The American Record Company was an American record label that was in business from 1904 to 1906.
22-543: The American Record Company (commonly abbreviated as " ARCo ") was founded by Ellsworth A. Hawthorne and Horace Sheble, formerly designers of accessories for Edison Records machines at their Philadelphia-based bicycle shop; in a previous venture, they had issued a small run of brown-wax cylinders in the mid-1890s. Hawthorne and Sheble partnered with John O. Prescott, whose brother Frederick worked with International Talking Machine in Berlin, which marketed Odeon Records . The new company
44-452: A Native American with a smoking pipe listening to a front-mount disc phonograph of undetermined manufacture; American Record Company advertising commonly marketed them as "Indian Records". Several variations of the "Indian" label exist, differing only in minor details. Most ARCo records are single sided; with their double-sided records, apparently the combination of sides were randomly chosen. The company would press any two sides paired, if
66-692: The U.S. survived the war intact because its president, Otto Heinemann , was an American citizen. During the war, the Transoceanic Trading Company was set up in the Netherlands to look after its overseas assets. Lindström returned to the UK in 1923 with the establishment of a British Parlophone branch. Parlophone's "₤" trademark is not the lira sign but a stylised blackletter "L" ( L {\displaystyle {\mathfrak {L}}} ) for Lindström. Among Parlophone 's later claims to fame, it
88-769: The Balkan countries etc. In the 1920s and 1930s about 70% of the German Odeon production was exported. Some Odeon recordings were leased to the American Okeh Records for distribution in the United States. Odeon discs were first manufactured in America, for export only, in 1905 or 1906 by the American Record Company, which produced lateral-cut, 10¾-inch 78 discs made of blue shellac. This business ceased in 1907 when ARC
110-628: The Lindström enterprise into a public company, the Carl Lindström A.G. and in 1903 purchased Fonotipia Records , including their Odeon-Werke International Talking Machine Company. International Talking Machine Company issued the Odeon label first in Germany in 1903 and applied for a U.S. trademark the same year. While other companies were making single-side discs, Odeon made them double-sided. In 1909 it created
132-452: The Odeon label continued as an EMI subsidiary in many non-English-speaking markets, such as West Germany , France , Spain , Scandinavia , Japan and Latin America . The dome logo was still used in most of those places, although they also had their own label designs. With the sale of most EMI properties to erstwhile rival Universal Music Group (UMG) in September 2012, Universal retained
154-399: The United States on the Odeon label. During the 1920s, Odeon issued American jazz records in other countries, such as Germany, Italy, France, and Spain. During the 1930s and 1940s Odeon sold its Swing Music Series. Odeon recorded and issued over 2,700 titles of Indian music from the period 1900–1940. Odeon's shellac disc issues were in two phases: (1) 1912–1916 and (2) 1932–1938. During
176-596: The artists that appeared on American Record Company. Odeon Records Odeon Records is a record label founded in 1903 by Max Straus and Heinrich Zuntz of the International Talking Machine Company in Berlin, Germany. The label's name and logo come from the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe in Paris. Straus and Zuntz bought the company from Carl Lindström that he had founded in 1897. They transformed
198-502: The brass pop band Querbeat 's third album Randale & Hurra . Carl Lindstr%C3%B6m Company Carl Lindström A.G. was a global record company founded in 1893 and based in Berlin , Germany . Founded by Carl Lindström (1869–1932), a Swedish inventor living in Berlin , it originally produced phonographs or gramophones with the brand names "Parlograph" and "Parlophon" and eventually began producing records as well. It became
220-433: The buyer met the minimum-order qualification. These records are notable for being blue in color, rather than the usual black, pressed from a shellac compound called Empedite which reputedly delivered better sound quality than standard black shellac. The records appear to have been numbered using a sequence which began at 030000; the highest number known is 031435. The records exist in 7-inch, 10-inch and 10.75-inch sizes, with
242-815: The first phase their engineers visited many cities to record the diverse regional music of India, and after production in Berlin shipped records back to India. The company was based in Mumbai and Madras during the second phase. However the outbreak of World War II , and the subsequent trade embargoes, meant that the company had to wind-up its operations in India. The company's output included "drama songs, speeches, folk music, classical music, drama sets, skits and plays, vocal and instrumental music". It has been estimated that about 600 titles have survived in private collections. The British Museum have digitised some of these records which are free in an online archive. After World War II,
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#1732855734830264-619: The first recording of a large orchestral work — and what may have been the first record album — when it released a 4-disc set of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite with Hermann Finck conducting the London Palace Orchestra. Between 1910 and 1911 Odeon was acquired by Carl Lindström. On 30 January 1904, Odeon became a part of the Carl Lindström Company , which also owned Beka Records , Parlophone , Fonotipia, Lyrophon, Homophon and other labels. Lindström
286-610: The history of recorded sound is that they made the earliest surviving records of Hawaiian music in several discs credited to the Royal Hawaiian Troubadours ; this was a group led by July Paka. The house band was called the Regimental Band of the Republic and was responsible for most of the remaining instrumental selections on the label, in addition to providing accompaniments to singers. Other performers were mainly drawn from
308-499: The holding company for Odeon Records , Parlophone Records (originally "Parlophon"), Beka Records , Okeh Records , Fonotipia Records , Lyrophon, Homophon, and other labels. Lindström sold the company to Max Straus (Odeon co-founder), but Lindström remained with the company as an engineer and inventor. World War I caused the company to cut back its holdings closing the United Kingdom branch of Odeon when war broke out. Okeh in
330-537: The latter size being derived from its connection with Odeon, which also used that size. The seven-inch discs used a different numbering sequence and seem to have only been produced for a short time. Some export pressings for Britain carried the "American Odeon Record" logo. Unlike most American producers of discs apart from Victor and Columbia in the first decade of the twentieth century, American Record Company made their own recordings in direct contravention to existing patents. The most important contribution made by ARCo to
352-594: The ranks of singers that worked for Victor, Columbia and the cylinder companies, recording many of the same songs that they did elsewhere. Many ARCos are anonymous, though just as many if not more do carry an accurate credit as to the performer. Collectors of early records do value ARCOs; while not as common as early Columbias or Victors, they survive in decent numbers, especially when compared to discs on labels that they provided masters to, such as Busy Bee, Kalamazoo and Peerless. In Europe, their releases appeared on Pelican, Leader, American Odeon and Odeon. A listing of some of
374-756: The right to reissue from namely Odeon's post-war Japanese, Latin American, German and select European catalogues, while another former competitor Warner Music Group (WMG) acquired the rights to the remainder of EMI in February 2013 and with that, reissues from Odeon's French, Scandinavian, Spanish and most other European releases, to comply with the European Commission 's divestiture conditions. Universal Music Enterprises manages UMG's Odeon catalogue with Parlophone and WEA International handling WMG's own. In October 2018, Universal Music Germany revived Odeon to release
396-540: Was acquired by the English Columbia Graphophone Company in 1926. In 1931 Columbia merged with Electrola , HMV and other labels to form EMI . The Berlin Odeon plant recorded, processed, and exported records to many countries. There were extensive national catalogs for some of these countries: Greece, Scandinavia, India, all of Arabia, Netherlands, Estonia, Portugal, South and Central America, Romania, Turkey, Hungary, China, Dutch East Indies, Siam,
418-565: Was based in Springfield, Massachusetts , though they maintained factories in Bridgeport, CT and Philadelphia; recordings were made in a studio in New York City. American principally produced single-sided, lateral-cut disc records on blue shellac, although two-sided issues and standard, black shellac appeared towards the end of the company's run. The label of the discs featured artwork depicting
440-489: Was originally called "Lindström-Electrola" after the merger. Okeh became part of the American operations of Columbia Records . Parlophone became a major powerhouse in the EMI portfolio of labels thanks to the company's signing in 1962 of The Beatles . As a condition of Universal Music Group acquiring EMI in 2012, European regulators forced EMI to spin off certain assets into a separate company called Parlophone Music Group. Parlophone
462-551: Was sued by Columbia for patent infringement. Lindström tried again to open an American branch, this time through Otto Heineman, who worked for Lindström's company and was living in America when World War I broke out. Stuck in New York, Heineman created the Otto Heineman Phonograph Supply Company in 1915, then four years later started his own label, Okeh Records. In 1919, Okeh began issuing foreign recordings in
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#1732855734830484-589: Was the label for UK releases by The Beatles and Peter Sellers . The introduction of electrical recording with microphones and mixing consoles put Lindström at a disadvantage and they sold the company in 1926 to the Columbia Graphophone Company which had rights to electrical recording technology. In 1931, Columbia Graphophone merged with the Gramophone Company to form EMI with the labels retaining their identities. EMI's German unit in 1931
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