Schwann Catalogue

SCHWANN CATALOGUE

The Schwann Catalog (previously Schwann Long Playing Record Catalog or later Schwann Record And Tape Guide) was a catalog of recordings started by William Schwann in 1949. The first edition was hand-typed and 26 pages long, and it listed 674 long-playing records. By the late 1970s, over 150,000 record albums had been listed in Schwann. The company was honored by the record industry both at the 25th anniversary (1974) and 35th anniversary (1984). The Schwann Catalog changed hands several times, sold in 1976, then again in the late 1980s to Stereophile, then to Valley Media in the 1990s. In 2002, the company was purchased at a bankruptcy auction by Alliance Entertainment Corporation. (More from Wikipedia)

Likewise, Alice Cooper was the under-stated name of the lead singer from the beginning, but Alice Cooper started out mainly as the name of the band. The bulky, dirty-yellow Schwann Catalogue – which showed all the records in print in the United States, and which used to sit in one corner of larger record stores back in my youth – identified them as “the Alice Cooper”, and they were listed with the A’s. Once the lead singer of this theatrical band became larger than life, it was more Alice the man than Alice the band. In later years, Alice Cooper frequently appeared on talk shows and game shows as just a regular guy – and that was as startling in its own way as the gaudy make-up that he used in his live performances.

(August 2013)