Playtime Records (U.S.A.) / c. 1937
Corporate background:
According to Sutton & Nauck (American
Record Labels and Companies, 2000) Playtime was launched in
1924 by Plaza, which also marketed children’s Playtime
phonographs.
After a business merger in 1929, the label
became owned by American Record Co. (ARC), and was again
transferred, in 1938, to CBS; the label name lasted into the
late 1950s.
While the illustration has a
‘British’ look to it, the lettering of the label
name, with its squared-off letterforms, is more
‘American-looking.’
Record kindly donated by Canadian collector
and jazzologist Dave Dixon.
Design: A
beautifully-arranged and well-illustrated design, showing a
crowd of bob-haired all-white children excitedly crowding
around ‘Mother Goose’ (most often depicted as being
airborne, astride a flying goose) dressed in traditional Welsh
costume of tall-crowned black hat, red cape, cross-laced bodice
and full skirt, with red stockings (why she is identified as
being of Welsh ethnicity is unknown). With her hands around the
spindle hole, she seems about to spin the record.
The huge sales potential of the
middle-class nursery market now being tapped followed the rise
to fame of such popular children’s author/artists as
Beatrix Potter and Mabel Lucie Attwell.
