musician who comes to play there, they’re all going to love it. It’s the origin of recorded sound. And it can be a brand for Camden the way that Cleveland has the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. They only have it because they built it there, but this is where it all started. We just need to draw attention to it. It’s already there.’’

And if lots of other people in the past have thought about resurrecting the Victor legacy in the city, Perks thinks Alexander is the one to really make it happen.

“I would say, Graham is an exceptionally intelligent and talented individual who is pretty much a leader in the advocacy for bringing back the legacy of Victor Talking Machine and its related brands to the Camden community,’’ Perks observes. “He’s an exceptional individual. He’s a very nice kid. You can hang out with him for hours and he’s easy to be around. His mind is hyperactive and he’s always thinking of possibilities and he’s meticulous with detail. The more density of detail, the more grain, about anything … the more real or interesting it becomes.’’

While there would be plenty of hurdles — to accomplish their goal, they’d most likely have to work with the city and with developers to create a museum within a larger residential unit – Perks believes Alexander “has the youth, the intelligence, the interest to move it in a way that other people may not.

“He’s at the early part of his career. This is something that he can pursue with his entire focus and really make a difference,’’ Perks continues.

“There are plenty of people who could tell the history (of Victor) in two minutes, the elevator version. … But each one of those little words, Graham then digs to find what really happened. It’s a fascinating story, the more you dig into it.’’

Perks says the Victor legacy is “a modern apple pie thing. There is nobody in Camden County who is going to say anything negative about RCA/Victor, the legacy of music … it’s a mom and apple pie story.’’

He is hopeful the 100th anniversary of the building, as well as the nearby ‘’Nipper Tower,’’ now luxury condos and a pub, will serve to call attention to the cause.

Someone else hopeful is Fred Barnum of Barrington, author of “His Master's Voice in America,’’ a historical perspective of Victor and its corporate successors through GE Aerospace. An historian, Barnum protected precious artifacts from being tossed into dumpsters when RCA shut down the Camden industry. The materials Barnum kept safe for years are now housed at the Hagley Museum in Wilmington, Delaware.

A museum in Camden would serve the entire region, and in particular, the local middle school children the Historical Society is tasked with educating about local history, including Campbell Soup Company, the New York Ship Building Company, and, of course, Victor.

And Perks can almost envision a future where, say, Jimmy Buffett performs at the BB&T Pavilion in the evening, but first spends the afternoon touring the Museum of Recorded Sound.

For now, The Vault will extend the society’s outreach, just as The Vault team will refer interested guests to the county’s archives, where they can see an original Nipper window and other historic items.

For now, though, there is The Vault.

A full lineup of live shows is planned. Some nights, Alexander, a recording artist who has had enough success to have considered signing with a major label, takes the stage, performing songs from his latest album, “Repeat Deceiver.’’ It is the first record to be produced on a Victor label since 1945.

Asked how that feels, Alexander shakes his head, his eyes wide.

“(The album’s) been on a radio tour right now,’’ he says. “It’s so wild to see the label listed among the other major labels. It’s very wild, bizarre almost.’’

But this brings us back to why this whole endeavor began — the desire for an independent record company outside the constraints of the big labels.

“It’s a necessity. There is no industry for us. We wanted to do music in a different way. And it felt poetic to do it the same way it was done originally. Musicians, playing music, the same way it was meant to be done. We do seek out people who we feel are authentic musically. People who have something to say.

"Modern labels … no one wants to say anything. There isn’t much popular music that is saying anything about what’s happening. … The last music to really do that was hip-hop, back in the day. And the reason we don’t have that is, there are only three major labels left. … They are controlled by massive conglomerates. They don’t want to ruffle feathers and they don’t want people to think. It’s terrible. And it affects our music.’’

While Alexander talks, a photo of folk legend and social activist Woody Guthrie looks down upon The Vault listening room.

Guthrie recorded his iconic “Dust Bowl Ballads’’ on the Victor label in 1940.

The irony of the moment isn’t lost on the young visionary.

“Woody … we actually have a letter from him. His first album was recorded in Camden, and he writes to the Victor Recording Company and says, 'Some of this music you are playing is really lame. You should do something that really matters.' … And then they kept on recording him. That’s pretty bold.’’

Helping to keep things seamless is Christina Sees, Alexander’s right hand in his Victor endeavors. Sees’ official title is vice president of development of the Victor Talking Machine Co. Millennial-driven start-up energy and the latest digital technology blend seamlessly with all this history inside The Vault.

As she points out yet more rare examples of the Victor legacy — a wall of photographs of musical luminaries here, a Johnny Cash album cover there – she grapples with the responsibility The Vault team now shoulders.

“It’s definitely a responsibility. You have the whole history in your hands now and you have to make sure you tell the story as they would have if they had continued,’’ Sees says. “And they were brilliant marketers, so everything we do has to kind of live up to that. There is a standard that must be met, or you are doing damage to the legacy.’’

Alexander has felt this history surround him his entire life.

He seems up the challenge, but he wants so much more than just to preserve a legacy.

”It’s not so much a responsibility as it is a duty to music in the future and music of the past,’’ he says. “It’s about having it be a functional piece of history. No one cares about things once they are just behind glass. We want to continue the legacy through expanding that musical palette that we obviously birthed and was unfortunately taken away from us prematurely,’’ adding that at one point, RCA executives leaving the city behind dumped masters into the Delaware River.

“An unfortunate part of our history is the corporatization of that history, which we then lose. The birthplace … is still waiting to be rediscovered right here,’’ he concludes.

“There is an honor in being able to continue making music with Victor, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. There is nothing more important than Victor in Camden to me.’’

If Alexander and his team are dreaming big, the dreams don't stop with Victor.

He has since acquired the rights to the Woolworth's brand.

But that's a tale for another day.

Tammy Paolino; (856) 486-2477; tpaolino@gannettnj.com

VICTOR COMPANY HISTORY

The Victor Talking Machine Co. was the original company name from circa 1901 to 1929.

When Radio Corporation of America bought Victor around 1929, they kept the name for recognition and became RCA/Victor.

Victrola was a particular type of record player, a new gramophone that had the horn built inside, not outside, and looked more like furniture than a machine. The first internal horn phonograph, initially designated as The Victor-Victrola, was marketed around 1906.

"His Master's Voice" was the trademark for the Victor record label.

Today: Victor Talking Machine Co. and its Victor Talking Machine Co. Label Group are wholly owned divisions of Radio Corporation of America, Inc. formed by Graham Alexander and a team of music, film, home entertainment and media specialists. The Victrola label of Victor Talking Machine Co. is the imprint tasked with the release of Victor's new music.Rather than focus on a genre, the label endeavors to offer recordings with superior sound in keeping with the company's legacy.

Source: Chris Perks and The Victor Talking Machine Co.

Presented by Victor Talking Machine Company, The Vault is a music venue, mini museum and sound studio/production company. 150 S. White Horse Pike, Berlin. Visit www.thevictorvault.com and www.victorrecords.com The Vault

GRAHAM ALEXANDER

You can learn more about Graham Alexander and here samples from "Repeat Deceiver'' by visiting http://www.graham-alexander.net/repeatdeceiver/

Dec. 11 and 12: First Annual Christmas Extravaganza, featuring Graham Alexander.

PERFORMING AT THE VAULT

Dec. 18: Decades Live! Presents 'Groovin,' a Musical Celebration of the '60s'

Jan. 7: Imagine: John Lennon: A tribute featuring Zach Harski (guitar), Keith Hohing (drums), John Croly (guitar), Chris Clayton (bass), Graham Alexander (piano/guitar).

Jan. 8: "The Art of McCartney'' featuring Graham Alexander, Keith Hohing (drums), John Croly (guitar/vocals), Chris Clayton (bass/keyboards/vocals) and Zach Harski

Jan. 27: "Sentimental Journey: A Live Celebration of the Great American Songbook,'' featuring Greg Farnese

HAGLEY MUSEUM & LIBRARY

Retired RCA historian Fred Barnum of Barrington, author of “His Master's Voice in America,’’ donated his sizable RCA./Victor archives The Hagley Museum & Library in Wilmington, Delaware, a Smithsonian affiliate.

The Hagley Museum & Library is at 200 Hagley Creek Road, Wilmington. Visit http://www.hagley.org/

JOHNSON VICTROLA MUSEUM

Operated by the state of Delaware, this museum tells the story of Victor founder Eldridge Reeves Johnson, a Delaware native, and his Victrola invention. Exhibits include phonographs, recordings, memorabilia, trademarks, objects and paintings that highlight Johnson's life and career, and history of recorded sound. 375 S. New St., Dover, Delaware. Visit http://history.delaware.gov/museums/jvm/jvm_main.shtml