Editing Brunswick Records (section)

=== 1930–1944 ===
In April 1930, Brunswick-Balke-Collender sold Brunswick Records to [[Warner Bros.]], and the company's headquarters moved to New York.<ref name="Kernfeld">Barry Kernfeld ''The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz'', London & New York: Macmillan, 1988 [1994], p.164</ref> Warner Bros. hoped to make their own soundtrack recordings for their sound-on-disc [[Vitaphone]] system. A number of interesting recordings were made by actors during this period, featuring songs from musical films. Actors who made recordings included [[Noah Beery]], [[Charles King (musical actor)|Charles King]], and [[J. Harold Murray]]. During this Warner Brothers period Brunswick signed [[Bing Crosby]],<ref name="LarkinGE"/> who was to become their biggest recording star, as well as [[the Mills Brothers]],<ref name="LarkinGE"/> [[Adelaide Hall]], [[the Boswell Sisters]], [[Cab Calloway]], the [[Casa Loma Orchestra]] and [[Ozzie Nelson]].

In November 1930, the new budget-line, [[Melotone Records (US)|Melotone]], debuted, entering a field of lower-priced electrical records, including Columbia's Clarion, Velvet Tone, Harmony and the labels of the Plaza Music Company, such as [[Perfect Records|Perfect]], [[Banner Records|Banner]], and [[Romeo Records|Romeo]]. Melotone releases before the [[American Record Corporation|ARC]] takeover of December 1931 are not duplicated on these labels. When Vitaphone was abandoned in favor of [[sound-on-film]] systems—and record industry sales plummeted due to the [[Great Depression]]—Warner Bros. leased the Brunswick record operation to [[Consolidated Film Industries]], the parent company of the [[American Record Corporation]] (ARC),<ref name="Kernfeld"/> in December 1931. In 1932, the UK branch of Brunswick was acquired by British [[Decca Records|Decca]].

Between early 1932 and 1939, Brunswick was ARC's flagship label, selling for 75 cents, while all of the other ARC labels were selling for 35 cents. Best selling artists during that time were Bing Crosby, the Boswell Sisters, the Mills Brothers, [[Duke Ellington]], Cab Calloway, [[Abe Lyman]], Casa Loma Orchestra, [[Leo Reisman]], [[Ben Bernie]], [[Red Norvo]], [[Teddy Wilson]], and [[Anson Weeks]]. Many of these artists moved over to Decca in late 1934, causing Brunswick to reissue popular records by these artists on the ARC dime store labels as a means to compete with Decca's 35 cent price.<!-- During much of 1932, Brunswick/ARC used a different microphone setup in their New York studios, which made records from 1932 sound very constricted with little bass. By the end of 1932, they apparently abandoned this setup and sound quality improved dramatically. -->
In 1939, the American Record Corp. was bought by the [[CBS|Columbia Broadcasting System]] for $750,000, which discontinued the Brunswick label in 1940,<ref name="LarkinGE"/> in favor of reviving the Columbia label (as well as reviving the [[OKeh Records|OKeh]] label, replacing Vocalion). This, along with the lower than agreed-upon sales/production numbers, violated the Warner lease agreement, resulting in the Brunswick trademark reverting to Warner. In 1941, Warner sold the Brunswick and Vocalion labels to American Decca (which Warner had a financial interest in), with all masters recorded prior to December 1931. Rights to recordings from late December 1931 on were retained by [[Columbia Records|CBS/Columbia]].

In 1943, Decca revived the Brunswick label, mostly for reissues of recordings from earlier decades, particularly Bing Crosby's early hits of 1931 and jazz items from the 1920s. Since then, Decca and its successors have had ownership of the historic Brunswick Records archive from this time period.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wwwEAAAAMBAJ&q=%22Brunswick+records%22&pg=PT94 |title=''The Billboard'', 29 May 1943, p.95 |date=1943-05-29 |access-date=2014-06-29}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sAwEAAAAMBAJ&q=%22brunswick+records%22+%2B+decca+%2B+%22bing+crosby%22&pg=PT37 |title=''The Billboard'', 23 August 1947, p.38 |date=1947-08-23 |access-date=2014-06-29}}</ref>