Cremona= Rex (Cremona: Rex) was a gramophone producer in Sweden. The brand also produced records. The German firm Menzenhaur & Schmidt recorded them between 1929 to 1930.
A few hundred of discs with Swedish repertoire that were issued by four labels: Corona, Kalliope, Cremona Rex & Melocord.
Sonora was a Swedish record company founded on November 5th, 1932 by Erik Ljungberg (1884-1958).
At first, Sonora didn’t have any Swedish recordings to release so their initial releases were reissues of the German record company Artiphon. From 1933 and forward, Sonora solely released Swedish recordings. Between 1933 and 1958 Sonora made approximately 9,000 recordings.
When the founder Erik Ljungberg died and the production of shellac 78s ceased, Sonora was purchased by Philips and became AB Philips-Sonora which later turned to Phonogram AB and then Polygram AB and now Universal Music Group.
There were also a Sonora branch in Norway that started releasing records in 1934, and a branch in Finland and one in USA.
Symfoni was a classic music record label from Sweden.
Ekophon was a German-Swedish record label owned by German Carl Lindström AG but produced exclusively for the Swedish market. The label was registered at the Swedish Patent Office 6th of July 1920 and the first records were released the following spring.
Ekophon’s repertoire consisted of a mix of German recordings from other brands within the Lindström Group (mainly Beka) and material recorded especially for Swedish audiences both in Berlin and locally in Stockholm. In order to strengthen the Swedish impression, many of the German recordings were published under invented Swedish artist and orchestra names. For example, pianist Gunnar Boberg falsely stands as the leader of a series of recordings that are actually of German studio orchestras.
Thanks to Lindström’s contacts with American Okeh, some seventy recordings from this company were also released on Ekophon, including with well-known American orchestras such as Ray Millers, Sam Lanins and Vincent Lopez.
Of jazz historical interest are some Swedish recordings from 1923 with Sven Rüno’s jazz band, which included the US-born black banjoist Russell Jones.
The records were pressed in Berlin until 1924.
In early 1927, Ekophon was replaced by Parlophon.
In 1947, Sonora’s chief recording engineer Helge Roundquist together with engineer Artur Rydin left Sonora and set up Cupol together with artists like Yngve Stoor, Willard Ringstrand and Thore Ehrling. Cupol started to release records June 1947.
In 1970, Cupol was merged with CBS Records AB and in 1973 CBS took over full ownership of Cupol. The last original Cupol recording was made in 1975.
Revived under Sony Music Entertainment (Sweden) AB.
Hemmets Härold was a Swedish record company owned by Pingströrelsen and with its main business period from the early 1930s to the late 1970s based in Stockholm.
In 1949, John Engelbrekt created the label Gazell in Stockholm, Sweden, to distribute jazz albums. In September 1950, he founded a jazz club in Stockholm called Gazell. In 1957, recordings from the club and by Engelbrekt were sold to the Scandinavian Record Company (Sonet Records) run by Gunnar Bergström and Sven Lindholm, while the rights to the label Gazell were sold to Dag Häggqvist, though other sources say Häggqvist started the label himself in 1950.
Häggqvist sold Gazell to Sonet in 1960 and was run by Sam Charters until Sonet was acquired by PolyGram in 1991. Häggqvist retained the rights to the label again in 1993 when he formed Gazell Music AB.
In 2004, Häggqvist made a deal with Bonnier Music Publishing, a subsidiary of The Bonnier Group. Since then, the companies have been called Bonnier Gazell Music.
Metronome (also Metronome Records) was a multinational record label founded in 1949 in Sweden by the brothers Lars and Anders Burman together with their friend Börje Ekberg to release jazz.
