Little Wonders were produced by the Little Wonder Record Company, 2036, Woolworth Building[?], New York, New York. The general manager was Henry Watterson. Artists are uncredited on Little Wonder labels, which simply give recordings such general attributions as "band", "tenor", "quartette", or "accordion solo".
Little Wonder exclusively produced lateral-cut single sided 5½ inch analogue disc records. The records contained only about 1 minute to 1½ minutes of music. They retailed for ten cents each, some of the lowest priced recordings availible. The audio fidelity is average to slightly above average for the time, with rather narrow grooves (best played with a smaller stylus than contemporary discs).
The small size of the discs (together with the chrubic face on one version of the label) has led some record collectors to incorrectly assume that Little Wonders were made as children's records; they were actually made for the general audience looking for low-priced recordings. The records sold well, and were stocked by many 5 & 10 cent department store chains of the time.
All Little Wonders are made by artists who recorded for Columbia, often longer versions of the same tunes the same day. One account says that recording artists would visit the Little Wonder recording studio on one floor of the Woolworth building before or after making records at the Columbia studio on a higher floor of the same building.
There has been some speculation that the masters for Little Wonders were actually warm-up balance checks recorded as tests at the begining of Columbia recording sessions; if such tests happened to record a usuable performance, they would be leased to Little Wonder. The exact situation seems to not to be definatively documented.
Among the noted artists of the day whose performances were released (uncredited) on Little Wonder include Al Jolson, Wilber Sweatman, Billy Murray[?], and the Louisiana Five[?].
External Link
- Little Wonder Records (http://www.littlewonderrecords.com/)