[78-L] Victor's Sunrise label

[Steven C. Barr]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Harold Aherne" <leotolstoy_75 at yahoo.com>
> Of all the short-lived Victor labels of the early 30s, this is the one 
> I've never
> come across. Very occasionally there will be a Timely Tunes, Electradisk, 
> or their
> Canadian equivalent Aurora offered on Ebay, but I've never seen a Sunrise 
> disc and
> don't really know what the label looks like. I know there's a description 
> of it in Rust's
> record label book; is there any example online?
>
> Unlike Timely Tunes or Electradisk, there don't appear to have been any
> unique masters on Sunrise, though the possibility of alternate takes 
> exists, as I
> suppose it always does. So why did Victor create this label when their 
> standard black
> label sales were mediocre and they already had Bluebird?
>
Victor came out with THREE discount labels in 1932, when they finally 
noticed
that most of their potential customers were buying 25-cent "dime-store" 
labels!

They basically (as VMB2 shows) ran simultaneously...Bluebird, Electradisk 
and
Sunrise. The latter two quickly expired...! BTW, "Timely Tunes" was, AFAIK,
a "store label" forMonkey Wards...!

Sunrise used a label coloured in red and (BB) buff...and, as you note, they 
DON'T
exactly abound! However, everything released on the label also appeared on 
BB...!
BTW, Victor DIDN'T "already" have Bluebird...BB, Electradisk and Sunrise all
were introduced simultaneously (there are, admittedly, a few VERY rare 8"
Bluebirds which probably predate all of Victor's experiments with "bargain"
labels...don't own any & never seen any...!!)

BTW, ALL of this goes back to Emerson's 1918 introduction of the 50-cent
"Regal" label...!

...stevenc