DCC Compact Classics
Reissue and audiophile label formed in the mid 80's as Dunhill Compact Classics but changed it's name to DCC after a lawsuit, published reissues on 180 gr. high quality vinyl and 24k gold plated CD's but in the latter years it increasingly concentrated on issuing compilations at mid price. Went bankrupt in late 2001, and after that there were accusations of mismanagment against the CEO of the company, one Mr. Marshall Blonstein (ex-Island, now with Audio Fidelity Records) due to the setup of a production company that his wife owned but was finacned by DCC, bit odd given that DCC was a re-issue label. A buyer claimed to be taking over the remains of the company in early 2002 but nothing has been heard from them since.

les Discophiles Français
French classical label run by Henri Screpel active in the 1950's and into the mid 60's that specialised in issuing works by French performers that did not get published by the majors although the company did also release a small number recordings by German artists. Their catalogue contained a number of gems by artist such as L'Orchestre Hewitt and Marcelle Meyer, but also a small number of absolute duds. The fact that the French majors were not actively developing and recording much local talent at the time means that releases by the company are to a degree the only records available of a number French artists from the 50's and this has made releases by the label highly collectable, especially in southern Europe. Note that a number of DF album issues were not LP's but box sets of 33 RPM 7" singles and that a few catalogue numbers appear to have been released in Belgium, although that may be just a distributors rearrangement. Some DF releases have been reissued on EMI France through the years and Coup d'Archet has recently been releasing some of the Discophiles recordings as part of their L'Archet d'Or subscription series.

Edison Records
You can find a short introduction to the Edison label here, there also exists a company called American Sound Archives that is dedicated to re-issuing Edison recordings.

Guaranteed See --> Carlton Record Corp. (1958 to 1964 - Rock'n'roll & Doo-wop)

Gennett Records Company
A independent label based in Richmond, Indiana, USA. It was founded in 1916 as an offshoot of the Starr Piano Co. piano and phonograph manufacturer and was originally known as Starr Records but was forced to change their name to Gennett Records in 1918 when they fond that dealers that also sold pianos from manufactures that were in competition with Starr where unwilling to stock anything with that name on, later the company also released under sub-labels such as Champion. The Gennett catalogue has got lot of interest lately due to their releases of some early Jazz masterpieces such as piano solos by Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton and it was the original label for the Wolverine Orchestra but that band included the great Bix Beiderbecke, due to this and that fact that this was the first USA label to issue Jazz records in any quantity it's often referred to as a Jazz label, but in actuality that style of music only a minor part of their output with the company simply recorded anything that they thought would sell and that included speeches and all kinds of folk and popular music of the day. Gennett was one first USA based company to start recording electrically in the mid 20's but the ravages of the great depression hit the company hard and they stopped issuing records in 1934 although the record division continued pressing records for third parties and the production team continued making sound effects records until the late 40's at the least, but these where not sold to consumers. The Champion label and catalogue was sold to Decca (USA) and although attempts where made in the 1940's to revive the label they turned out to be short lived.

Guaranteed See --> Carlton Record Corp. (1958 to 1964 - Rock'n'roll & Doo-wop)

Largo Records
German classical label based in Köln (Colonge) that was founded by Uwe Buschkötter of UBM Records fame in 1984. Interesting repertoire, originally mostly 18'th and 19'th century works by little known composers but later when bigger labels started to thread down that path the company refocused on unfamiliar or seldom heard 20'th century music by composers such as Markevitch, Zemlinski, Toovey and Wahren. The website of the company went down in 2002 and their CD's have been disappearing from stores, I did write to Mr. Buschkötter's other company (who handle the recording & publication rights for the Largo catalogue) for further info but did not get an answer, their catalogue will be sadly missed.

Mapps Cafe See --> Almafame

Mirage Tapes (UK Electronica - early 80's) See --> Mirage Magazine

Mudslide See --> Almafame

Jeffran Music Company
Small USA based publisher founded in the late 1960's by pedal steel player Jeff Newman. The label issued a number of albums that featured popular tunes of the day arranged for the pedal steel guitar, sought after these day's as curiosiata. The company is still around although no loner publishing music recordings, is now called Jeffran College and puts out pedal steel educational material and holds courses etc..
Homepage: http://www.jeffran.com

Pope Music
Audiophile label founded in 1994 by Gene Pope and Alan Leftwich, based in Saddle River, New Jersey, USA. Concentrated on making classical recordings using mostly Russian artist on one hand and on the other recordings of American singer/songwriters. Recordings were made with a pair of DPA omni's, custom mic amps and straight onto tape without mixing in a typical minimalist audiophile label fashion, and most of their disks were available either as straight aluminium or with a gold coating. Went out of business in 2000 for reasons unknown.

Three Blind Mice
Legendary Japanese jazz specialist label, issued only music by local artists but some of them quite notable such as Terumasa Hino and Sleepy Hidehiko (aka Matsumoto Hidehiko), but the company was best known for the astonishing recording quality of their releases and coupled with superior Japanese pressings meant that their releases were popular as audiophile demonstration disks worldwide in the 70’s and 80’s.

Three Blind Mice was founded in June 1970 by Takeshi Fujii and started issuing records shortly thereafter, their output slowed down in the latter half of the 70’s and stopped altogether in the mid 80’s with only a couple of their releases appearing on CD’s, but all in all the catalogue from the company was less than 100 releases in total. Three Blind Mice however still exists, it was actually a subsidiary of a printing company or some such and they have licenced the catalogue from time to time but have not released any new material and are primarily an specialist on-line Jazz record store. USA company Cisco Music released some of their issues in the 1980’s while Audio Trade released portions of their catalogue on CD in the same decade, more recently Sony Music put out a large part of their catalogue on SACD in 2006/7 and in 2008 Box Star Records has released a compilation album on three 45 RPM vinyl disks.
Homepage: http://www.tvz.com/TBM/

Resources: Three Blind Mice discography

Trio Records
A label founded in 1969 by the Japanese company Trio, the label is best known these days for their Jazz recordings, but a number of their own recordings have been reissued on CD and LP recently to a great reception, and at the time they were operating Trio Records was often the only source for some rare Jazz recordings especially in the modern Jazz and vintage blues fields but also a source of better pressings than that of the Western companies that they licensed their material from.

But actually the label output was as much pop and rock as it was Jazz, during its heyday much of it home grown rock that the established majors did not want to touch, but also foreign artists. Since Trio did not have access to foreign major releases due to other Japanese record labels having long term relationships with the larger Western labels the company often had some adventurous licensing deals, putting out material that you would not normally associate with a major such as the Dead Kennedys, DAF and The Monochrome Set in the late 70’s and early 80’s.

The quality of the labels output started to wane in 1982, we start seeing issues of interview discs and low quality live recordings and so on, the Compact Disc revolution also hit the company hard, after an initial muted reception the CD took off in 1983 and unlike the big Japanese labels the company had not made any provisions for either building a CD pressing plant nor made any deals to reserve pressing runs for them in the pressing plants of Toshiba and Sony meaning that when the demand actually arrived Trio Records could not get CD’s pressed even if they wanted to, thus could not take advantage of the sudden interest in their back catalogue. The few CD’s the label released were of a bad quality and got a wholly negative reception meaning that Parent company Trio-Kenwood decided to close the label down in 1985. Note that today there are at the least 5 labels active that use the Trio Records name including 2 just here in the UK and none of them have any connection whatsoever to the original label.

Trio Records (USA)
A small company based in Milwaukee in Wisconsin, USA that was founded in 1998. Primarily a recording studio and rehearsal rooms that became moderately well known in the Midwestern Rap scene but the company also put out a small number of Rap and R&B releases featuring local talent such as Hoodstar, appears to have stopped issuing CD’s in 2007 or thereabouts and the studio seems to have closed in 2010 or 11.

Victory Works See --> Almafame

VinylShminyl See --> Almafame

Waverley (Scotland 1920'a Accordion rel. music) See --> A. H. Wilkinson & Co. Ltd.

YEAAH! See --> Almafame

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