Grey Gull

The Grey Gull label was released by Grey Gull Records in Boston, Massachusetts, between 1919 and 1930. The company was founded by Theodore Lyman Shaw.

Grey Gull began advertising in The Talking Machine World in August 1919. According to the Massachusetts Department of Corporation and Taxation, Grey Gull was officially incorporated on 31 December 1919. It was dissolved on 31 March 1934 (Acts 1934, c. 187).

The earliest Grey Gull releases were vertical-cut discs marked as "Two-in-One (Hill and Dale)" with an H-prefix that boasted of twice the playing time of standard 10-inch records of the time (more than 5 1/4 minutes). A March 1920 ad mentions that both 10- and 12-inch records are available. As early as 1920, Grey Gull seems to have introduced lateral-cut records as well; they were marked with an L-prefix (the lateral-cut patent had expired in 1919).

In 1921, Grey Gull switched to releasing only lateral-cut records, and the prefixes were dropped.

In 1922, Grey Gull turned into a budget label and adopted a much more simple label design. Labels now were maroon with golden script. Records sold wholesale for just 11 cents, and dealers could set their own prices for them, usually between 20 and 25 cents. Racks with Grey Gull releases of the newest pop numbers were set up next to news stands.

For a brief time in 1923, labels turned black and gold and were attached to orange brown shellac pressings. Some dark-green labels also exist, but only on black shellac discs.

In 1926, Grey Gull opened up its own recording studio New York City, but the electric recording process they used was probably some kind of contraption of their own, not one leased from General Electric or Western Electric. The resulting recordings sound poorly modulated and distorted, especially on vocals. It did not help that the company also used gritty, substandard shellac for its pressings.

Labels now were either light blue or a grayish pink, later red. Around 1928, the labels changed again. They became uniformly bright red, with the brand name Grey Gull in a larger, gold-framed white script. For a brief time, they still featured a white gull under the Grey Gull logo, but it was soon dropped.