The HMV logo dog has a name. He’s the one staring into the gramophone horn, stamped on a billion records. He was Nipper, a real terrier, and he had been dead three years before the painting that made him immortal was finished. Stranger still, the record companies now joined to him at the hip all turned the picture down first.
Who was Nipper?
Nipper earned his name the honest way: he nipped at visitors’ legs. He belonged to a man named Mark Barraud, and when Mark died, the dog passed to his brother Francis, a painter. Nipper himself died in 1895. Everything that made him famous happened after he was gone.
The painting nobody wanted
In 1898, working from an old photograph, Francis Barraud painted Nipper peering into a cylinder phonograph, head cocked at the sound. Because those early machines could record your own voice, the image carried a quiet, heartbreaking reading: a dog listening for the voice of the master he had lost. Barraud called it “His Master’s Voice.” Then he tried to sell it, and the phonograph companies shrugged. A confused dog and a gramophone, they decided, had nothing to do with selling music.
How Nipper became HMV
William Barry Owen of the Gramophone Company saw it differently. He bought the painting for £100, on one condition: Barraud had to paint over the cylinder machine and drop in one of the company’s disc gramophones. Nipper got his makeover, the image became a trademark, and the firm eventually renamed itself after the motto everyone remembered: His Master’s Voice, or HMV. The slogan travelled in a dozen languages, from “La Voix de son Maître” to “La Voce del Padrone.”
India knows the logo as well as anyone. The Gramophone Company’s Indian arm pressed records under that dog-and-trumpet mark for generations before becoming the label now called Saregama. A terrier who nipped ankles in Victorian England ended up on Indian film soundtracks a century later.
Nipper is proof that the most famous dog in music history was just somebody’s ordinary, ankle-nipping mongrel. Pink Floyd and Cat Stevens found their muses the same way. For the songs themselves, see the best songs about dogs. And if you want your own future icon, adopt, don’t shop.
Great!! And how have you been, Abhishek?
All well, thank you 🙂 How are you?
am a very passionate music over of both old and new heard long time ago about the HMV Dog story but was not sure of the whole thing it was very touching besides I am very close to dogs love them like I love my kids.
Totally knocked out by this blog entry. Surprised to see it was by an Indian. Love for dogs?! Mention of Pink Floyd and Cat Stevens! Cheers, mate!
Five years ago i retired. What next ? I got enrolled as an Advocate and started to attend court. Very soon i came to learn that i am not made this profession. Then i turned to my first love of journalism & free lance writer. Here , I saw that profession of journalism was totally changed from pen to computer & camera. It is now an era of technology dominated test tube journalism. Suddenly one day a maggoty wounded dog fell down to my gate. His was breathing his last. I surprised why did dog fell to my gate ? Answer was love. It came to my notice that my son & daughter are very passionate to feed and care all stray anlmals specially stray dogs , puppies. This incident brought a spritual change in my life to serve stray, hungry, ailing dogs. Care their puppies. I do not remember any good work than this ever done in my last 60 years old life. They are my master & loveguru to transform me being human.
I’m 86, I have two little china dogs that belonged to my mum, I look at them often when I think of my mum and dad and wondered where these characters came from, hence I googled Toby, Nipper and HMV and so ended up here! I was never allowed to have a dog when I was little but a few years ago I saw the plight of hundreds of dogs in Romania and the amazing dedication of Anna at Last chance 2 Life. Looking at the pictures of her ‘now rescued charges’ about 400 (now, 700) I couldn’t resist adopting a year old bitch who sort of Trogened her way into the rescue ‘camp’ inside her mummies tummy, she was called Muffin, but is now called Rosie because it gave me an excuse to use my mum’s name often, Rosie is by my side as we speak and I love her very much! I am now housebound to some degree since lockdown and Rosie has kept me smiling and sane in my old age. Marié Martin.🐕🌈
Such a heartwarming anecdote, thanks for sharing it with us, Marie! 🙂
Wishing you and Rosie, health and happiness!