Ekophon

The Swedish Ekophon label was started in 1920 by a music shop in Göteborg named AB Nordiska Musikaffären and at first used only material already issued on Swedish Beka, even using the original Beka catalogue numbers, but with an NS- prefix instead of the S- on the Bekas. From January 1921, the Beka label was dropped in Sweden and the Beka recordings were henceforth issued only on Ekophon, which had been taken over by Nordiska Grammophon AB in Stockholm. A little over seven hundred local recordings were made up to 1925, and recordings from OKeh and German Artiphon and German, Danish, and Norwegian Beka were also issued. All records were pressed by the Lindström company in Berlin and all the American OKeh material was taken from the Lindström American Record series. The recording director in the years 1921-1923 was pianist/composer Gunnar Boberg (1890-1949). At least 72 discs (144 titles) were issued as by Gunnar Bobergs Dansorkester, Stockholm, but at least a third of these actually used German and Danish Beka material. Boberg was not a member of the Musicians€™ Union and it is not known who were the members of his studio groups. Generally, despite interesting titles, the records are disappointing and sound like a military band trying to play €˜modern dance music€™. Boberg was considered a good dance pianist and made a career of playing at private parties in high society. He recorded six piano solos for Ekophon which are reasonably good and show ragtime influences. In the summer of 1923, Boberg was replaced as recording director by pianist Sven Rüno (1900-1960). Oddly, the last Boberg recording was Ciro's Blues, composed by Rüno under the pseudonym Ted Sloan. Rüno had a much better conception of dance music and jazz and the eight 1923 recordings with his regular eight-piece dance band, which included American banjoist Russel Jones, are very good for the period. Rüno was also €˜house pianist€™ for Ekophon from 1923 and it is possible that it is his band that plays the anonymous accompaniment to several singers from this period. The 1924-25 recordings were made in the Odeon studio in the Stockholm suburb of Sundbyberg and it is quite possible that the records were also pressed at the Odeon factory there. The last local recordings were made in the spring of 1925 but the Ekophon label continued to exist until the end of 1926 and, in that year, even issued several electrical recordings from German Beka. In 1927, the Parlophon label replaced Ekophon. (From Björn Englund, "A glimpse into the past: Ekophon", in jazz magazine Storyville, no 84 (1979), p. 230-231)