His Master’s Voice Logo featuring a cylinder phonograph and a dog staring at it, is unarguably one of the most famous Logos in the world history. The picture is not only known to every music lover of the world but is also recognized by the people who are remotely related to music or not a keen listener too, quite easily. Interestingly the LOGO has a true loving story related with its origin and the artist Francis Barraud, actually painted it after getting inspired from his own personal surroundings.
Francis’s brother Mark, had a fox-terrier dog called Nipper who was hugely devoted to his master and had a great bonding with him. Unfortunately Mark died and now Nipper went to live with Francis who used to paint on a regular basis with Nipper sitting by his side as dogs normally do.
Once while the room had a Cylinder Phonograph playing some music, Francis noticed Nipper listening to the notes very carefully and looking into the cylinder with a surprise. Now where some web-posts say that those were the recordings of Mark only which Francis got as his inheritance along with the Phonograph, there the others are not sure that whether it was Mark speaking through those recordings or not.
But anyhow, Francis found Nipper hooked on to the phonograph with deep interest as well as amazement and that’s when he decided to paint this scene, giving the title “His Master’s Voice” to the painting. Here at few places it is also mentioned that Francis painted this after the death of Nipper but in any case it was Nipper, his master Mark and the phonograph which became the real inspiration for Francis to paint this historical painting altogether.
Next assuming that this might interest the phonograph manufacturing companies of those days, he took the painting to few of them who surprisingly didn’t get impressed and it remained unsold till 1899, when The Gramophone Company bought it with a vision. They later adapted the same as their official trademark with an addition of one of their disc machines being replaced in it representing the company. And after a few years, when it became hugely popular, they even changed the company’s name to HMV after the painting (in abbreviated form), as a part of their branding strategy which really worked big time.
So this is the actual story behind that loyal dog Nipper looking into the phonograph, probably listening to HIS MASTER’s VOICE in the world famous logo.
Cheers!
Bobby Sing (Harpreet)
(Note : The write-up also forms a chapter in my book DID YOU KNOW Vol.1 published in October 2014. An updated, expanded edition of the book was released in October 2018)
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Tags :
Real story behind HMV LOGO by Bobby Sing at bobbytalkscinema.com, HMV Logo Story, Marl's Dog and Logo, Unknown Facts on Music, Interesting Music Trivia by Bobby Sing at bobbytalkscinema.com, DID YOU KNOW Vol.1 by Bobby Sing
