American Record Company

The American Record Company was a United States record label, in business from 1904 to 1906.

The American Record Company (commonly abbreviated as "ARCo") was founded by Ellsworth A. Hawthorne and Horace Sheble, formerly designers of accessories for Edison Records machines at their Philadelphia-based bicycle shop; in a previous venture, they had issued a small run of brown-wax cylinders in the mid-1890s. Hawthorne and Sheble partnered with John O. Prescott, whose brother Frederick worked with International Talking Machine in Berlin, which marketed Odeon Records. The new company was based in Springfield, Massachusetts, though they maintained factories in Bridgeport, CT and Philadelphia; recordings were made in a studio in New York City. American principally produced single-sided, lateral-cut disc records on blue wax, although two-sided issues and standard, black shellac appeared towards the end of the company's run. In 1906, John O. Prescott left, and Hawthorne and Sheble yielded to pressure from patent holders and retired American, retooling as Star Records; they also abandoned making their own recordings as with American, preferring to re-release "legitimate" discs already marketed by Columbia Records. Hawthorne & Sheble and Star Records was finally closed after unfavorable judgments in 1909 on patents held by the Victor Talking Machine Company.

The label of the discs featured artwork depicting a Native American with a smoking pipe listening to a front-mount disc phonograph of undetermined manufacture; American Record Company advertising commonly marketed them as "Indian Records". Several variations of the "Indian" label exist, differing only in minor details. Most ARCo records are single sided; with their double-sided records, apparently the combination of sides were randomly chosen. The company would press any two sides paired, if the buyer met the minimum-order qualification. These records are notable for being blue in color, rather than the usual black, pressed from a shellac compound called Empedite which reputedly delivered better sound quality than standard black shellac. The records appear to have been numbered using a sequence which began at 030000; the highest number known is 031435. The records exist in 7-inch, 10-inch and 10.75-inch sizes, with the latter size being derived from its connection with Odeon, which also used that size. The seven-inch discs used a different numbering sequence and seem to have only been produced for a short time. Some export pressings for Britain carried the "American Odeon Record" logo.

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