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The American Record Corporation, often known as ARC Records or simply ARC, was a United States based record company. It resulted from the merger in July 1929 of Regal Records, Cameo Records, Banner Records, the US branch of Pathé Records and the Scranton Button Company, the parent company of Emerson Records.

Louis G. Sylvester (former head of Scranton) became president of the new company located at 1776 Broadway in Manhattan, New York City. In October 1929, Herbert Yates, head of Consolidated Film Company took control of ARC. In the following years, the company was very involved in a depressed market, buying failing labels at bargain prices to exploit their catalogue.

In December 1931 Warner Brothers leased Brunswick Records, Vocalion Records and associated companies to ARC.

In 1932, ARC was king of the 3 records for a dollar market, selling 6 million units, twice as much as RCA Victor. In an effort to get back on top, RCA created its Bluebird label. ARC bought out the Columbia Records catalogue in 1934, including Okeh Records. In the 1930s ARC produced Brunswick at 75c and Oriole, Romeo, Melotone, Vocalion, Banner and Perfect at 35c.

As with the companies that they bought, some of the labels were created exclusively for specific stores (Challenge, Conqueror, Oriole, Romeo) and when the contracts ended, the labels ended too. Other labels (Banner, Perfect, Melotone) were known to have been sold at enough varied businesses that they are considered "general purpose labels". Many of the remaining labels have not been attributed with a specific store contract, but it's likely that the smaller and shorter-lived labels were exclusive to some business or another.

In December 1938, the entire ARC complex was purchased from Consolidated Film for $700,000 by the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS). CBS revived the Columbia imprint as its flagship label with Okeh as a subsidiary label. This allowed the rights to the Brunswick and Vocalion labels to return to Warner Brothers, which assigned the rights to those labels to Decca Records.

The company evolved into what is now Sony Music Entertainment.

[edit] Labels ARC issued or pressed (1929-1938)

+ labels that existed prior to the formation of ARC

• ARC sold to theaters for background music 1931-1933?
• Banner +1929-1938
• Bernardo
• Broadway +(from 1932)
• Brunswick +1932-1938
• Cameo +1929-1930
• Challenge for +Sears
• Columbia +late 1934-1938
• Commodore specialty label for Commodore Music Shops
• Conqueror +for Sears
• Domino +1929-1931, but was restarted (with a gold label) exclusively for the John Gabel Co. circa 1933-34
• Fox Movietone for Fox Theaters
• Gospel Herald
• Gramophone Shop Varieties specialty label for The Gramophone Shop
• Hollywood
• Homestead mail order label (1929-1930)
• Hot Record Society specialty label for the Hot Record Society
• Jewel + (1927-1932)
• Liberty Music Shops specialty label for the Liberty Music Shops
• Lincoln +(from 1929-1930)
• Mel-O-Dee specialty jukebox label
• Melotone +1932-1938
• Oriole +1929-1938 for McCrory
• Pathe +1929-1930
• Perfect +1929-1938
• Regal +1929-1931
• Romeo for Kress Stores +1929-1938
• Shamrock Stores specialty label for the Shamrock Stores
• Supertone +1930-1931 (short-lived series made by Brunswick after the Gennett period ended, but this rare series probably hails from right before the ARC takover of Brunswick)
• U.H.C.A. specialty label for United Hot Clubs of America
• Vocalion +1929-1938

[edit] See also

• List of record labels