Banner Records

Banner Records was a United States based record label of the 20th century.

Banner Records was launched in January 1922 by the Plaza Music Company of New York City. Banner was an extremely popular label in the 1920s, concentrating on popular music of the day. To this day, Banners are often found all over the country, indicating their popularity as Plaza's "flagship" label. The audio fidelity of the records when new was average to slightly below average for the time, but being a cheap label, they were often pressed from cheaper materials that did not well withstand repeated playing with the heavy phonograph reproducers of the time, so Banner Records tended to display significant surface noise and audio distortion with moderate wear. Banner's recording studio was in New York City; the recording director was Adrian Schubert, who also led the label's house band.

Early on, some Banner Records were reissues of recordings made by Emerson Records and Paramount Records using masters leased from those labels.

In 1928 Banner merged with Pathé Records and Cameo Records to form the American Record Corporation. ARC continued the popular Banner label through 1938.

In 1939 the Banner label was revived, primarily as an outlet for klezmer recordings; they continued to issue recordings on Banner into the long-playing vinyl record era.

See also