American Record Labels & Companies: An Encyclopedia (1891-1943) [Hardcover]

Allan Sutton (Author), Kurt Nauck (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 417 pages
• Publisher: Mainspring Pr (May 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0967181909
• ISBN-13: 978-0967181905
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,837,520 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A valuable resource for the 78 rpm record collector, January 25, 2003

By 

"Gimpy" Peach Johnson - See all my reviews

This review is from: American Record Labels & Companies: An Encyclopedia (1891-1943) (Hardcover)

I've collected 78 rpm phonograph records for some time, and was delighted to hear of the publication of this book. Sutton and Nauck provide detailed histories of virtually every American record label prior to 1943 from Acme to Zon-O-Phone, giving dates of manufature, the companies that marketed them, and offering all sorts of interesting trivia along the way about the early years of the recording industy. The first half of the book covers the actual label names and is presented alphabetically. The second half tells the histories of the companies that made and produced these records. I have found many uses for the book, from getting approximate dates for records in my collection not found in most discographies to answering questions about exact playback speed of certian early disc records, to anything else I'd ever want to know.

Th book comes with a CD-ROM filled with scanned images of the labels discussed in the book. My only gripe with the CD is that it is not very user-friendly towards those of us using Macintosh computers. I can access the images with a photo viewer on my Mac, but file names that do not display properly on a Mac make it difficult to find what I'm looking for.

Anyone who collects 78 rpm records and has an interest in the "behind-the-scenes" workings of the early record industry should have this book. It's a work I find myself referring to frequently to answer my questions about the records in my collection.