[78-L] Aaron Sachs (was Whither Manor?)

[David Lewis]

Thatcher,

I feel your pain. But I'd rather it be right for 15 minutes than wrong for years, which it often is. It's good practice for me, as I no longer work at the former All Music Guide, yet still write for other concerns; just not every day like I used to. Moreover I hope the new articles are useful to you and to others. I have also discovered that if you are an overseas artist not well known over here and your promotional articles are in another language, then having an English language Wikipedia page is really useful to you. And I've done some of those.

Just about all of the things I cover is research that serves some other purpose for me that I need to conduct anyway. As Don kindly asked, I have included what I plan to post on Manor once I get all of my references in place, followed by the article I am replacing. And I'd like to say a big thank you again to David Diehl, who put me on the right track. I guess I've been lucky; I haven't really been edited much by the pimply faced set, though I do get tagged here and again with nitpicky little warnings about references or writing orphan articles. Those usually disappear over time.

Uncle Dave Lewis
uncledavelewis at hotmail.com

My article:

Manor Records was the best-known incarnation of three United States based "race" record labels run by Irving Berman. These companies -- Regis, Manor and Arco -- existed between 1943 and 1950, with singer Savannah Churchill as their most successful artist.

==History== 
At the beginning of 1943, Irving Berman was working out of the G&R Record Shop in Newark, N.J. In February, Berman announced that he had established a new label, Regis Records, with the intention of releasing four records a month, "spirituals only." The first Regis issues were by Sister Ernestine Washington and the Silver Echo Quartet; the second batch were by the Coleman Brothers. In July, 1944 Berman hired the Dixie Hummingbirds to back up Washington and recorded a couple of numbers with them as well. Nevertheless, despite the "spirituals only" promise, Regis rather quickly segued into Rhythm & Blues with releases from Albino Jones and his Ambassadors and Seth "Skooddle Dum Doo" Richard & John Sheffield; Tab Smith, Tiny Bradshaw and The Cats and the Fiddle joined the Regis fold afterward.

In January 1945, Berman opened an office in Manhattan and changed the name of the label to Manor Records; what had been a crown at top of the Regis label -- coincidentally similar to the label design of Cincinnati's King Records -- was replaced by a musical staff and some notes. Most Regis releases reappeared on Manor, but Berman was still offering stock on Regis in his advertising though early 1946, and continued to list an address of 162 Prince Street in Newark, possibly as a distribution center. By February, Berman was releasing discs by the talent that would define Manor; Savannah Churchill and ex-Ink Spot Deek Watson and his group The Brown Dots. Berman also served as personal manager to Savannah Churchill. A slightly varied incarnation of The Brown Dots became The Four Tunes, another vocal group very important to Manor. In January, Manor recorded Dizzy Gillespie's first issued session as a leader; consisting of only four titles, these remained among Manor's fastest sellers.

Manor and Berman were still "groovin' high" in 1948 when the Harry Fox Agency slapped them with an injunction for non-payment of royalties. Berman found a creative way to solve the problem; earlier that same year, RCA Victor had wooed away The Four Tunes, causing them to break their contract with Berman, and Berman sued. Although the Fox Agency attempted to block the payment, when the case was settled in Berman's favor in 1950 he used the $7000 gained to pay off the Fox Agency. Berman had closed Manor around the early part of 1949 and moved back to Newark, reopening in Fall of 1949 as Arco, short for "American Record Company," a name used at least twice before by earlier concerns. The artist roster for Arco remained much the same as it had been for Manor, and the Manor titles began reappearing through Arco. Although the name on the label changed, the same musical notes and staff that had graced the top of the Manor labels remained in place.

At the same time that Arco was founded, Berman acquired what was described by Billboard as "most of the Disc catalog" from Moses Asch. Berman began to reissue material such as JATP concerts from this material, and took Chicago's Mercury Records into court over their issues of these recordings that had initially appeared through Disc. However, Norman Granz -- who had made the JATP recordings, had leased them to Moses Asch, and still owned them -- was then among the chief A&R personnel at Mercury. In the summer of 1950, Berman happily informed Billboard that he'd renewed his management contract with Savannah Churchill and had signed crooner Del Casino to Arco, a major departure from Arco's status as a "race" label. These were among the final artists to appear on Arco in September; by the end of 1950, Arco was no more and Berman was out of the record business, a victim of his own poorly considered lawsuit.

==Legacy==
Although it occupied only the three center years of the seven year legacy of Berman's combined companies, all retrospective mentions of the operation, in Billboard and elsewhere, refer to Manor Records; it had the farthest reach and greatest success of the three. Tastes changed sharply, particularly in the R&B market, around 1950 and the easygoing groove that distinguished most Manor Records became quickly obsolete, and Arco simply didn't have time to enter the 45 rpm or LP markets. The Dizzy Gillespie items, however, proved indispensible and appeared on a wide array of cheap labels throughout the 1950s, and even at one point on Columbia. Ultimately, Herman Lubinsky of Savoy Records -- also, incidentally, based in Newark rather than New York -- acquired the Manor Records catalogue. Although the selections on Manor are often desirable, the poor shellac grades employed by Berman's company makes for noisy surfaces, and as a result such records are of only marginal interest to collectors. 

the original Wiki:

Manor Records was a United States based record label of the 1940s.

A small label founded in NYC by Irving Berman, Manor Records later moved its headquarters to New Jersey. The label featured such artists on its roster as Savannah Churchill, The Sentimentalists—later famous as The Four Tunes, Luis Russell, Deek Watson and His Brown Dots, Boy Green, Skoodle-Dum-Doo (Seth Richard) and Sheffield, as well as a number of other artists.

Also of interest were the occasional recordings by Dizzy Gillespie of the Be-Bop genre. Performances on the label were generally not bad, all things considered. Savannah Churchill and The 4 Tunes would be considered "lounge acts" today, but they scored impressively for record sales, and kept Manor afloat for most of the late 1940s.

Berman later changed the name to ARCO Records. But after 1950, tastes in the record buying public began to change and the hits were very few...consequently Berman shut down operations, and his stars went to other labels. The quality of Manor pressings was not very good, but one could probably attribute that to the war time shellac shortage, which adversely affected even the major labels during WWII.

> Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 20:43:48 -0400
> From: thatcher at mediaguide.com
> To: 78-l at klickitat.78online.com
> CC: uncledavelewis at hotmail.com; 78-l at 78online.com
> Subject: Re: [78-L]  Aaron Sachs (was Whither Manor?)
> 
> I don't understand your enthusiasm for contributing to Wikipedia. Their 
> pimple-faced, 14-year old members routinely delete new entries and 
> you're left with hours of effort totally wasted with no recourse.
> 
> 
> -- Thatcher
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 7/7/2011 6:25 PM, David Lewis wrote:
> > Cary,
> >
> > Thanks for tipping in about Aaron Sachs and adding that Terry Gibbs was involved in that session. I'm working on
> > the Manor Wiki as well as it is especially bad.
> >
> > Irving Berman was a piece of work; I've been going through the various Billboard articles that mention him and other
> > sources. One of the Dixie Hummingbirds told Jerry Zolten that Berman wouldn't pay them in cash, just in records, which
> > they sold at their appearances. They looked at it as being something better than nothing at all and on the way to a real
> > recording contract, which they did eventually get. Berman sued RCA Victor, and won, in order to pay off his debt to the Harry
> > Fox Agency. However, he bought a bunch of Disc masters from Moe Asch, put out some of the JATP stuff on one of his
> > labels and then sued Mercury. Wrong idea; it put him out of business.
> >
> > Uncle Dave Lewis
> > uncledavelewis at hotmail.com 		 	   		
> > _______________________________________________
> > 78-L mailing list
> > 78-L at klickitat.78online.com
> > http://klickitat.78online.com/mailman/listinfo/78-l
> 
>