British Homophone was a recording studio behind the present day Sainsbury’s and Superdrug in Kilburn High Road. It later became the famous Irish dance hall The Banba.
St Margaret's
Before British Homophone opened their recording studio in 1929 this was the site of a large house called St Margaret’s. The last owner and occupier of St Margaret’s was the builder Robert Allen Yerbury who rented the house about 1877. He soon bought the freehold as well as a large piece of land adjoining his grounds. He used the garden in front of the renamed St Margaret’s Lodge as the site for a terrace of shops. Although completely hemmed in by the shops on the High Road, Yerbury was able to rent the house to a series of tenants.
By 1903 a hall and conservatory had been added to the back of St Margaret’s Lodge. ‘Professor’ Sidney Bishop ran ‘The Athenaeum’ for dancing there from 1902 to 1914 before moving to nearby Quex Road. During WWI it was used as a Forces recreation room and in the 20s the Hall became the Kilburn branch of the Church Army, with successive secretaries living in St Margaret’s Lodge.
The site was next adapted as a recording studio for the British Homophone Company Ltd. William Sternberg was the director of a company that had been selling gramophones under the trade name of Sterno for some years. They had used the masters and distributed records of the Homophon Company of Berlin since 1906, and also produced Sterno records from 1926 to 1935.
On 24 May 1928 the Times announced that British Homophone was issuing a share capital of £150,000. In a contract dated 21 May 1928, Sternberg put all his assets into the new company of British Homophone for £37,500 worth of shares. They moved into No.84a Kilburn High Road the following year.
British Homophone advert, 1928
Lots of well-known performers and dance bands of the time were on the Sterno label including Mantovani, Oscar Rabin, and Syd Lipton.
The most important artist on the label was the pianist and band leader Charlie Kunz who sold an astonishing one million records. He became the highest paid pianist in the world reputed to be earning £1,000 a week. Born in America, he came to England in 1922, and during the 1930s he lived at 134 Dollis Hill Lane on the northern edge of Gladstone Park. For more information on him see:
https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Charlie_Kunz
Charlie Kunz record on the Sterno and British Homophone label
In 1934 the BBC studios in Maida Vale sent recordings of their radio programmes by telephone lines to British Homophone in Kilburn who recorded them onto wax discs. They were able to offer the BBC a quick turnaround of 12 hours for programme repeats.
But like other companies in the Depression, British Homophone struggled financially and in May 1937 Decca and their rival EMI jointly purchased all the British Homophone masters for £22,500.
When British Homophone finally left Kilburn in 1939, the ladies clothing chain, Richard Shops, who had been at Number 82 since 1936, took over Number 84 and probably the studio building as well.
William Sternberg had lived at ‘Mondesfield’, in Exeter Road Kilburn, from 1924. When he died on 14 June 1956, his addresses were Exeter Road and Seddscombe in Sussex. He was buried at the Willesden Liberal Jewish cemetery probably with his wife Eva who died in 1925. He left £19,379, today worth about £500,000.
Sterno and Canned Heat
As an interesting aside, Sterno was also the name of an American campsite cooking fuel made from jellied alcohol. During the Depression, and strained through cloth, it was used as a cheap substitute for whisky and popularly known as ‘Canned Heat’. The early bluesman, Tommy Johnson, wrote and recorded ‘Canned Heat Blues’ in 1928, and the famous American band Canned Heat, which was formed in Los Angeles in 1965, took their name from the song.
The Banba
The studio building behind Richard Shops was used from about 1951 to 1969 by Michael Gannon who ran the famous and very poplar Irish dance hall there called ‘The Banba’ (taken from a poetic name for Ireland).
Michael Gannon on the right, with William Dunlea, the Irish tenor
From the Sainsbury Archive, 1969
The Banba entrance was down a narrow alley to the right of Sainsburys, between Nos 84 and 86 Kilburn High Road, as shown on the 1950s OS Map below.
It addition to the evening sessions a Sunday afternoon tea dance was also held. The writer Tom O’Brien remembers being there when The Sunshine Boys, a local Irish gang who ran a protection racket in Kilburn and Cricklewood, blocked the entrance with a Mini. They beat up the doorman and smashed up the hall presumably because the money had not been paid.
Marianne can remember being taken to the Banba one evening. She was bought a coffee made from Camp Coffee Essence, which Wikipedia describes as: ‘A glutinous brown substance which consists of water, sugar, 4% caffeine-free coffee essence, and 26% chicory essence’. She left it untouched after the first sip.
British Homophone after the buyout
Despite the 1937 buyout by Decca and EMI, the British Homophone name continued into the early 1980s, but was no longer based in Kilburn. By 1962 it was at Excelsior Works, Rollins Street, SE15, New Cross. The new company pressed some of the early records for Chris Blackwell’s Island Records about 1965. Edward Kassner the boss of President Records owned the pressing plant. Eddy Grant and ‘The Equals’ were signed with President Records. Eddy set up Ice Records and a studio called the Coach House and bought the pressing plant in New Cross from Kassner in the late 1970s, where he pressed his own records until the early 1980s, when he left England.
Comments
Post a Comment