One of the many jokes shared with my friends recently on the current political situation brought the old RCA trademark "His Master's Voice" to mind.
It was as we totally agreed with Newsday's editorial of January 8, 2002, asking the former Attorney General, Mrs Kamla Persad- Bissessar "to nurse, quietly and sedately, her anguish at the UNC's loss of office. (For) even when she occupied the Attorney General's chair, Mrs Persad-Bissessar was prone to embarrass herself by some ill- informed and bizarre remarks", that a friend with the greatest sense of humour remarked of the former AG'S mouthings of her beloved political leader's every thought: "she reminds me of His Master's Voice."
This sent me looking for pictures/ information about this label which so aptly describes not only Mrs Persad-Bissessar's outbursts on behalf of the party's 'maximum' leader, but also the other 16 supposedly well- educated and intelligent individuals who all amazingly seem not to stop to analyse the utterances of their Master's voice before expressing full agreement, even when the Master himself, as is quite normal, seems to be having changes of heart, unknown to them, leaving them in the lurch still supporting his original outbursts.
Before explaining how the His Master's Voice label came into being, I must express a great degree of sadness and disappointment at the changes in the first woman to have acted as Prime Minister in this country. A lady for whom I had the greatest respect to the point of writing her a supportive letter when she was embroiled in the battle for the position of Deputy Leader of the UNC. A lady for whom I gave up a precious Sunday afternoon to celebrate her ascension to P.M. at a tea organised by the Non-Governmental Organisations. A lady who now just blithely echoes 'Her Master's' instructions.
And what of Mr Panday's second lady satellite, young Miss Gillian Lucky, one of the prosecuting attorneys in the Dole Chadee case, who refused to be interviewed for a feature story on completion of the case as it would have been improper. Need I make any comparisons as to what now is proper and what is not. A product of a tightly knit family, I am hoping that come February 15, the Honourable Prime Minister will once again put forward her father's name for the position of President of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. Where will your loyalty lie Gillian?
Anyways since neither political nor editorial journalist am I, it will be better for me to move on to the published picture of the recording label "His Master's Voice" which shows a dog listening to a horn attached to a phonograph, and seeing that lawsuits are the order of the day, make it quite clear that the dog, Nipper, bears no relation whatever to the people of whom I write. It is the name "His Master's Voice" which relates to those who listen to the UNC Political Leader's strident tones and then repeats as he thinks and says to the media.
And since I am sure that even those of us, like myself, who grew up with "His Master's Voice" do not know the story, here goes. Nipper, a mutt, part bull terrier with a trace of fox terrier, born in Bristol, England in 1884, became famous as the symbol of RCA, after being taken to Liverpool when his first owner, Mark Barraud, died in 1887, by Mark's younger brother, Francis, a struggling painter. And it was in Liverpool that Nipper discovered the Phonograph, a cylinder recording and playing machine. Francis Barraud "often noticed how puzzled he was trying to figure out where the voice came from", committed this scene to memory and it wasn't until September of 1895, three years after Nipper died, that Francis painted the scene of Nipper trying to make out where the sounds were coming from.
In 1898, Barraud completed the painting and on 11 February, 1899 registered it as "Dog looking at and listening to a Phonograph." Subsequently, he renamed the painting "His Master's Voice", tried to exhibit at the Royal Academy but was turned down, and had no more luck trying to offer it for reproduction in magazines because "no one would know what the dog was doing" was given as the reason. "Dogs don't listen to phonographs" said The Edison Bell Company, leading manufacturers of the cylinder phonograph.
Acting on advice to repaint the horn from black to gold, Barraud asked the newly formed Gramophone Company at 31 Maiden Lane to borrow a brass horn. The manager Mr Barry Owen asked if the picture was for sale and if it could be used to introduce a machine of their own make, a gramophone, instead of the phonograph in the original picture. The alterations were done and the painting made its first public appearance on The Gramophone Company's advertising literature in January 1900, at which time also Emile Berliner, inventor of the gramophone, asked Barry Owen to assign him the copyright of "His Master's Voice" for America. Owen agreed as he did in 1904 to a similar request from Japan. Some eighty years later, when the arrival of the Compact Disc prompted record companies to start manufacturing centrally for the world, EMI paid the price of losing its rights in these two territories and EMI Classics was created as a successor to "His Master's Voice."
Though only used by EMI today as the marketing identity for HMV Shops in the Uk and Europe, the "His Master's Voice" trademark is still instantly recognized and sits proudly and firmly in the Top 10 of "Famous Brands of the 20th Century."