The Winner

The Winner Records was a United Kingdom-based record label from 1912 onwards. Its records were manufactured by the Edison Bell Record Works, London. This company, founded by James Hough, had originated in the early 1890s as an importer of Edison and Columbia phonograph cylinders; from 1898 Hough had also made cylinder records, initially using a separate company, Edisonia. When Edison set up his own European operation in 1904, the import franchise was withdrawn, but the name Edison Bell remained in use. From 1909 the official name of Edison-Bell was J. E. Hough Ltd.

Winner Records were designed to offer well-recorded and pressed gramophone records at a budget price. Winner records, with black or red labels, were mostly of a popular music type, although they included some items of musical distinction, such as early recordings by John Barbirolli, then a child-prodigy performer on the violoncello, and nearly all of the discography of Marie Novello, one of the last students of Theodor Lesc… More