Ariel Grand Record

The Ariel Grand Record was produced for Messrs J. G. Graves of Sheffield, England, who sold them on a mail order basis.

The label was available from 1910 until 1938. The masters came from many sources over the years. The early ones from Beka, Favourite, Grammavox & Jumbo; occasionally the label is found to be just a paste-over, examples have been found as Winners with Ariel paste-overs, from the early 1920s.

As far as dance music is concerned, in the early 1920s, Ariel was using Zonophone masters and some sides by "Jack Hylton's Jazz Band" may be found, along with others of a similar period, with a 2000 catalogue series, often anonymous. Generally, apart from this, all dance records are labelled as by "Ariel Dance Orchestra".

In the later 1920s, was a 1000 series, again from Zonophone issued sides by the various Bert Firman groups.
Overlapping with this, Ariel used masters from Parlophone from about 1924 until 1938, using a 4000 series Catalogue No., sometimes prefixed with a "Z". This included many American masters from OKeh records.

Source: Off The Record