Canadian Music Sales Corporation

Canadian Music Sales Corporation

Canadian Music Sales Corporation (after June 1977 Boddington Music Publishing Ltd). Established in the late 1920s in Toronto as the Canadian affiliate of Warner Brothers' Music Sales Corp (USA), which controlled music from the newly invented sound movies. This music was distributed in Canada by syndicated stores (eg, the Kresge and Metropolitan chains). In the financial crisis of 1929 Warner Brothers relinquished control and within a few months Canadian Music Sales went bankrupt. A Toronto chartered accountant, William St Clair Low, took over the business as a trustee paid by Warner Brothers. In 1934, having liquidated all debts, he assumed full control of the company and remained its manager until 1947. He was succeeded by his brother T. (Thomas) St Clair Low, who had joined Canadian Music Sales in 1933 and retired in 1971. The latter sold the corporation in 1971 to Terry Regan who remained its manager until 1977, by which time it was under the ownership of a holding company.

In the early 1940s Canadian Music Sales purchased (and subsequently expanded) the Anglo-Canadian Music Co Ltd catalogue, which included a large amount of church music. The resulting enlarged choral catalogue included folksong arrangements by Leslie Bell and Howard Cable and church music. Canadian Music Sales also published several band arrangements by Maurice DeCelles and country music by Hal 'Lone Pine' Breau, Stu Davis, Earl Heywood, Don Messer, and the young Hank Snow and distributed publications of such US companies as Warner Brothers (Hollywood), Alfred Music (Port Washington, NY), Rubank (Miami), and Beacon Music, Columbia Pictures Music, Harms Inc, Pietro Deiro Publications, Shapiro, Bernstein & Co, and M. Whitmark and Sons (all of New York).

Canadian Music Sales entered the recording field in the 1930s as the Canadian distributor of Columbia Records of Canada. In 1950 it established its own label, Dominion; recorded the country and folk performers Isidore Soucy, Stompin' Tom Connors, Earl Heywood, and others; and became the Canadian distributor of the Music Minus One instructional series, the Dewolfe library of sound effects, and the US folk, jazz, and blues labels Arhoolie and Yazoo.