I had the supreme pleasure of interviewing David Whatmough on Sunday, July 11th, 2011. David has been a serious collector of Canadian vinyl records since 1957 and is still collecting them today. In fact, when EMI Music Canada celebrated their 50th. anniversary in 1999, it was David who tracked down the very first Capitol 78 disc to be pressed in Canada at their London, Ontario plant (Capitol C-101). David donated his extremely rare copy of that disc to EMI. That very rare Capitol 78 RPM disc appears at the beginning of the Nicholas Jennings book "Fifty Years Of Music - The Story Of EMI Music Canada" (Macmillan Canada, Toronto, Canada, 2000).
David Whatmough was born in 1939 and has lived in Hamilton, Ontario all of his life. He told me a wonderful story of his family trip to the CNE in Toronto in the mid 1950s .. instead of going to the CNE with his family he opted to spend time on his own at the record shops in Toronto ... now that is a record collector !
David has produced two definitive books on Canadian vinyl records. His first book on the 78s and 45s in it's latest format is approximately 1000 pages ! The other book deals with Canadian LPs and is also an excellent reference manual. I have found both books indispensable. They can be ordered from this web site. David told me that he has allowed Global Dog Productions to display some of his Canadian label discographies online but of course there are many that you can only access from his books.
David prints each book on his own and to date he estimates that he has sold 60 or so of the larger book. It is very time consuming to print and bind each one.
Now you can hear my interview with David. Here he discusses how he started this "odyssey" and he also provides an amazing insider's story on how he tracked down all of this very obscure information.
Thank you David Whatmough for your two wonderful books and for sharing them with record collectors around the world. The books go a long way to help to tell the story of recorded music in Canada in the 20th. century.
You can listen to the interview: HERE