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DIME STORE DYNASTY
The Scranton Button Company Story

Scranton's name never appeared on a commercial record label, yet it was the largest producer of cheap records in the 1920s. Its notoriously confusing output is now detailed in the new Plaza-ARC Discography.

NOTE: For a much more detailed history of Scranton and its many affiliated companies, see the illustrated introduction to the Plaza–ARC Discography.

Founded in 1885, the Scranton Button Company (Scranton, Pennsylvania) originally manufactured hard rubber and shellac-based buttons, electrical insulators, and unspecified "novelty items," according to its early advertising. Scranton was not the first button manufacturer to enter the record-pressing business. The Auburn Button Works (Auburn, New York) had supplied test pressings to Berliner in the 1890s, pressed Zon-O-Phone discs in the early 1900s, and from 1905 pressed Excelsior and a seemingly endless array of custom labels for the International Record Company.

Scranton Enters the Record Business
There is anecdotal evidence that the Scranton Button Company learned the art of record pressing from a former Auburn employee. Scranton's first major pressing customer probably was the Emerson Phonograph Company. By the early 1920s, working with the Keystone Printed Specialties Company (a label printer in Scranton), the Regal Record Company (Emerson's subsidiary and producer of 50¢ Regal records), and the Plaza Music Company (Regal's marketing and distribution affiliate and dealer in musical merchandise), Scranton could offer full-service record production to any retailer that desired its own label. Pressing quality was mediocre at best, and for the cheapest labels it was usually quite bad.

In August 1922, Scranton acquired the Regal Record Company from the reorganized Emerson Phonograph Company, in the process retaining both Regal and Emerson as pressing customers. Lacking its own studio, Regal at first obtained its masters from the New York Recording Laboratories, drawing on the same material used by NYRL's Paramount and Puritan labels.

In late 1922, Regal began to produce its own masters at the Independent Recording Laboratories, a newly formed independent studio that also recorded some of the last Arto masters. Belated announcement of Independent Recordings's formation, in the Talking Machine World for February 15, 1923, noted that "the company has made bookings for recordings for practically the whole of every working day." Arthur Bergh, Emerson's former musical director, served in the same capacity for Independent but departed in September 1923 to join the General Phonograph Corporation. He was replaced by Adrian Schubert, whose house band would cut countless sides for the Regal-derived labels under a bewildering array of pseudonyms.

Regal's Independent master numbers started at 5001, and the series was destined to become one of the longest-running in recording history, remaining in use by a string of successors into the 1940s, long after both Regal and Independent had ceased to exist.

The Plaza-Regal Alliance
Closely allied with Regal in its new venture was the Plaza Music Company, which had begun business as a musical merchandise wholesaler and sheet music dealer in 1911. A look at Talking Machine World advertising for 1922 makes the connection to Regal clear. Both companies listed their address as 18-22 West Twentieth Street, New York. Although the two companies maintained separate corporate identities and never merged, they shared office space and personnel, with Plaza's Herman Germain (executive director and treasurer) and C. J. Kronberg (president) also serving as Regal executives. In the Regal-Plaza-Scranton alliance, Regal managed the recording program; Plaza handled marketing and distribution for a wide range of musical merchandise as well as its Regal-produced Banner and Domino labels; and Scranton pressed the discs.

Plaza's Banner label, introduced in early 1922, also drew at first on masters from Paramount and other outside sources, but by early 1923 it was using Regal's Independent masters. There has been a mistaken belief for many years that Banner was the flagship label in what is often mistakenly called the "Plaza" group, but the primary label in fact was Regal. The TMW release lists prove that in most cases the same material was released concurrently on Banner and Regal. When there was not a concurrent releases, however, the first issue was almost invariably on Regal.

As the distributor of Banner and Domino records in the 1920s, Plaza enjoyed tremendous success in the low-priced record market. "Start a 3 for $1.00 Record Department in Your Store," a 1925 Plaza ad encouraged. "A $50 Investment Is All that Is Necessary." In the mid-1920s Plaza was a well-diversified company, dealing in cameras, portable and children's phonographs, and musical instruments as well as its two record labels.

In 1924, the Independent Recording Laboratories moved to 55 West Sixteenth Street, then abruptly vanished from the trade papers. The move probably represented the studio's takeover by Regal, who had become their primary client. Their distinctive ND logo also vanishes from pressings at about this time, suggesting their end as an independent entity. Judging from the tremendous number of items on Regal by various groups under the direction of Adrian Schubert at the time, it appears likely that he retained his position after the takeover.

For Scranton, the ownership of Regal made full-service record production possible. In October 1922, when Scranton began production of the National Music Lovers' mail-order label, it had to lease masters from outside sources, including Federal, Emerson, and NYRL. But by mid-1923, with Regal acting as its fully owned recording arm, Scranton was able to offer masters from a single source, thus keeping production all in the family. In 1923 Scranton purchased a large interest in NML to ensure its continued business and also began production of the Oriole label for the McCrory dime stores. Both labels drew heavily on Regal's masters. In the mid-1920s, Scranton acquired the Auburn Button Works factory in New York, the former pressing plant Excelsior and other International Record Co. labels.

Scranton and the Emerson Recording Laboratories
The Emerson Recording Laboratories were incorporated in New York in January 1924, a separate entity from the newly created Emerson Radio Corporation. ERL, having little luck with its moribund Emerson label, found a new source of income as a supplier of masters to Grey Gull and numerous other dime-store and custom labels, and in early 1924 ERL arranged to export pressings to such far-flung locations as Australia, the Dutch West Indies, Panama, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Ireland, and Denmark. The company also established a personal recording program under which Emerson retailers received commission for booking private recording sessions. In a May 1924 Talking Machine World ad, ERL styled itself "the only recording laboratory operated by a phonograph company with a record for performance of long standing, which has placed the facilities of its laboratory at the disposal of the professional and amateur musician for the making of commercial and personal records."

Emerson, however, saw its future in radio, not records. In November 1924, after several years of declining Emerson record sales, the company sold its record division to Scranton outright, although it continued to act as the sales agent for Emerson records. A 1924 Talking Machine World ad stated "The Scranton Button Company...is back of the name Emerson and is now the complete manufacturer of Emerson Records." At that time, TMW claimed that Scranton was the largest presser of thermoplastic material in the United States.

With ERL came the Grey Gull pressing account, which might have had a great deal to do with Scranton's desire to acquire ERL. Scranton, after all, did not need another studio; it already owned Regal. It probably wasn't a coincidence that when Grey Gull left Scranton after opening its own pressing plant in early 1926, Scranton promptly scuttled the Emerson Recording Laboratories. A group of former ERL executives revived the Emerson label and carried on for several lean years as the Consolidated Recording Corporation, but without Scranton's backing the venture stumbled into oblivion in early 1929.

The Regal-Plaza Split
By 1927, Scranton had a strong hold on the dime-store and custom label market. In that year the company was pressing Banner; Challenge and Conqueror (lucrative Sears Roebuck contracts, recently wrested away from Gennett); Domino; Homestead; Jewel; National Music Lovers and its successor, New Phonic; Oriole; Regal; several export and children's labels; and an array of private and promotional issues. In the same year, the Regal Record Company became allied with the Crystalate Gramophone Record Manufacturing Company of Great Britain. The manufacturers of Imperial and other popular British brands, Crystalate had issued Regal masters in England as early as 1923, and the alliance resulted in an upgrading of the Regal studio, which had been producing rather poor quality electrical recordings since early 1926.

On January 1, 1929, the Regal and Crystalate interests merged, and a wedge was finally driven in the Plaza-Regal alliance. Although Regal and Plaza continued to share staff and office space, the Plaza Music Company (which was not acquired by Crystalate) was restricted to phonograph, piano roll, sheet music, and musical instrument sales, while Regal concentrated exclusively on record production. Bigger plans were in the offing, however.

Scranton and the American Record Corporation
In July 1929, Scranton merged with the Cameo Record Corporation (which by then also controlled the Pathé labels) and the Regal Record Company to form the American Record Corporation. The Talking Machine World for August 1929 announced that Scranton's Louis G. Sylvester would serve as ARC's president, and other directors would be drawn from Cameo, Regal, and Crystalate. Under terms of the merger, Scranton continued to operate as an independent unit. Plaza, having been left out of the deal, lauched its own ill-fated Crown Record Co. subsidiary in 1930, snatching several key personnel from ARC.

By mid-1930, the ARC-Scranton complex had vanquished most of its competition in the cheap-record market. The Cameo and Pathé-Perfect operations had been fully absorbed by ARC, Emerson was long-gone, and Grey Gull was on the verge of collapse. The Starr Piano Company would limp along with its inexpensive Champion and Superior labels for several more years, but sales barely justified the effort. RCA and Decca had yet to enter the market with their low-priced labels.

ARC next acquired Brunswick's commercial record division from Warner Brothers Pictures. Under terms of the December 1931 agreement, ARC would record, manufacture and market Brunswick and Vocalion records as the Brunswick Record Corporation, with Scranton handling the pressing. Although the American and Brunswick Record Corporations retained separate identities on the surface, the two companies eventually consolidated operations at ARC's Broadway offices and studios and operated as a single organization, resulting in widespread master swapping between the two divisions and an unfortunate decline for a time in the quality of Brunswick and Vocalion records.

In 1934, ARC's parent corporation, Consolidated Film Indsutries, purchased the Columbia Phonograph Company, including rights to the Columbia and Okeh labels and masters, but bypassed Scranton in this instance by continuing to press at Columbia's venerable Bridgeport plant. During this period Scranton sometimes accepted pressing work from their competition. Decca Records, a formidable new force in low-priced records that competed directly with several of ARC's labels, pressed at Scranton before opening its own plant in 1936. Scranton's primary competitor in the pressing field was the Starr Piano Company, whose Richmond, Indiana, factory continued to operate as an independent pressing plant long after Starr's Gennett and Champion labels had disappeared.

In April 1938, the American Record Corporation discontinued most of its dime-store labels. In December of that year, the entire ARC complex was purchased from Consolidated Film for $700,000 by the Columbia Broadcasting System, which dissolved the company and allowed rights to the Brunswick and Vocalion labels to revert to the Warner Brothers' Brunswick Radio Corporation subsidiary.

With the ARC dime-store labels discontinued, Brunswick and Vocalion spun off, and Columbia's better-equipped Bridgeport plant standing ready to produce the newly revived Columbia label, CBS had no use for the Scranton Button Company.

Scranton's End
Scranton's fall was swift and severe. In 1939 it was reorganized as the Scranton Record Company, financed in part by producer Eli Oberstein. It negotiated what it probably thought would be a lucrative contract to press Varsity and Royale records for Oberstein's newly formed United States Record Corporation. But Oberstein, possibly the most unprincipled record producer of the period, predictably failed to pay Scranton for its services. Scranton filed for bankruptcy in the early autumn of 1940, as did USRC.

Having lost Oberstein as a customer, Scranton limped along, pressing for Musicraft and other minor accounts, and even taking back Oberstein as a customer, perhaps a measure of its desperation. Its next major account was Capitol Records in 1942. Scranton's end as an independent entity came when Capitol acquired the sprawling plant in 1946, eventually abandoning it in the 1980s.

Selected References
American Record Corp.: "American Record Corporation, World's Largest Manufacturer of Popular    Priced Records" (advertising flyer, c. 1931)
Columbia Broadcasting System. "American Record Corp. Matrix Numbers." Reconstructed    Regal/ARC recording logs, 1924 - 1938 (Unpublished internal document)
"Emerson Laboratories Chartered." Talking Machine World (1/15/1924)
Emerson Radio & Phonograph Corp.: "Emerson Solves the Problem" (advertisement). Talking    Machine World (12/1924)
"Emerson Record Manufacturing Rights Taken Over by Scranton Button Co." Talking Machine    World (11/15/1924)
"Independent's Musical Director." Talking Machine World (10/15/1923)
"Leading Executives in New Firm [Independent Recording Laboratories]." Talking Machine World    (2/15/1923)
"Merger of Phonograph Record Manufacturers - American Record Corporation Formed…."    Talking Machine World & Radio-Music Merchant (8/29/1929)
New Banner Record Series." Talking Machine World (9/15/1923)
Paikoff, Herman: "American Record Corporation Update." New Amberola Graphic XXI:3
   (1/1993)
--- . "The American Record Corporation (A Corporate Overview)." New Amberola Graphic XXI:2    (10/1992)
Plaza Music Co.: "Banner." U.S. Patent Office: Trademark application #157,534 (filed 1/5/1922)
"Plaza Co. Files Schedules." Talking Machine World (3/15/1921)
"Plaza Music Co. of New York Moving into New Offices and Warerooms this Month." Talking    Machine World (1/15/1925)
Radio Corporation of America v. Decca Records, Inc., et al.; Same v. Columbia Recording    Corporation, Inc., et al. District Court, S.D. New York. May 13, 1943. 51 F.Supp. 493.
"U.S. Record in New York Follows Scranton Plant in Filing Petition for Reorganization." Variety    (9/11/1940)