Edisone wrote:One of the records shown is a Columbia master (144951), issued as Harmony 537-H. I was not aware that Columbia provided Sears with Silvertone discs.
The following is from the Mainspring site- it seems as if Columbia used any company that would cut them a good deal:
Silvertone’s familiar tan label, introduced in late 1923 or early 1924, signaled a new production policy. Instead of relying on a single supplier and risking a repeat of the Federal debacle, Sears decided to contract production to numerous manufacturers. The company assigned blocks of catalog numbers to each of its contractors; thus, master sources for most tan-label issues can be determined from the catalog series:
200 = Columbia budget series (Harmony)
1200 = Pathé, with isolated issues from Olympic
1600 = Regal Record Company (Banner/Regal)
2000 = Federal Record Corporation
2400 = Emerson Recording Laboratories (Emerson/Dandy/Grey Gull)
3000 = Brunswick-Balke-Collender (Brunswick/Vocalion)
3100–3189 = A mixture from Emerson Recording Laboratories, New York Recording Laboratories (Paramount), and Starr Piano Company (Gennett)
3190–3400 = Columbia budget series, including reissues of earlier Columbia masters
3500 = New York Recording Laboratories (Paramount)
3800 = Starr Piano Company (Gennett) and Rainbow
4000 = Starr Piano Company (Gennett)
5000 (not to be confused with Federal’s earlier blue-label series, which was discontinued before the introduction of the tan-label series) = Gennett
6000 = Regal Record Company; isolated issues from Marsh Laboratories (Autograph)
8000 = Starr Piano Company (Gennett)
21500 = Regal Record Company
25000 = Starr Piano Company (Gennett)
There were occasional exceptions to the system. Pathé’s block was especially short-lived, possibly because Silvertone’s large preprinted sometimes labels had to be trimmed severely to fit within Pathé’s smaller label area; some specimens are known with labels overlapping the last few grooves. Most Silvertone issues duplicated material on their suppliers’ regular releases. However, a few items appear to have been issued on Silvertone exclusively, and use of alternate takes was fairly common. Many issues were pseudonymous.
By 1925, Columbia (using masters from its Harmony budget series as well as its own older acoustic masters) and Gennett were Silvertone’s main suppliers. Gennett was the sole supplier by 1927, when it introduced electrically recorded Silvertone Truphonic records.
Sears discontinued the Silvertone label in the Spring 1929 catalog, replacing it with the revived Supertone brand. The Silvertone name was revived briefly by Sears in 1940–1941 for a Columbia Recording Corporation product drawing on masters from the Columbia–Okeh pool as well as older American Record Corporation material owned by Columbia.
