Spotlight: Woodrow Wilson's Patria Recording—The Patria Company

So far we have been unable to learn anything of substance about this mystery company called the Patria Records Corporation. The accompanying advertisement comes from the leading trade magazine, The Talking Machine World, from May 15, 1917 (p. 75), and as can be seen, the Patria company was located at 32 East 23rd Street in New York.

Sometime in the weeks immediately following the initial publication of President Wilson's war speech, a recording artist presumably recorded it in four parts to be issued on two double-sided discs for Patria. No one connected with our CD project, The Great War, has ever witnessed another specimen of this record or has ever found a copy of the disc containing parts 1 and 2. Several other recordings by Wilson—for instance, those made before the election of 1912 for the Victor Talking Machine about tariffs, trusts, and labor issues—are not especially rare today, but to our knowledge, the recordings made for Patria are exceedingly uncommon, and we are not aware of any other releases of Wilson's war speech delivered by Wilson himself. If you know more about this subject or if you have a copy of the Patria record with parts 1 and 2, contact us.

Next: The Patria record 1, 2, 3, 4