page_title: Puritan Records
section_title: Label Design and numbering systems
hierarchical_section_title: Puritan Records / Label Design and numbering systems
caption_attribution_description: Puritan Records 4091, side A, circa 1918.
context_page_description: Puritan Records was an American record label which lasted from 1917 to 1929. For most of its existence Puritan was a product of the Wisconsin Chair Company, which also marketed Paramount Records, but as a label, Puritan briefly predates Paramount and began with United Phonographs Corporation.
context_section_description: United Phonographs-era Puritans employ at least three, distinct label designs. The four-colour vertical-cut label is especially handsome, employing tan and blue overprinting on a light grey background with an inset image of a pilgrim woman listening to her phonograph at fireside; the words "Vertical Cut" appear in red type. With the advent of laterals, the image of the pilgrim woman was kept, but surrounded by fancy lacework in a label printed in varying degrees of gold and black. Near the end of the United Phonographs period, the inset image was replaced by a legend, "America's Best Record." This was retained, with a small amount of the lacework, on the far simpler label design used by NYRL which is gold on blue, similar to Paramount's own design. Around 1925 the label changed from gold on blue to gold on black. BD&M pressings, however, employ their own unique label design of gold and white on black, with an inset profile of the Puritan of legend in a broad-brimmed hat.
  Very little information is available about the numbering systems of the earliest Puritans and Paramounts, though vertical-cut Puritans were numbered in the 2000s. With switching to lateral-cut in 1919, Puritan ran at least three concurrent series, 6000 for classical, 9000 for light music and 11000 for popular, though the classical line didn't last beyond 1923. The Puritan 11000 series corresponds to releases in the Paramount 20000 series and the 9000 series reflects Paramount's 33000 series; there are other Puritan series known in number blocks of 500 and 70000. Once BD&M gets into the mix, the numerical relationship between Puritan and Paramount becomes considerably disturbed, with different records sharing the same numbers. About 1923, the 11000 system stabilizes until the end, the highest known Puritan release in the pop series being 11819 in 1929. By then the parallel pop release program on Paramount had already concluded.
caption: "Sweet Genevieve" by Frank Joy
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