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The Arturo Toscanini Society

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US label established in 1969 in Dumas, Texas. (see also, the unrelated [l=Arturo Toscanini Society (UK)].) [l=Clyde J. Key] launched the (U.S.) Arturo Toscanini Society with the goal of celebrating the career of Italian conductor, [a=Arturo Toscanini]. It was a private, nonprofit club based in Dumas, Texas, which offered members five or six recordings annually for a $25-a-year membership fee. The Society (the ATS for short) gave wider distribution to off-the-air material, not only of American origin but from Europe, too. For years Key scoured the U.S. and Europe for off-the-air transcriptions of Toscanini broadcasts. Key owned 5,000 transcriptions (all transferred to tape) of commercially unreleased material—a complete catalogue of broadcasts by the Maestro between 1933 and 1954. It also included about 50 concerts that were never broadcast, but which were recorded surreptitiously by engineers supposedly testing their equipment. Because the Arturo Toscanini Society is nonprofit, Key believed he had successfully bypassed both copyright restrictions and the maze of contractual ties between [l=RCA] and the Maestro's family. RCA's attorneys looked into the matter to see if they agreed with Key. Key was ultimately shut down when he overreached in a deal with [l=Olympic Records (4)]/[l=Everest] that brought his work much more visibility than he’d previously enjoyed. Death stopped Thomas. But [l=BMG] brought out all the U.S. commercial recordings, and [l=Pearl] (and then others, including [l=Naxos]) issued the English ones. The Collection at Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin contains the Toscanini Society of Amarillo and Dumas's newsletter and other printed material regarding the career of Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini.