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Little Wonder, Emerson, and the Miniature Record Fad (1914-1919)

By Allan Sutton Photographs adapted from The American Record Label Image Encyclopedia

Beginning in 1914, record companies set out to prove that bigger wasn't necessarily better. For the next four years, they treated American record buyers to a parade of inexpensive, diminutive discs all claiming to rival their full-sized counterparts. The public loved the concept for a time, at least until the novelty wore off. Small-diameter discs were nothing new, of course. Until 1902, 7" discs had dominated the market, but by 1906, manufacturers were phasing out the smaller (and less profitable) sizes.


The Little Wonder Phenomenon

The label that rekindled the public's interest in small, inexpensive records was Little Wonder, a single-sided 5" disc manufactured by Columbia and marketed by the Little Wonder Record Company of New York.

At a time when the cheapest double-sided discs sold for 65¢, Columbia recording engineer Victor H. Emerson interested Henry Waterson (president of the music publishing firm of Waterson, Berlin & Snyder) in marketing a cheap, small-diameter disc. Contrary to many published accounts, court records clearly prove that it was Emerson, and not Waterson, who initially conceived of the Little Wonder disc (Emerson Phonograph Co., Inc., v. Waterson, 183 A.D. 386, 170 N.Y.S. 776). Emerson personally negotiated an exclusive sales agency for Waterson in July 1914 in return for one-half of the profits from sales of the discs.

Waterson's trademark application claimed use of the Little Wonder trademark beginning on September 1, 1914, and Little Wonder announced its first releases the following month. The little 10¢ discs were an overnight success. Sears, Roebuck & Company offered the discs in its catalogs from early 1915 through the autumn of 1921, and other dealers gave the records away as premiums with the purchase of other merchandise.

Despite its diminutive size, the Little Wonder was not a children's record. Its repertoire ran the gamut from the latest musical comedy hits and dance numbers to necessarily abbreviated operatic arias. Columbia drew primarily on freelance performers - Henry Burr and members of his Peerless Quartet, Arthur Collins and Byron G. Harlan, Charles Harrison, Sam Ash, M. J. O'Connell, and Ada Jones, among others - as well as studio instrumental groups under the direction of Charles A. Prince. Issues were anonymous, leading to a long-standing guessing game among collectors as to identities. Among the few stage personalities known to have recorded for Little Wonder were Al Jolson (on a single release, #20), Rhoda Bernard, Frank Crumit, and Wilbur Sweatman's Original Jazz Band. Contrary to some published accounts, Little Wonder masters were not dubbed from existing Columbia masters, nor was the performer on a given Little Wonder title necessarily the same as on the corresponding Columbia title.

In 1916,Waterson was sued by Emerson, who had left Columbia to head the Emerson Phonograph Company and was marketing 5" and 7" discs in direct competition with Little Wonder. The initial verdict in Emerson's favor, involving a settlement of $46,486.59, was overturned on appeal in 1918, but in the meantime Waterson sold his brand outright to Columbia, which operated Little Wonder as a separate division.

Little Wonder's sales declined sharply after 1917, and many of the later titles are hard to find today. Although the trade press doesn't appear to have issued a formal announcement of the label's end, song titles date the last Little Wonder releases to 1923.


John Fletcher's Operaphone

Little Wonder's success inevitably invited competition. Next on the "little record" scene was John Fletcher, a musician-turned-inventor who founded the Operaphone Manufacturing Corporation of New York late in 1914. Fletcher's trademark application claimed use of the Operaphone name beginning March 1, 1915.

Its name notwithstanding, Operaphone featured ordinary popular and light classical fare. Fletcher initially produced fine-groove vertically cut 7" discs, which were soon replaced by an eight-inch series. Operaphone was also the source of several obscure fine-groove brands (including All Star, Elginola, and early versions of the Crescent and Domestic labels) produced circa 1915-1917. In Canada, 8" Operaphone discs were sold for 50¢ by the Canadian Phonograph Company (103 Yonge Street, Toronto), which had taken over rights to the Best-Phone, an early universal-arm machine that played lateral as well as fine-groove vertical discs.

The public showed little interest in Operaphone's small-diameter offerings, which were plagued by technical problems, and in 1917 the company discontinued its smaller discs in favor of 10" pressings obtained from other sources. Fletcher's later history is covered in John Fletcher: From Sousa's Band to Black Swan and Beyond elsewhere on the Mainspring site.

Emerson Enters the Market

Victor Hugo Emerson left Columbia after helping to launch Little Wonder and in May 1915 announced formation of the Emerson Phonograph Company, Inc. Emerson's universal-cut 5" and 7" discs, obviously modeled on the Little Wonder, sold well for several years (unlike Emerson's short-lived vertical-cut discs, pictured at the beginning of this article), but as it had with Little Wonder, the public soon lost interest in the small discs. Emerson discontinued his 5", 7", and 9" lines by the end of 1919, although the company continued to record 7" masters for the Melodisc label and several specialty brands into the early 1920s.

Emerson's long and convoluted history is the topic of a separate series on the Mainspring site, The Emerson Record Story.


Majestic and Domino

Two particularly active but short-lived players in the miniature-record saga were the Majestic Record Company and the Domino Phonograph Company, both based in New York.

Recent research by Glenn Longwell has revealed that two companies were involved with Majestic. The Majestic Record Company, incorporated in New York on November 24, 1915, was the producer. However, in September 1916 a separate company, the Majestic Record Corporation, was incorporated to market the records. Friction between the two companies — recounted in detail in Longwell's superbly documented study (http://majesticrecord.com/history.htm) led the label's eventual downfall.

Among Longwell's many interesting discoveries is Majestic's involvement with Jacques Kohner, who went on to head the Lyraphone Company of America (producers of Lyric discs) and several other failed record ventures in the late 'teens and early 'twenties. Majestic's first offering of 7" discs, advertised in the November 1916 edition of the Talking Machine World, consisted of 50 records, including some of the last issued recordings by the venerable Dan W. Quinn. An ad in the same issue mentioned 9 1/4" Majestic discs, but as of that date, none were listed for sale.

A 7" etched-label Majestic disc

The nine-inch Majestic, retailing for 50¢ and advertised as playing for five minutes, was announced in the same month, although Longwell's research has revealed that only seven of those discs were ready for release as of December 1, 1916. Majestic promised to release sixty new titles monthly, but the Advance Records listing in the January 1918 TMW seems to have been its last. In an August, 1916 advertisement, Majestic had predicted, "The demand for a lower priced record is even greater than it was a year ago. Probably the greatest factor in bringing about this change will be the Majestic record." But the public wasn't enthusiastic, and Majestic soon vanished.

Although it was once thought that Operaphone supplied pressings to Majestic, the source of that label's masters is now in question. The 1916 Talking Machine World trade directory claims that Majestic manufactured its own records, and the 9" series, at least, appears to be unique.

The story of the first Domino label (not to be confused with the Plaza Music Company's common 1920s product of the same name) is equally unclear. This rare and apparently short-lived seven-inch fine-groove vertical-cut brand was marketed by the W. R. Anderson Company (220 Fifth Avenue, New York), and its manufacturer supplied pressings to several other minor brands, including Melodograph and the 7" version of Crescent. Anderson advertised Domino records heavily in trade publications during 1916, but neither Anderson nor Domino were listed in the following year's Talking Machine World trade directories.

A rare variant of the Domino label credited to the Thomas Manufacturing Company of Dayton, Ohio, a supplier of phonograph parts (left). Domino supplied pressings to several other obscure labels, including Melodograph (right).

Domino's masters do not appear to derive from other sources, based upon the few pressings that have been inspected, suggesting that the company might have manufactured its own product. (Several collectors have suggested that masters were supplied by Operaphone, but so far they have failed to demonstrate any correlation.) Although the Talking Machine World trade directory claimed that Anderson was "sole distributor for Domino records, manufactured by the Domino Phonograph Company, New York City," Kurt Nauck has located a rare variant (pictured above) crediting the Thomas Manufacturing Company of Dayton, Ohio, as distributor.

Domino discs sold for 35¢ each, or three for $1. Like Operaphone, the discs employed a fine-groove vertical cut for increased playing time, and an August 1916 Talking Machine World advertisement claimed that the records played "as long as the ordinary ten-inch record now on the market." In September 1916, Domino took a full-page ad to proclaim, "The future of the Domino...record is assured. The public likes it." But apparently that was not the case, if rarity is any indication.


Henry Burr and Fred Van Eps' Par-O-Ket Record

Surprisingly few early recording artists were involved in the production of their own records, but tenor Henry Burr and banjoist Fred Van Eps were notable exceptions. Both were entrepreneurs who had dabbled in other businesses, and together they incorporated the Paroquette Record Manufacturing Company in 1916, claiming use of the Par-O-Ket trademark beginning on August 14 of that year in their trademark filing. A studio and pressing plant were located in the Bush Terminal Building, Brooklyn.

Paroquette manufactured 7" etched-label, fine-groove vertical-cut Par-O-Ket discs, which were marketed by the Brown Specialty Company (36 South State Street, Chicago). The company produced at least two Par-O-Ket series: a popular series, beginning at #1 and running into the low 100s, and a catch-all standard, classical, and foreign-language series numbered in the 500s. Retailing for 25¢ each, Par-O-Ket records featured Burr, Van Eps, and other popular New York-based studio free-lancers. The company recruited Walter B. Rogers, former director of the Victor Orchestra, as its musical director and house conductor.

Despite an active and up-to-date catalog, Par-O-Ket records seem to have sold poorly. No new releases were announced after January 1918, a month that saw an uncharacteristic flurry of Italian vocal releases. Paroquette's end came in May 1918, when the Talking Machine World advertised an assignee's sale of the company's assets, including 30,000 Par-O-Ket discs. Some researchers have suggested that Victor Emerson produced Par-O-Ket records, but the sales list included a complete recording and pressing plant, confirming that Paroquette recorded and manufactured its own records. One interesting note is the offering of "master and mother matrices" for sale, suggesting the possibility that Paroquette material could have been acquired by and re-pressed on other labels. There is no evidence of this, but it remains an intriguing possibility.


The Fad Passes

By the end of 1918, the "little record" fad was all but over. The small-diameter discs were plagued by technical problems and (in the case of the vertical-cut brands) incompatibility with standard phonographs. Inner grooves were prone to distortion and mistracking, the necessarily cheap pressings wore prematurely, volume levels tended to be low, and the lightweight discs often slipped on the turntable. Despite advertising claims, many of the smaller discs failed to achieve the full three-minute playing times of their 10" competitors. In 1918, Emerson and Operaphone switched to full-sized pressings. By that time, Domestic, Majestic, and Paroquette were out of business, and Little Wonder's sales had begun to slump. The demand for inexpensive records continued, but in the next decade that demand was to be met by cheaply produced, but full-sized, "dime-store" labels.