Banner Records - History

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.

In December 1946, entrepreneur Sam Selsman formed a new Banner Records label, devoted entirely to Jewish music and Yiddish-language comedy routines; although this later Banner Records no longer actively records, its catalogue still remains a going concern even today. There is no relationship between the Hebrew Banner label and the earlier products of Plaza Music or ARC/BRC. Likewise, there is no relationship between the Banner Records of the 1920s and 1930s to a dime store label put out by Leeds and Caitlin in the early 1900s, though the label design is oddly similar.