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Back in the early 2000s I had a professional "I've arrived" moment at the HMV store on Oxford Street when I found that their classical CD section had a divider with my name on it. You know, those plastic tabs with composers' names that help you find what you're looking for. This was on the strength of a disc of my choral works recorded here in Finland that enjoyed quite wide circulation (relatively speaking -- the market for contemporary classical choral music is, shall we say, not huge).
There used to be two HMVs in Oxford St. The other one was much larger and about half of the basement was classical music. It had glass partitions and doors to stop the sound drifting in from the jazz section. I don't remember seeing your name though, sorry!
I remember the one on Market Street in Manchester. It was pretty massive and the back half of the ground floor was dedicated to classical in its own separate, sound dampened part of the store. Now the building it was in is split up into like 2 smaller pound shops (think Dollar Tree in the US or... Sweden. Yeah, I don't get that either lol) and the upper floors seem to be offices or storage spaces. It's as sad to see that beautiful building being used for budget crap as it is to see HMV being a shadow of its former self. Apparently the rent was £1million a year, never mind all the other overheads, so its pretty obvious why that particular store shut. The one inside the Arndale Centre that took its place is nowhere near as nice.
I was prompted to investigate your work on Spotify and very much enjoyed your Kaleidoscope LP from the late 90s (which I will now buy a physical copy of, I promise!)
Great video. I'm so glad that Lloyd's Bank put up a plaque to commemorate the world's most famous little audiophile dog. An utterly charming tale. Thank you!
I remember going into Lloyds as a kid and seeing the plaque thinking how cool it was that a famous dog was buried there. The building at the end of Nipper Alley is an old toilet block which was briefly an art galley called the Toilet Gallery. It was the co-owner of the gallery who led the campaign to have the road called Nipper Alley
It's a bit of a shame HMV and record shops are so much rarer, it was so fun going down all the aisle flicking through albums, listening to music on those huge headphone. It was quite an event with lots of people doing the same. Although at the same time, it is so much much cheaper to listen to music than it was in the past and you can find any music you want with just a few clicks. So it's not all bad.
As with all other actual stores in London, Amazon killed it and the pandemic was the final nail in the coffin. I tried shopping for a new camera back in the summer. My first choice of store was completely gone, even the building had vanished. My second choice was also gone, third choice only sold phones and phone cases and was obviously money-laundering, and I had to walk right back down the length of oxford street to find what's apparently the last camera shop in London.
Some people like collecting vinyl, cds, dvds and even cassettes. I took a Dutch friend to visit the HMV store in Leith, Edinburgh a few years back. His first action upon entering the shopping precinct was to say 'Just going in to look. I'm not spending any money in the HMV'. Within minutes, he was.
@@frglee I've recently accepted CD collecting as a thing, rather than just a way to get music purchased, ripped the way I want it, tagged accurately, and devoid of any DRM.
Hmv are actually opening new but somewhat reinvented stores in some cities. They focus more on pop culture merchandise in general, along with the usual cds and vinyls but in smaller scale to accommodate the demands of the vinyl revival. They opened a new store in Oxford last year
The one on Oxford street closing was a real shame, Artists from all around the world used to do album signings and play chilled acoustic shows in the back. And the store was so big you could find CDs for so many tiny or obscure bands. At least Kingston still has Banquet Records, they do a similar kind of thing.
Fun fact: The rights to the dog belong to different entities in different countries. In the USA and Canada it's RCA Victor. Thus the HMVs in Canada (yes, they existed until 2017 or so) only had the letters, no dog or record player. In Japan and some other parts of Asia, it's JVC (who was originally part of RCA Victor, until World War 2 happened) who owns the dog in front of the gramophone.
As a Canadian I can attest to associating Nipper with RCA exclusively. When HMV Canada went into recievership many of the leases were bought by a local chain called Sunrise Records and converted to their own stores. In 2019 they ended up purchasing the UK parent company also.
Sorry to hear HMV closed down over there. Last time I visited one of their stores was in 2015 in Ottawa. They were well-stocked and properly organized, how I like my music stores. But now you say it, indeed I wondered why it just said HMV in nice sans-serif letters without the logo.
The HMV shop in Oxford St was my favorite London shop when in my teens & twenties. You could go there and listen to various tracks from the latest LP’s
The player piano section at the end is the cherry on top of this video. I knew the basic story about how the Nipper logo came to be but not the sad backstory. Thanks, this is another good way to extend your channel beyond just transportation related topics, although I hope you keep doing those.
5:43 an interesting thing about those "american candy stores" is they are more often than not, fronts for Money Laundering, that is why their prices are so high. They don't need people to buy anything, and their supposed revenue, would then make sense, high price with a made up but seemingly average number of sale for a sweet shop. Makes the revenue seem more legitimate and therefore more money can be laundered.
As somebody who spent 10 years working in Music Retail, the demise of record shops in favour of digital downloads is something I still find a little painful to reflect upon. The company I was working for at the time even explored the radical concept of 'in-store juke-boxes' which could create customer-own compilation CDs to order. It's funny how the future sometimes "out-futures" previous visions of the future!
Strangely I never wondered what HMV stands for, simply figuring it's probably something like "Her Majesty's Video- and audiotheque". I also thought the dog was a clever and self-explanatory logo, but the history of it is fascinating, and then turns out to be closely tied to the abbreviation. So, thanks as always for an inspiring video, and now we'll never forget Nipper!
I was surprised to see HMV reopened their main Edinburgh store here this year after 6 years gone. We've now got two HMV stores. The ground floor is dedicated entirely to anime, film downstairs and music upstairs.
This video took me right back to my childhood, I was fascinated by the picture of the dog listening to the gramaphone on my dad's records. Feeling a bit sad now. Thanks Jago!
When the Road was originally named it had a very nice miniature cast aluminium street name plate with a painted nipper cast in relief. It lasted about 2 months before it was stolen! But in those days the disused toilets at the end were an Art Gallery managed by Kingston University!
Funnily enough, there is video of a dog purported to be Nipper listening to a gramophone. He then attacks it and chews the horn to bits. It's very old and appears to date from the silent era (ironically). I've seen it so I know it exists.
There is a former RCA Victor factory in Camden NJ nicknamed Nipper Tower with a stained glass rendering of the Nipper logo where a clock would be. It is now condos.
Great video, Jago. Victor were not the owners of the Gramophone Company but their affiliate in the United States. Their association began in 1902 and lasted until the late 1950s with both companies owning the 'dog and trumpet' trademark in their respective territories.
This was lots of fun, Jago. I'd be happy to see more like this, please and thank you. Cheers for all of your delightful content and ever so slightly sardonic wit.
The description is of where Nipper is buried is "of a small park with magnolia trees" - which sounds lovely. Sadly however it's now the arse-end of several shops (including Lloyds) where there is a second slightly tatty sign glued to an outside wall. That location is about as attractive as Nipper Alley that you do show.
my longest lasting job in my life thus far is 3 years in hmv which was also one of my favourites. we generally knew the story about nipper but i don't think any of us knew the deep and very sad back story you've done this marvellous video on. i sadly lost my job in the 2019 administration and found it hard walking past the empty oxford st shop that closed at the same time. but i was even more upset to see it taken over by one of those candy shop owners. it's probably too much to hope for now but i would love to see hmv move back in there one day. nipper deserves to have his spot back in oxford st like it was for nearly 100 years.
I grew up near Camden, New Jersey where the Victor Talking Machine Company was headquartered in the early 1900s. Their old HQ building and factory is still there, it was converted to apartments about 15 years ago. The most notable feature of the HQ/Factory is its tower which includes a stain glass relief of Nipper and his phonograph. You can easily see it from across Camden and in neighboring Philadelphia
Thanks for the history lesson. I have often wondered about Nipper. His image was on almost every record released by the RCA Victor label. Ok, Black Friday is the day after American Thanksgiving, which is the fourth Thursday of November. Retailers have tremendous sales on this day. Their hope is to end the Christmas shopping season in the Black.
And with retailers also attempting to stretch the day into a full month with various "Countdown To Black Friday" sales the original meaning of the term is long gone - and shows how increasingly desperate they are to get any sort of sales boost.
I should also mention that the HMV store on Oxford Street used to have a disc-cutting facility at the top, manned by a fellow named Jim Foy. In 1962 he was visited by a young man from Liverpool who was a friend of the store manager. He had a reel tape that he wanted converted into discs. The young man's name was Brian Epstein and the tape was of a group he was managing. It was recorded when they auditioned (and failed) at Decca Records. Foy liked the sound of the group and suggested Mr. Epstein meet a friend of his, George Martin at Parlophone Records. Epstein did just that, met with Martin a few days later, and Martin signed the band to a contract. They had a few hits after that. The band of course, was The Beatles.
I worked for EMI in Hayes, Middlesex, in the late 1960s and can still recall the heady aroma of hot vinyl emanating from the record factory on Blyth Road. Nipper was much in evidence on the hundreds of thousands of disks pressed there. Some 35 years later I found myself in Albany, NY, where the world's largest Nipper statue, some 28 feet tall, sat (and still does) atop the so called RCA building at 991 Broadway, about 3 miles from my house. Was he following me around?
In the United States, RCA used the "His Master's Voice" image as a trademark starting in 1929, first for RCA/Victor records and eventually across the company as a whole. In 1990 they ran a series of print and TV ads for their electronics products featuring a contemporary dog playing Nipper and a similar-looking puppy called Chipper, who was supposed to symbolize the hip young demographic they were trying to reposition themselves for. It didn't really work, but the ads were cute. One of them featured the strapline--I'm not making this up--"Finally a VCR that anyone and his dog can use."
Thank you so much for this! I live not too far away, and was even in Kingston this evening. I've been aware of the HMV dog all my life, but didn't even know his name until I was in Japan a few years ago, and stopped by in a relatively minor town on the south coast of Honshu, somewhere between Kobe and Hiroshima. I love a random museum, so sought out a few, including one that was dedicated to Nipper, essentially an old house, packed with thousands of pictures, statues, radios, toys, ashtrays, everything with Nipper on them. There were even at least 10 fibreglass models from shops on the roof. It was cool but not exactly that usual, when the friendly owner noticed a foreigner and asked in so-so English (much better than my long-forgotten GCSE Japanese) where I was from. I thought I would keep it easy and just said London. His eyes widened and he breathlessly uttered the most unexpected word I have ever heard: Kingston! And then he proceeded to get out a printed tourist information map of Kingston upon Thames. TLDR: Lovely and just-the-right-amount-of-crazy middle-aged Japanese guy shows me that Nipper is buried about 100 feet away from where I bought my shoes, while on the other side of the planet.
I have spent all my adult life under the impression that I had seen the original painting of Nipper looking at the gramophone. I started my working life as a laboratory assistant at EMI Research located in Hayes in 1959. Just off the main entrance to the building was a room which was used as a visitor’s waiting room. Hanging on the wall of this room was a painting of Nipper. I was told by somebody that it was the original painting from which the trade mark was derived. Now I wonder if it was one of the copies.
Sadly Kingston lost hmv when the shopping centre decided to up the rent as they do. The shop was empty for ages after and now it’s a children’s play centre. The original shop in Kingston was huge and spent many hours in there.
In the US,that logo,was connected to RCA-Victor,and Red Seal Records! One of the most prominent artists was Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra[the Boston Symphony,in its summer guise],and if memory serves,there were during the 1970's,a number of ragtime albums issued! The movie,"The Sting",revived and popularized Scott Joplin's music,and it still makes some waves,even now!! Thanks Jago,for a rather off-beat,but very interesting video!! Thank you 😇!
Curiously, no mention that I could spot in the video or the comments of EMI, who absorbed Gramophone, owned the UK trademark of HMV and eventually converted it into the classical music label of EMI Records in 1967.
Old victorian stories, antique sound technology and dogs, all of this WITH Jago narration? It must be my lucky day. BTW, im not crying, you are crying.
Classic fun. I love the fact that you managed to work the Piano Museum into this. If you think dogs are notoriously bad at sound engineering, you should hear the racket they make whilst trying to sing along with or indeed play the piano! Then again cats are undoubtedly worse...
Well, definitely a digression from the usual tube stories, but equally fascinating and just as entertaining. Happy memories of going to the HMV stores in Oxford Street and Oxford itself to built up my collection initially of cassette tapes and then CDs. Another interesting art-related subject; the murals at Leytonstone tube station, which I discovered by accident recently. Worth a video?
That was a great video Nipper was listed as the most well know trade made if I am not mist taken. GOOD NEWS - HMV is reopening its store in Nuneaton this month. So I am not off topic you can get a train to Nuneaton.
Nicely done video. I am a bit of a collector of old records including 78's and so was I was aware of the original picture depicting Nipper looking into the horn of a phonograph and how the machine was altered to be a gramophone. Phonographs that played cylinders were superseded by gramophone playing discs during the 1890's. Original discs were only recorded on one side (I have a number of examples - the oldest being 1903). By the time WW1 broke out, discs were recorded on both sides and the phonographs had lost out to the new technology.
Nice to see the original picture with the phonograph. After suffering a stroke, Nipper was laid to rest under a mulberry tree in Durham Gardens, Eden St, Kingston-upon-Thames "one September afternoon in 1895". The supposed site (now greatly changed by the modern world) was excavated on August 4th 1950 in the presence of Barraud family members, HMV representatives and 2 veterinarians. Bones were found but it could not be concluded they were those of Nipper - the old dog was thus left to rest where he been buried. My Great Aunt, Ellen (Nellie) Wheeler married Henry George Barraud (son of Nipper's original master) in 1903. Their son, Philip and my late father, Michael were guests at the opening of The Dog & Trumpet in Great Marlborough St on 28th November 1973.
Your take on a non-Tube/railway topic is as detailed and enjoyable as all your other content. I’d go far to say this video and your one on “Electric Avenue” are my favourite Jago videos around! I have no objection to coverage of such themes and topics like this!
to think I've walked through 'nipper alley' numerous times whilst some what intoxicated during my student days with out the foggiest of clues. Great short story !
Priceless!! It may have nothing to do with railways, but is this the best Jago video yet?? From the pirate "Arrrrr" through to the wonderful closing titles, this had me chuckling throughout. Top job!!
Sniff. I used to have a method where, a few times a year, I would go to the nearest HMV shop, find the most interesting looking (according to my mood of the day) shop assistant, and ask them to sell me the most interesting yet at least barely listenable album they had encountered recently. This is how my collection came to include the Jewish-American rap, the Balinese music (which is very far from just barely listenable), and the … thing I can't really describe in words. Poor dog.
This video has certainly been something different. Very interesting as well. It's a good job as well that Leicester still has an HMV on the high street. :)
'No refunds' - definitely an audience stopper. I learned about Nipper decades ago, so it was a pleasant reminder of a topic residing in my subconcious.
There's also a plaque commemorating Nipper and Francis Barraud on the façade of 126 Piccadilly in London. It says that is where Barraud completed the famous painting, so presumably he either lived or had a studio there (Barraud, not Nipper). I'm fairly sure that the plaque is visible from the top deck of a bus, although I first noticed it while wandering around sightseeing, as I frequently do. Thank you for another great video.
Francis looks exactly like a Terry Gilliam creation for Monty Python. Sociologically, it must have really hit people when to hear the dead talk. We're used to it now and I get the voices in my head all the time (usually Radio 4 Extra) but back then it would have been all so fresh and new, and discombobulating upon the living I expect. What an amazing piano solo. No handed too! My late friend Bill had one of these. He had got it possibly in the (Thistle St.) Lane Sales behind Lyon and Turnbull's for a few bob in the 60's (clockwork gramophones typically half a crown, grandfather clocks 5 bob). He replaced the rubber tubing with surgical rubber hose but I can't remember how he did the bellows. What with all the wheezing and gasping, it was hard work and we had to pump like buggery. I remember we had an Elvis Presley commemorative roll. It was all so jolly physical but his wife was used to it and made us a cup of tea while we rolled out some ragtime classics. The unique thing about these instruments was that the faster you went at it, the pitch remained the same, unlike recordings which were all analogue in those days.
If you haven't done so, have a listen to one of Jago's earliest Tales From the Tube about the Mind the Gap voice recording at Embankment. Relevant to your post.
The dwindling of HMV shops is something I am sad to see and I well remember the famous store in Oxford Street. The late John Peel used to tell listeners when he was going record shopping there and invite people to join him. That store had everything. In the 1990's CDs really gave record stores a boost. Ironically, what stopped HMV from totally vanishing was the new interest in vinyl records. As a 60+ person, I felt that I must have fallen into a time warp when I saw some youngsters picking up a 12 inch vinyl LP rereleases of the Beatles Sargent Pepper album and exclaim "this is cool".
Great video! Something that I haven’t seen being mentioned and is worth knowing is, that at the parking lot behind Lloyd’s bank (Fife Road Entrance) there is also a plaque by the brick building wall, marking Nipper’s last resting place. Not many people know that. As a Kingston resident for the last 20 years (a musician, huge record collector) I didn’t know it either, I accidentally found out about the parking lot plaque when talking to someone living at the apartments there.
Thank you for this “deviation.” We own and old Victor Victrola and I have always loved the logo. It was probably the first logo I consciously took notice of.
All these years I kept wondering what HMV stands for, but were too lazy to google it. What a pleasant opportunity to learn all about it...! I wanted to work at HMV as a teenager but my father wouldn't let me cos he'd say they also sold ADULT DVDs!!! Later on in life I learned (by accident on the shared computer) that he is an avid adult movie watcher himself!!!
It's somehow validating to hear that audio nerds existed in the Victorian era! I'll always remember temping at the Oxford Circus HMV as a young 'un.... a nice crew.
Love these slightly different videos. Which reminds me, not long ago you did a video on South Kensington. When viewing your uploads, I usually open google maps or similar in a second tab to get more geographic information on the topic. When thus surveying the South Kensington area, a building just north of the eastern end of South Kensington Subway Station caught my attention, it was labelled 'Thin House' (on the corner of South Terrace and Thurloe Square). I immediately thought it would be a nice thing if Jago made a video about this building, so there you are. Have you already made a video about Thin House ? Is there any interesting to tell about it ? If no and yes, please consider to do so and tell us everything you can find out about it.
I used to live close to Kingston as a nipper and we regularly went shopping there but never knew the HMV dog was buried there. The park existed back then and the phone boxes in the market were still upright.
I heard of HMV store chain and I remember pics of that dog seemingly listening to the grammaphone.But never knew the connection between the two. Great learning video.
An interesting and endearing story. I don't know why HMV didn't try launching a streaming service or digital-download music store of its own (unless it did and I hadn't noticed) to get with the times.
In 1989 I went to work for a company that had taken over the accounts of RCA. As part of the acquisition we received two large plastic statues of Nipper. We would playfully kidnap them between departments.
Really pleased to see you getting sponsorship Jago. You deserve it after years of delivering quality idiosyncratic videos! I know you appreciate your privacy, but very pleased to enjoy taking these walks with you round London and beyond through your videos.
Fantastic video - next time I’m in Kingston, I will pay my respects to Nipper. Great musical interlude at the end. My parents worked at a large boarding school in Horsham, Sussex and in the 90s, my dad became a housemaster of a boarding house. In our dining room was a piano like the one you played, and it also had a cylinder for the Entertainer!
Thank you so much for posting this, a logo I well remember from my childhood and growing up. It is in many ways unique in that it tells of its history and now we know it does.
I've always loved the HMV logo. And I've always been aware that a dog knows his master's voice. I found your research into the history of this logo fascinating. A REAL dog that inspired the germ of an idea that has survived through many decades. Thanks Jago, AGAIN!
Very Spooky! Today, a friend told me about the time he was manager of HMV in Oxford Street, and especially, the time he took Michael Jackson into the HMV canteen.
The trademark "HMV" was purchased by a Chinese company it seems as cheap and nast "HMV" devices are still around. In the 1960's we had "HMV" record players (Big sideboard type units with lift up timber lid over the Multi changer record player on one end, record storage at the other end and Radio tuner with the other controls in the centre), TV's etc
We still have a HMV in East Kilbride, and I was in there buying some CDs a few days ago. I actually used to buy CDs from that first HMV store, although the last time I visited it was in 1999/2000. Shame it is now a Candy shop.
Here in the US, Victor would be purchased by RCA and Nipper (and the HMV logo) would see use for decades. I'm not sure when it was dropped; some time in the nineties the logo for RCA was just the three letters in a particular font, usually in red.
