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ARSC Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded-Sound Research:
 

ISBN # 978-0-9973333-3-6
Library of Congress Control # 2018960581

Browse the Entry List

 

American Record Companies
and Producers
1888 - 1950

An Encyclopedic History

By Allan Sutton
ARSC Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient

Covering the American recording industry from the birth of commercial recording to the start of the LP era, American Record Companies and Producers contains more than 1,120 detailed, carefully documented entries devoted to the record companies, independent studios, and individual producers, and the thousands of disc and cylinder brands they produced for the commercial market (including consumer, jukebox, and subscription labels).

A directory section preceding each entry includes company founding, record-production, and closing dates; office, studio, and pressing-plant locations, with dates of operation for each; original- and licensed-master sources; foreign affiliations; and a listing of all commercial labels and other record products.

The volume also includes a lengthy introductory history of the American recording industry from the 1880s through 1950; user's guide; company timelines and genealogical charts; glossary; extensive references (largely primary-source); and label and subject indexes.

760 pages / 7" x 10" full-cloth hardcover
Heavy-duty sewn library binding • Limited edition 

 
"A mighty fortress is this book - and it guards an accumulation of knowledge of unparalleled proportions."
- Tim Fabrizio, ARSC Journal

"Clearly a labor of love, and obviously something that took years to compile. American Record
Companies and Producers will forever be the ultimate resource..."
- John R. Bolig, author of Caruso Records and The Victor Discographies

"I am in awe of the scope, breadth, detail and documentation."
- James A. Drake, author of Ponselle: A Singer's Life and Richard Tucker: A Biography

Where Did the Rest of the Books Go?

After twenty years and nearly seventy releases, Mainspring Press has exited book and CD production and will be publishing exclusively online, through The Mainspring Blog and our growing Free Online Reference Library. All books and CDs (other than American Record Companies and Producers, which is in short supply) have now sold out.

Please keep in mind that all Mainspring Press publications, including our free online editions, remain under full
copyright protection, whether or not currently in print. 
 

The Mainspring Press Free
Online Reference Library

The Gus Haenschen Interviews
(James A. Drake)

The International Record Company
Discography

Russian Interference: Boris Morros, ARA Records,
and the Soviet Infiltration of Hollywood

RCA Victor Program Transcriptions
Complete Discography

Audio Oddities: William S. Hart Seeks
a Lost Friend in Alaska (1930)

From Kodisk to Speak-O-Phone: Victor & A. T. Emerson
Launch the Instantaneous-Recording Industry

Victor Emerson's Personal
Photograph Album

Enrico Caruso's "MeToo" Moment:
The 1906 Monkey House Scandal

The Records Guglielmo Marconi Didn't Invent:
The Marconi Velvet Tone Story

Sam Moore: From "Laughing Rag" to
"Spooning and Ballooning" (and Beyond)

Efrain Bain's South American
Record Piracy Operation

American Record Corporation Marketing Materials
(1935 - 1937)

Fletcher Henderson & his Orchestra:
Newspaper Highlights, 1924 - 1931

Cal Stewart (Unce Josh): Newspaper Highlights,
1892 - 1919

"Oh, That Damned Horn": Rosa Ponselle Talks About
Her Recordings (The James A. Drake Interviews)

 
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