CMS Records (11)

CMS was an outgrowth of Chesterfield Music Shops founded by Irving Tepper and Jerry Schoenbaum in 1940s as a wholesaler and retail mail-order operation, selling discount classical records to schools, libraries, and the general public. By the early 1960s, longtime Chesterfield employee Leon Golovner had become a partner in the company, and began consulting with New York Library Association on its annual kidisk directories. In the 1950s, Chesterfield issued at least one title Back-Room Ballads under its CMS Records (11) imprint, but it was not until the mid-1960s that it became a full-fledged label CMS (10), and began developing a large catalog of spoken-word and other literary-type recordings, joining Caedmon, Spoken Arts, and Folkways as a leader in the field.