Banner Records

Banner Records was a United States based dime store record label manufactured between 1922 and 1938. It was created primarily for the S.S. Kresge Company, though it was employed as a general purpose budget label in other discount stores as well.

History

Banner Records was launched in January 1922 as the flagship label of the Plaza Music Company of New York City. Plaza Music produced several cheap labels targeted at various discount houses, and employed bandleader Adrian Schubert as musical director. At the beginning, Banner concentrated on popular dance hits, though it also recorded comic selections, semi-classical music and a small number of country and blues records; it sold at 25 cents. In its first years Banner also leased masters from Paramount Records and Emerson Records labels.

In July 1929 Plaza Music Company merged with Cameo-Pathé and the Scranton Button Corporation to form the American Record Corporation or ARC (record company). ARC dropped Pathé and Scranton Button's label Emerson but kept all of the other labels belonging to the combined company, including Banner, active. Banner continued much as before, with Adrian Schubert as music director, though the end of 1931, but after ARC acquired the rights to the Brunswick label, Banner's product lines began to reflect the general ARC product, and this added a lot more African-American and country music to its catalogue. As part of the ARC-BRC combine, it no longer enjoyed a flagship status, by then accorded to Melotone among the budgets. While ARC-BRC did eventually drop some of the dime store labels along the way, it did keep Banner until the end, which came in December 1938 when the CBS Broadcasting Network bought ARC-BRC and liquidated all of the dime store labels.