Art Records (3)

1940s-1980s label from Miami, Florida. Also appears as "ART" only and as "ART 45's." For the related companies, see Art Records, Ltd., Art Records, Inc., American Recording And Transcription Service, Inc. or Art Records Manufacturing Company. Art Records started in the late 1940s as a transcription and recording service located in the Cadillac Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida. In fact, the name of the company, American Recording and Transcription Service, gave rise to the acronym ART, which became the name of the label itself. It was owned and operated by Harold E. Doane, who also served as A&R Director of the label. Doane was in his forties when he established Art Records, and recorded some 900 reels of performances at clubs, lounges, and aboard cruise ships before finally calling it quits in the 1980s as an octogenarian. From the beginning, the label specialized in recording the lounge and club acts that were appearing in Miami hotels and clubs, and clubs across the water in the Bahamas. Much of the time, these recordings were "live" recordings of their lounge acts for distribution on vinyl. The albums on the Art Records label were manufactured to be sold by the artists themselves at their club appearances. Because of this, a much, much greater percentage of records on the label are autographed by the artists. In fact, later albums feature a small box on the back of the album with the notation "For Autographs". Many of the early 1950s recordings were of calypso music, usually recorded in the Bahamas. And because some of the early albums were meant to be sold in clubs in the Bahamas, which were British islands, early albums were sold there under the "Bahamas Records Ltd." label, with the same catalogue number as the mainland Art Records counterparts. For unofficial releases, see Art Records (35)