more budget labels!

[Guest]

Wyncote Records is started in 1964 as a budget reissue daughter of Cameo-Parkway Records.

Stops in 1967 when Cameo-parkway gets into financial troubles.

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2 lps i have on this budget label include: Henry Mancini Favorites, and Moods of Mancini

[Guest]

2nd up:

what about PERIOD. includes a lot of west coast jazz-- i have a great chet baker lp on it which is the soundtrack to the james dean story. also have a large ensemble bud shank lp.

[Guest]

on 2nd thought, the shank might be on KIMBERLEY records....have to dig it up...

[Bill Nelson]

Period's 'SHO-300' series carried a list of $1.98, otherwise they had other product lines with list prices of $4.98 and $5.95 (with chutzpah at no extra charge).

Oh, and let's not forget the purely cut-rate LPs and 2nd-tier labels of majors -- often with the thinnest of record spines with no printing and no inner sleeves: Baronet, Coronet, Camden, Clarion, Crown, Design, Diplomat, Forum, Guest Star, Kent, Kimberley, Pickwick, Richmond, Rondo-lette, Roost, Spin-o-rama, Strand, Sunset, Wing, Wyncote -- and others too numerous to mention.

While the majors dispatched fringe or 'race' artists to 99-cent bins, some of the condemned turned out to be amazing and highly-prized. Crown is, to me, the worst label (wretched pressings) to carry some great R&B artists like B.B.King, The Jacks, and Joe Houston.

[Bill Nelson]

And then there's the irony in the nomenclature of these el cheapo labels: the more regal and exalted -- such as Crown, Palace, and Premier -- the more wretched the pressing. I'd throw Syd Nathan's King into the equation but, as we know, Syd was just a frugal bastid' who "liked to make a beautiful dollar."

[Guest]

Have you guys read this before?

http://www.soundfountain.com/dongabor1.html

Good pages on the history of budget vinyl.

Zeno

Don't forget to read all 4 pages since it gets into some jazz related interest. My own interest in the Gabor labels aside from the early things on Continental are some LPs that appeared on Plymouth, Paris, and MasterSeal LPs of the obscure and not properly credited latin pianist Rey Davila who recorded about 2 1/2 albums worth of material on these labels. There are also some obscure tracks by Machito associated with these budget labels which I have on the Plymouth label.

Edited December 11, 2005 by Zeno

[Guest]

interesting article-- it seems like the majors wanted to really distance themselves from the cheap-o line. out of all these labels named so far in this thread, do any other knows any connections they had to the majors?

[JSngry]

interesting article-- it seems like the majors wanted to really distance themselves from the cheap-o line. out of all these labels named so far in this thread, do any other knows any connections they had to the majors?

Wing=Mercury

Camden=RCA

Harmony=Columbia

Pickwick was for a while associated in my mind with Capitol, but now I'm not sure how direct the connection was.

Vocallion was reborn at some point in the 50s or 60s as a Decca budget label, I think.

[GA Russell]

Sunset = Liberty

Pickwick was an independent whose stock was often recommended on Wall Street Week.

[JSngry]

Forgot about Sunset!

Yes, I know that Pickwick was/is an independent company, but for a while it seemed to also be Capitol's budget label. Just a coincidence, or did Capitol co-opt/lease the name or something?

As long as we're on the subject, Blue Note had a budget label in the 1950s. It was called Savoy...

[Chuck Nessa]

Sunset = Liberty

Pickwick was an independent whose stock was often recommended on Wall Street Week.

At one point Capitol had a stake in the company and supplied a bunch of masters.

This opens a whole bunch of worm cans and takes me back to my Wisconsin days. One state over you have MN and they had Heilicher Bros (forgive spelling) and they were major powers in the music biz before the '90's, I think Detroit's Handlemen (sp warning again) was another. The only remnants of marketing giants like these and a few others are pale shadows but they shaped the music world we all live in.

I wish someone would finance a study of the record biz from the end of WWII and the arrival of the digital curse. I'd be a witness asap.

I'd learn more than I contribute but want to know a bunch of stuff.

[Guest]

i really do think think thread is relevent beacuse a lot of these lps were avaiable at places other records weren't, such as supermarkets and thrifty drug stores. also interesting to note, the cover art on a lot of these were the best produced aspect of the whole package-- take wyncote for example--- i have 3 different "mancini" records on this label- the covers, although featuring models like so many other labels did, have a graphic design to them which is unlike any other covers ive ever seen.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

interesting article-- it seems like the majors wanted to really distance themselves from the cheap-o line. out of all these labels named so far in this thread, do any other knows any connections they had to the majors?

Here's what I've been able to find out about the labels mentioned so far.

Budget labels

Baronet - dunno

Coronet – this was a subsidiary of Premier Albums Inc (see below)

Clarion – a subsidiary of Atlantic

Crown – subsidiary of Kent/Modern/RPM owned by the Bihari Brothers

Design – a subsidiary of Pickwick

Diplomat - dunno

Forum – a subsidiary of Roulette

Guest Star - dunno

Kimberley - dunno

Palace – Hollywood firm owned by Al Schlesinger (who also owned the R and B label) active from 1952 into the 60s – may not be the same firm as mentioned in preceding posts

Period - a subsidiary of Everest, who made quite a lot of interesting jazz records – Gloria Lynne, Wild Bill Davis etc.

Pickwick – dealt with in earlier posts

Premier – there were several 1950s labels called Premier.

:1 a firm in St Louis owned by H S Somson – active between 1944 and 1951

:2 a firm in Syracuse , NY, owned by Frank J Hundshamer, active between 1955 and 1958

:3 a firm in Tucson, AZ, active in 1959.

I don’t know which one of these owned Coronet

Richmond – a subsidiary of London (itself a subsidiary of the UK firm Decca)

Rondo-lette – A subsidiary of Rondo, which was owned by Eli Oberstein – the great failed entrepreneur of the record industry. Rondo started in 1955 and was still active in 1959 – may have continued into the ‘60s

Spin-o-rama – a Newark, NJ firm owned by Henry LaPidus, who also owned the following labels: Humpty Dumpty; Peter Pan; Prom; Rocking Horse; and Synthetic Plastics, which was the parent company. The last label started in 1949; at least Prom (and maybe other labels) continued into the 60s

Strand – there was a Strand label at the end of the 1950s which was distributed by, and MAY have been a subsidiary of, US Decca.

Sunset – a subsidiary of Liberty

Wing – ditto Mercury

Wyncote - dunno

Don’t forget New Jazz – Bob Weinstock converted the original label he had started in 1949 into a budget line, for introducing new artists.

Grand Award was, I think, a budget subsidiary of Command - well, it was a subsidiary; not sure about price. But it had been the original owner of Command Performance, wich changed its name to Command.

MG

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I wish someone would finance a study of the record biz from the end of WWII and the arrival of the digital curse. I'd be a witness asap.

I'd learn more than I contribute but want to know a bunch of stuff.

I agree. I haven't any money, though.

MG

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I wish someone would finance a study of the record biz from the end of WWII and the arrival of the digital curse. I'd be a witness asap.

I'd learn more than I contribute but want to know a bunch of stuff.

I agree. I haven't any money, though.

MG

Hm, just remembered that there is “The American Popular Music Business in the 20th Century”, by Russell Sanjec. I haven't read the full thing, just the very large short version prepared by Russell's son, David. The trouble is that, since Sanjec was President of BMI, he tends to concentrate on the music publishing and performing rights issues. The record industry is dealt with rather sketchily in David's version, and even the occasional quoted statistics of record sales are presented in different ways so that one can't compare many years.

But it's still an interesting read.

Some more good stuff on the post war industry is in Arnold Shaw's "Honkers and Shouters", which focuses on R&B.

There are also histories of individual record companies, like Atlantic, and bios of owners. There's also a nice book called "Little Labels, Big Sound", by Rick Kennedy & Randy McNutt, which gives short histories of 10 independent labels, from Gennett and Paramount (though they were both owned by large corporations) to Delmark.

MG

[marcello]

The Strand label, by our friend Michael Fitzgerald.

I have the Slide Hampton: Horn of Plenty.

Another http://www.bsnpubs.com/strand/strand.htm]Link

Edited December 11, 2005 by marcello

[Bill Nelson]

Budget Label Adds To M. Goldberg's list:

Baronet - reissued Roost 78 rpm material, see: Stan Getz 'Pair of Kings', Baronet 102

Halo

Jazztone

MGM budget label family: Lion, Metro, Metrojazz

Tops (really the 'bottom' of budget labels)

In an earlier post, I inaccurately painted this genre as having been manufactured expressly for "99-cent bins". Well, many of these were stock catalog items at $1.98 list (Camden, Harmony, Richmond) and would be ordered by record shops and placed in bins titled 'Special Price'. Sometimes the budget label stock would get shuffled in with LP cut-outs -- a drag for us record-hunt fiends.

The TRULY low budget labels (Coronet, Diplomat, Spin-o-rama, et al) would arrive as a mixed assortment to the grocery and drug stores -- and gas stations (a surprisingly potent point-of-purchase). I've had the dubious pleasure of seeing many LP collections which consist entirely of these lowest-tier labels, otherwise known as 'Hitting the Skids'.

[StormP]

I don't know if this is a budget label but I have several JAZZ HERITAGE cds. The cd label reads licensed by Fantasy Records. The cds seems to stem from the late 1990's.

Anybody know the history of this cd label. It would be much appreciated.

[Chuck Nessa]

I don't know if this is a budget label but I have several JAZZ HERITAGE cds. The cd label reads licensed by Fantasy Records. The cds seems to stem from the late 1990's.

Anybody know the history of this cd label. It would be much appreciated.

Jazz Heritage is an offshoot of the Classical Heritage Society, a 40 year old mailorder "record club". They licensed material from a bunch of labels and still operate.

[Chuck Nessa]

FWIW, the Baronet lps were reissues of Jazztone reissues of Dial and Roost material.

[Bill Nelson]

And that's how these early Stan Getz sides were able to penetrate grocery stores and gas stations in Anytown, USA.

One may contemplate the potential 'musical corruption' of innocent buyers via these 47-cent slabs!

[StormP]

[Guest]

why was Tops the bottom of the bottom. i kinda like my tops 78s. they have FOUR songs on ONE 78!!!!

[Bill Nelson]

Glad you enjoy your 78s on Tops.

Their LPs came in thin jackets with no liner notes or inner sleeve. Tops spared EVERY expense possible when it came to the consumer. Only a collector with a warped sense of humor would say to a visitor,"Let me show you all my albums on the Tops label!"