The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #168926   Message #4082729
Posted By: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
10-Dec-20 - 09:24 AM
Thread Name: Stinson Records Revisted
Subject: RE: Stinson Records Revisted
By all reports the genuine cut-out inventory sold-out in a matter of months and here is where Irving Prosky et al take a hard turn with the established Stinson business model.

Charlie Stinson; Milt Gabler & the Okeh-Hot Club reissues were entirely above-board. Indeed, the original driving force behind the creation of bargain bins and cut-outs was to keep the resales and redistributions tax legal and 'by-the-book.'

The 1940s Stinson Trading Company Soviet N.Y. Fair pressings are most definitely not above-board nor by-the-book. The center labels still says otherwise but, they were pressed in the United States. They are markedly lower quality dubs taken from the originals. The print around the label border and the record company name are both missing. Technically, there is no record company or record label. Some, but not all, reflect a poorly inserted distributor's credit for Stinson Trading Co at the bottom-center.

They are what the Hollywood gangster films these days call fu-gazzi or fah-guzzi. To old-time jukebox collectors and crate-diggers like your 'umble scribe:

Fugace. Literally – fleeting. Fly by night. Here today, gone tomorrow. They have a hundred names- fake, pirate, knock-off, rip-off, bootleg, unauthorized, unofficial. Deliberately made and marketed in such a way as to make you think it is something that it is not. Or the other way around.

If Milt Gabler's record store and labels were indeed the first of their kind in honest cut-out and reissued record sales, and we believe they are, then Irving Prosky and The Stinson Trading Company were one of the first of the knock-off fugace record companies anywhere.

Out of control will be a hallmark of Stinson's way of doing business for the next 75+ years.