Sonora (6)

1940s shellac label based in Chicago, Illinois. Company started around 1900 as the Sonora Chime Company, making chiming clocks in New York City. In 1913, while still based in New York, it was reincorporated as the Sonora Phonograph Company. Sonora moved westward in 1923, when it merged with a furniture company based in Saginaw, Michigan, which had been making the cabinets for its players. In 1924, Sonora expanded into radios, and in 1927, the company's headquarters relocated to Saginaw. The Great Depression hit Sonora hard; from 1930 onward it was in and out of receivership. On April 10, 1938, the company resurfaced from bankruptcy as Sonora Radio and Television Corporation, moving its head offices to the Merchandise Mart in Chicago. In 1942, Sonora decided to branch out into making records while the company's headquarters were still in Chicago. The move into records may have been, in part, a reaction to wartime restrictions on the manufacture of radios for the civilian market. Because the record operation opened right after the the recording ban was imposed, Sonora's goal was to buy masters (most often of classics or light classics) and reissue them. Initially, the company made straight reissues of some Musicraft albums with new cover art. The parent company moved from the Merchandise Mart to 325 North Hoyne Street (the address seen in Sonora record ads) in September 1943. Early Sonora albums carried numbers in 200, 300, and 400 series. The individual 10-inch records (which were not meant to be sold as singles) carried numbers in a 4000 series. Sonora also released a few albums of 12-inch records; for these, the individual 78s carried numbers in the 19000 series. Every side in the 4000s and the 19000s was recorded by another company. MM matrix numbers (on all of the 19000s we have seen, and the majority of the 4000s) point to the Musical Masterpieces series, on the prewar Musicraft label, which was run out of New York City and owned by Gordon Mercer. Items recorded by Eli Oberstein originally had a US prefix, which usually did not appear on Sonora masters; most if not all of these had been released on his Royale label, though there may have been a few that appeared on the first edition of his Varsity label.