Vogue Records was a short-lived United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 based record label

Record label

In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...

 of the 1940s, noted for the artwork embedded in the records themselves. Founded in 1946 as part of Sav-Way Industries of Detroit, Michigan

Detroit, Michigan

Detroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...

, the discs were initially a hit, because of the novelty of the colorful artwork, and the improved sound compared to the shellac

Shellac

Shellac is a resin secreted by the female lac bug, on trees in the forests of India and Thailand. It is processed and sold as dry flakes , which are dissolved in ethyl alcohol to make liquid shellac, which is used as a brush-on colorant, food glaze and wood finish...

 records dominant at the time. The discs were manufactured by first sandwiching printed illustrations around a core of aluminum, then coating both sides with clear vinyl upon which the grooves were stamped.

The company went out of business the following year, having released between 67 and 74 double-sided 78 rpm

Revolutions per minute

Revolutions per minute is a measure of the frequency of a rotation. It annotates the number of full rotations completed in one minute around a fixed axis...

 gramophone record

Gramophone record

A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...

s. Some of the Vogue issues were re-releases of recordings originally issued by other companies.

The colorful artwork on the records have made Vogue Records a collector's item.

Two releases on the Vogue label have been the source of much collector debate over the years: the 1946 releases by the country swing group the Down Homers "Who's Gonna Kiss You When I'm Gone?" and "Boogie Woogie Yodel" have often been cited as featuring the earliest recorded performances by future rock and roll pioneer Bill Haley

Bill Haley

Bill Haley was one of the first American rock and roll musicians. He is credited by many with first popularizing this form of music in the early 1950s with his group Bill Haley & His Comets and their hit song "Rock Around the Clock".-Early life and career:...

, who was a member of the group in 1946. However this rumor was later debunked by surviving members of the Down Homers as well as Haley researchers.http://thegardnerfamily.org/haley/discography/recordings.html Nonetheless, the Vogue Down Homers releases are considered among the more collectable of the label's releases.

External links

• What's a Vogue Picture Record? from "The Association of Vogue Picture Record Collectors"
• Vogue Picture Records from the Todd Collection at the University of California, Santa Barbara
  University of California, Santa Barbara
  The University of California, Santa Barbara, commonly known as UCSB or UC Santa Barbara, is a public research university and one of the 10 general campuses of the University of California system. The main campus is located on a site in Goleta, California, from Santa Barbara and northwest of Los...
  
  Library