MERIT
1949 - 1951
MERIT was a small, local imprint linked to Midwest Recorded Specialties, a Chicago/Elmhurst operation active in the late 1940s.
Midwest Recorded Specialties advertised regularly in Billboard from 1946 onward with Elmhurst, Illinois addresses, indicating the company base that supported the MERIT imprint. In December 1946, ads list 104 E. Wilson, Elmhurst and 194 E. Wilson, Elmhurst; by autumn 1947, the address shifts to 113 Larch, Elmhurst.
Classifieds continued to place Midwest Recorded Specialties in Elmhurst through 1949 and into 1950, which brackets MERIT’s active window to roughly late 1949–1950. No later trade-press mentions or dated MERIT releases have surfaced, so the label appears to have become defunct by the early 1950s.
