Music Monde
Music Monde was a record label from Paris, France. It was acive in the late 1940s.
SALABERT
One of the main label of the French publishing company Salabert, founded in the 1920s or earlier as Disque Francis Salabert (shortened to just Salabert by the 1930s).
Also referred to as “Ed. Salabert”, or “Editions Musicales Salabert”, or “Editions Francis Salabert”, or “Editions Salabert France”, with either an “E” or an “É” for all the forms.
Also printed as Editions Salabert, S.A.
Source: Discogs
DUCRETET THOMSON
French label that was introduced in 1950 by Compagnie Française Thomson-Houston and Maurice Selmer of Henri Selmer Paris and the Selmer label. CFTH were a manufacturer of radios.
The label was distributed in several countries. In the US for example, it was distributed by London Records.
In 1958 Compagnie Française Thomson-Houston went into a partnership with Pathe Marconi, with the companies distributing each other’s products.
Eventually Pathe Marconi took over the label. Some sources state that happened in 1984 although Billboard Magazine already lists Ducretet Thomson as a Pathe Marconi label in the 1960s.
The “Ducretet” part of the name comes from “Ducretet et cie.” a company that CFTH acquired in 1929. Ducretet et cie. was a French company founded by scientist Eugène Adrien Ducretet which produced, among other scientific instruments, an early “plate phonograph”, or tinfoil disc player (1879) and a tinfoil phonograph for cylinders.
The repertoire focused on world music, including UNESCO recordings.
Source: Discogs
L’Anthologie Sonore
L’Anthologie Sonore was a French record label, focusing initially on medieval and Renaissance music.
Discs were recorded under that label between 1933 and the mid 1950s in France, initially under the artistic direction of Curt Sachs. He was also the artistic director of the first one, “2,000 years of music, a concise history of the development of music from the earliest times through the 18th century” in the very early 1930s, just before he left Germany for France where he founded “L’Anthologie sonore”.
Source: medieval.org
Barclay
Nicole & Eddie Barclay founded the Blue Star Record in Paris in February 1945. The firm changed its name in 1948 for Productions Phonographiques Françaises (PPF).
In January 1953, PPF became Compagnie Phonographique Française (also known as CPF-Barclay) and eventually better known as Barclay.
Barclay released mainly French chanson and jazz music, also distributing major US labels in France (Atlantic/Jubilee, Prestige, Mercury, Verve Records, Buddah Records,…).
Eddie Barclay sold his company in 1978 to the PolyGram group (now Universal Music) but remained as president and managing director until 1983.
Label code: LC 0126 / LC 00126
Note: the BA XXX codes printed on sleeves (eg.: BA 102 / BA 105 / BA 122 / BA 125 / BA 215 / BA 222 / BA 253 / BA 283) are not catalogue numbers but price codes identifying formats.
Source: Discogs
LE SOLEIL
French label and record company created by Martin Cayla in the 1930’s.
Specialised in folklore music and songs from the center region of France (e.g., Auvergne).
The early records were vertically-cut (played with sapphire), but later one they became horizontally-cut.
Source: Discogs
FIESTA FIESTA
The Fiesta label for 78 rpm shellac discs was initiated by Fonior / Decca France in 1947. At the outset it specialized in artists from North Africa with Ahmed Hachelef as artistic director. Around 1950 the label also began to record artists from France’s Sub-Saharan colonies Senegal, Soudan français (Mali), Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, Dahomey (Bénin), Cameroun and Congo.
As a Fonior / Decca France sub-label it predates Fonior’s pressing plant constructed 1954-1955 in the Belgian Congo. Given Fonior’s partnership with Decca in Great Britain and the geographical limitations found in British Decca’s West African series, only to include artists from Britain’s West African colonies, a quiet understanding seems to have been reached between British Decca and Fonior / Decca France not to compete against each other on the African record market. Seen from this perspective one could see the Fiesta shellac label as a parallel to Decca’s WA/GWA/NWA series.
However, in the early 1950s the Fiesta label soon found itself in stiff competition on the African market with new shellac series introduced by several other French labels Le Chant du Monde, Africavox, Pathé, Philips (France) and the Congolese based Ngoma and Opika labels. By the mid-1950s Fiesta seems to have given up on releasing new recordings with Sub-Saharan artists.
Source: Afrodisc
Swing
French Jazz label founded out of the activities of the famous Hot Club de France in 1937 by Hugues Panassié and Charles Delaunay. It was the first record label worldwide which focused only on Jazz Music. It also appears as “Swing Records” or “Disques Swing”.
The label stopped producing in 1951.
Source: Wikipedia
PACIFIC
French label founded by Rene Cacheux in 1945. It was owned by the Compagnie Générale du Disque. Shellac records often mention “Pacific Super”. The label also owned a license on Capitol Records (Frank Ténot was hired to deal with this license), but their contract with Capitol ended in 1954.
Source: Discogs
BAM
Also known as Boîte à musique, La boîte à musique or Disques BAM.
BAM publishing house is Éditions De La Boîte À Musique.
French label established in the early fifties for jazz, classical and French vocal music on 78 rpm and micro-groove records.
In 1969, Roger Creange and Lucien Morisse, president and general manager of Disc’Az, and Levi Alvares, president and owner of BAM Records, have announced the acquisition of BAM Records by Disc’Az.
Main series began with 1 to 45609, the C from 102 to 85092, the LD from 1 to 6022, the EX from 200 to 1500, the V from 501 to 509.
BAM had a sub-label called Cycnus which numbering goes from CALB 1 to CALB 62. Some records also had the prefix CYCNUS 30 CM for 12″ and CYCNUS 60 CS for 60 minute cassettes.
