The Advent of Telarc

Ohio music teacher Jack Renner began recording ensembles on February 20, 1962 as a hobby shortly after the start of his teaching career in Geneva, Ohio.¹ In 1963, he left teaching to record full-time. Jack became one of about sixty franchisees of the Century Custom Recording Company.² These engineers were also salesmen, creating the recordings, arranging for the manufacture of the discs, and often handling sales for the clients. They recorded school and community ensembles, local bands, and anyone else who was willing to pay to make a record.³ Renner and some of his colleagues became dissatisfied with how Century was conducting business, and in 1970 he broke from Century to start Advent Recording Company.⁴ Advent was a signatory of the American Federation of Musicians, which allowed Renner to record the musicians of the Cleveland Orchestra and others of that caliber, and sell the resulting product commercially. Renner continued to record community and school groups: The April 9, 1976 Akron Beacon Journal recounts Mrs. Eschliman’s eighth-grade choral ensemble eagerly recording their first album with Renner recording from his van outside the school.

While recording local groups around Ohio, Jack met Robert Woods, a vocal soloist at a local church. Bob had an interest in the recording business and some connections with local musicians. Bob’s connections to the Cleveland classical music scene, as well as New York’s Metropolitan Opera, proved to be a rich source of clients for Advent.

In mid-January of 1977, when Renner attempted to trademark the Advent name for making sound recordings, he was informed that the Advent Speaker Company of Cambridge, MA, had already done so just six weeks earlier. That meant that Renner and Woods needed to find a new name. After examining many possibilities, Woods was looking through a Latin dictionary one evening and came upon the prefix tel-, meaning covering a long distance or a termination point, as in telephone or telegraph. Put together with Advent Recording Company’s initials, it became TELARC. And on January 16 and 17, 1978, the Telarc team and the Cleveland Orchestra joined forces at Cleveland’s Masonic Auditorium to make recording history.

Last updated on April 16th, 2024 at 03:12 pm

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1. Much of Renner’s biographical information comes from his interviews with Susan Schmidt Horning for her book Chasing Sound and with Jonathan Scull for Stereophile magazine.
   Susan Schmidt Horning, Chasing Sound : Technology, Culture, and the Art of Studio Recording from Edison to the LP (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013).
   Jonathan Scull, “Jack Renner of Telarc: Direct From Cleveland,” Stereophile, October 1, 1998 ↩︎
2. Harry Humphreys, “Business Proves Groovy for Small Recording Firm,” Valley News, November 28, 1968, p. 61 ↩︎
3. This site describes some of the groups who recorded with Century Custom.  ↩︎
4. Century Custom’s parent company, Keysor-Century, dissolved in 2003 ^⁠after being levied with a large EPA fine for environmental violations at their Saugus, CA pressing plant. Other Keysor-Century offshoots included The Great American Gramophone Company and Altair Records. “Keysor-Century Widens Tape Base; Forms Disk Co,” Billboard, February 7, 1970, p. 14 ↩︎