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I noticed someone posted a coloured Columbia viva-tonal record sleeve on moo's board the other day, and it made me wonder what other coloured sleeves fellow collectors may have come across in their travels.
The only ones I have are by Columbia, so I wonder if any other company went to the trouble of producing multi coloured sleeves?
I've only got one 12" a couple 10" viva-tonal sleeves, which were printed here in Australia, which differ slightly from the American version, having a yellow background on the reverse side of the sleeve & 2 machines shown from different angles. I have found a couple more 10" sleeves that were disintergrating (probably due to high acid content in the inks used?), but those I've found intact have had Whiteman "potato head" labels in them.
Does anyone know if these sleeves were standard issue for the potato head label- perhaps when the label was first introduced?

The only other coloured sleeve I've found is the "Two Black Crows" sleeve pictured below.
I would imagine these are an American design as well because of the circular Columbia trademark used at the top of each side. The circular logo was never used here in Australia- we used the magic notes logo shown at the bottom of the last photo from the beginning of Columbia record production in 1926.
I was told some time ago that "In Hades", which is listed here as parts 11 & 12, was a separate issue in USA & was not included as part of the previous 10 side set.
Is this true?

If anyone else has any colour sleeves by Columbia or any other company, I'd be very interested in seeing them

This is one of the only vaguely coloured sleeves I own where a red ink has been used rather than a shade of black

Columbia also made a series of black and blue sleeves in the 1930s. I had a load of Carroll Gibbons piano solos in near mint original sleeves.
Broadcast used multi-colour sleeves for their budget 8" records.
Iirc correctly German BeKa (part of the Lindstöm group) also used more than one colour for their sleeves.
Most of the labels on earlier issues were printed in full colour too.

Peter

Too bad that there was only a low percentage of these beautiful full-color pages. The artwork of period sheet music is also an interesting field.

These are great! Here's the sleeve that Canadian Victor used for their Confederation Jubilee record. This was issued in 1927 for the 60th anniversary of Canadian Confederation . I've always like this sleeve. The recording is just the Victor Band ..and it was recorded in Camden. There's something VERY Canadian about that This was the first electrical that Montreal issued in the Canadian black label 10inch series...the 216000's. It represented a rejuvination of that series which had lain fallow since 1925. After this there were lots of Canadian sides which WERE recorded in Montreal, like the acoustics.
Jim