Montgomery Ward Records was American retailer Montgomery Ward's store brand record label. The records were sold at a lower than industry standard prices through company stores and catalogs. During its prolific run, the label issued many important country and jazz recordings.
Production of the label began in 1933 as an in-house budget label, with an arrangement with Victor Records that gave Montgomery Wards access to every style of music in Victor's vault. [1] [2] The first issues were pressed by Victor and included popular music as well as country (including Cajun), race records, ethnic material with catalog numbers beginning at M-4200, which was intended to match and replace (often with different artists) that of Broadway Records, which although not exclusive to Wards had been extensively marketed by them. [1] [2] A second series recorded and pressed by Victor, beginning with M-6000, was devoted to classical music. [2]
Montgomery Ward also had a short-lived contract with Decca Records that resulted in releases of both Decca and some Gennett Records material to which Decca held rights. [2] Decca-originated issues can be identified by the lack of a "M" prefix before the catalog number. [2] Material originating from Eli Oberstein's United States Record Corporation (Varsity, Royale) including older Crown Records recordings, was issued in a short-lived M-3000 series which also included material from Paramount Records, Gennett, and various foreign labels to which Oberstein's claim of ownership was dubious. [2] [3]
Production ceased in December 1941, by which time Montgomery Ward's longstanding arrangement with Victor ceased. [1] [2]
Because Montgomery Ward's catalogs were widely distributed in rural areas, country music was a large part of Montgomery Ward's catalog, including many releases of importance to collectors. [2] [3] The records were priced for consumers at well below industry average, 21 cents per record or $1.79 in groups of ten. [3] Older material such as recordings by Henry Burr and Cal Stewart, which continued to sell in rural areas, were released. [3] Most of the released material was from recordings originally made for Bluebird Records, although many were never released on that label, leaving Montgomery Ward as the sole issue. [2]
Decca Records is a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934 by Lewis, Jack Kapp, American Decca's first president, and Milton Rackmil, who later became American Decca's president. In 1937, anticipating Nazi aggression leading to World War II, Lewis sold American Decca and the link between the U.K. and U.S. Decca labels was broken for several decades. The British label was renowned for its development of recording methods, while the American company developed the concept of cast albums in the musical genre.
RCA Records is an American record label currently owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside RCA's former long-time rival Columbia Records; also Arista Records, and Epic Records. The label has released multiple genres of music, including pop, classical, rock, hip hop, afrobeat, electronic, R&B, blues, jazz, and country. Its name is derived from the initials of its defunct parent company, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). RCA Records was fully acquired by Bertelsmann in 1987, making it a part of Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) and became a part of Sony BMG Music Entertainment after the 2004 merger of BMG and Sony; it was acquired by the latter in 2008, after the dissolution of Sony/BMG and the restructuring of Sony Music. RCA Records is the corporate successor of the Victor Talking Machine Company, founded in 1901, making it the second-oldest record label in American history, after sister label Columbia Records, founded in 1889.
MCA Records was an American record label owned by MCA Inc., which later became part of Universal Music Group.
Brunswick Records is an American record label founded in 1916.
Gennett was an American record company and label in Richmond, Indiana, United States, which flourished in the 1920s. Gennett produced some of the earliest recordings by Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Bix Beiderbecke, and Hoagy Carmichael. Its roster also included Jelly Roll Morton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton, and Gene Autry.
MGM Records was a record label founded by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio in 1946 for the purpose of releasing soundtrack recordings of their musical films. It transitioned into a pop music label that continued into the 1970s. The company also released soundtrack albums of the music for some of their non-musical films as well, and on rare occasions, cast albums of off-Broadway musicals such as The Fantasticks and the 1954 revival of The Threepenny Opera. In one instance, MGM Records released the highly successful soundtrack album of a film made by another studio, Columbia Pictures's Born Free (1966).
American Record Corporation (ARC), also referred to as American Record Company, American Recording Corporation, or ARC Records, was an American record company.
Bluebird Records is a record label best known for its low-cost releases, primarily of kids' music, blues and jazz in the 1930s and 1940s. It was founded in 1932 as a lower-priced RCA Victor subsidiary label of RCA Victor. Bluebird became known for what came to be known as the "Bluebird sound", which influenced rhythm and blues and early rock and roll. It is currently owned by parent company Sony Music Entertainment.
Philips Records is a record label founded by the Dutch electronics company Philips and the Dutch-American largest record label company Universal Music Group. It was founded as Philips Phonographische Industrie in 1950. In 1946, Philips acquired the company which pressed records for British Decca's Dutch outlet in Amsterdam.
Record collecting is the hobby of collecting sound recordings, usually of music, but sometimes poetry, reading, historical speeches, and ambient noises. Although the typical focus is on vinyl records, all formats of recorded music can be collected.
Varèse Sarabande is an American record label, owned by Concord Music Group and distributed by Universal Music Group, which specializes in film scores and original cast recordings. It aims to reissue rare or unavailable albums, as well as newer releases by artists no longer under a contract. The label's name was derived from combining French-born composer Edgard Varèse's last name with the musical term sarabande, a slow Spanish dance.
"Sometimes I'm Happy" is a popular song. The music was written by Vincent Youmans, the lyrics by Irving Caesar. The song was originally published in 1923 under the title "Come On And Pet Me," with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and William Cary Duncan.
On August 1, 1942, the American Federation of Musicians, at the instigation of union president James C. Petrillo, began a strike against the major American record companies because of disagreements over royalty payments. Beginning at midnight, July 31, 1942, no union musician could make commercial recordings for any commercial record company. That meant that a union musician was allowed to participate on radio programs and other kinds of musical entertainment, but not in a recording session. The 1942–1944 musicians' strike remains the longest strike in entertainment history.
RCA Camden was a budget record label of RCA Victor, originally created in 1953 to reissue recordings from earlier 78rpm releases. The label was named "Camden", after Camden, New Jersey where the offices, factories and studios of RCA Victor and its predecessor, the Victor Talking Machine Company had been located since 1901.
Budget albums were low-priced vinyl LPs of popular and classical music released during the 1950s to 1970s consisting either of previously released material or material recorded especially for the line. Prices ranged from as low as 59 U.S. cents to $2.98. In the UK Pickwick Records' Top of the Pops record series, which operated between 1968 and 1985, was the most successful budget album range.
Crown Records was a record company and dime-store label that existed from 1930 to 1933 in New York City. Its catalogue included music by Eubie Blake and Fletcher Henderson. Known as the label offering "Two Hits for Two Bits" proudly printed on their sleeves, Crown's discs sold for 25 cents.
Elliott Everett "Eli" Oberstein was an American record producer and music business executive who established the influential Bluebird record label in the 1930s and owned a succession of small labels in the 1940s and 1950s.
Edison Bell was an English company that was the first distributor and an early manufacturer of gramophones and gramophone records. The company survived through several incarnations, becoming a top producer of budget records in England through the early 1930s until, after it was absorbed by Decca in 1932, production of various Edison Bell labels ceased.
Broadway Records was the name of an American record label in the 1920s and 1930s. Broadway's records were first manufactured in the early 1920s by the Bridgeport Die and Machine Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Most of the early issues were from masters recorded by Paramount Records. Starting in 1924, masters from the Emerson and Banner appeared on Broadway.
The Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR) is a database catalog of master recordings made by American record companies during the 78rpm era. The DAHR provides some of these original recordings, free of charge, via audio streaming, along with access to the production catalogs of those same companies. DAHR is part of the American Discography Project (ADP), and is funded and operated in partnership by the University of California, Santa Barbara, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Packard Humanities Institute.