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One of those 78-rpm labels that often prove frustrating to discographers is Majestic, a common relic from between the recording bans that in some cases include desirable material and artists, but about which little substantive information is to be found in one place. How many of these were made? How long did it last? Who is on this label? Majestic is widely thought as one of Eli Oberstein's labels, as it continues from Obie's Hit label, and many of its releases resurfaced on later LP and EP releases from Oberstein's 1950s era factory of cheap records. However, Oberstein's connection with the Majestic label proper was at best intermittent. This is intended as a short summary of what information is available regarding Majestic.
Majestic Records was a post-war Indie and a fully owned subsidiary of the Majestic Radio & Television Corporation. While the corporate parent existed on the books from 1936 to c.1961, as a commercial 78-rpm record label, the Majestic brand only lasted from 1945 to 1948, with a final, stray series appearing in 1949, possibly lasting into 1950.
Pre-History
Majestic Radio & Television was incorporated in Delaware in 1936. The company purchased the "Majestic" brand name and adapted the descending eagle logo from the Grigsby-Grunow Radio Corporation, who had used it to emblazon some now prized "Art Deco" radio sets in the early 1930s.1 Chicago-based Grigsby-Grunow, established in 1921, was by 1928 one of the leading manufacturers of radio sets, but they went bankrupt in 1933.2 By 1943, Majestic Radio & Television had likewise become insolvent, and it was bought by three executives who had defected from Zenith Radio & Television Corporation: Jud Sayer, Eugene A "Gene" Tracey and L.W. Sturdevant. Majestic Radio & Television had decided to get into the record business as a way to support its radio-phonograph product lines, and apparently that was part of the plan well before the label made its bow; a May 1944 ad placed in Radio & Television Retailing states "What comes next at Majestic? Naturally some of it - much of it - can't be revealed now."3 Presumably the record label was among those plans which Majestic felt it could not reveal at the time.
One detail relating to this story that only came...