Crown Records (2)

US label, also appears as "Crown" only.
For unofficial releases, see Crown Records (7).

Crown Records was a innovation of the California-based Bihari family (brothers Lester, Joe, Saul, Jules) who owned Modern, Flair and RPM , all great solid independent labels, as well as the budget label Custom, Kent, United Superior, and Riviera.

It started in December, 1953 and continued until 1972, earning itself the reputation of the king of the junk record labels. Aside from endlessly reissuing and repackaging the legitimate Modern and RPM hits including the B.B. King material, what Crown had to offer was musical junk food on plastic plates (i.e. cut-rate children's, classical, Broadway and big band cover version, generic and sound-alike pop and R&B albums).

The covers usually fell apart almost instantly. LP's were shipped out with NO inner paper liners, thus splitting covers. The cheaply-made records sounded worn right out of the package. Plagued with more than the typical pressing flaws, noise can be heard and bumps seen on most LP's. Crown was far too cheap to issue promotional copies (special labels or not)...if they ever gave any away.

The one nod to class was that the early stereo albums on this label were often issued on red vinyl. The stereo numbering did not correspond to the mono numbering for about the first 250 albums.

The first Crown label was black with silver print. This was replaced in the early 1961 by a black label with the logo in block multi-color letters. By early 1962, the same design was used but the label had changed to grey with black printing, discarding the colors in the logo. In late 1969, a logo with stylized "CROWN" lettering and a three-pointed crown above was used, again in grey with black print.

After the creation of United Superior Records in 1969, part of the catalogue was reissued on United Records (11), at first with United/Superior labels, then also on United (9) labels.