Music: Record Boom

By last week the counters of U.S. record shops were beginning to look like the walls of college dormitories. Never in recording history could a record-buyer buy the same song under so many different labels.

Among them : Capitol, Hit, Asch, Beacon, Blue Note, Comet, Commodore, De Luxe, Dix, Apollo, Savoy, Harmonia, Keynote, Exclusive, Feature, Musicraft.

The reasons for this sudden flowering are two : 1 ) retailers, cramped by wartime shortages, are stocking practically any thing; 2) small record companies, formerly devoted to such specialties as race songs or Elizabethan madrigals, have...

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