How To Date RITE Owned Labels

Go To Discography of all RITE Owned Labels in our Database
~ Go To 1950 Kentucky / Gateway Business Letter To Carl Burkhardt ~

Top Tunes - Click To Enlarge
Gateway Parade Of Hits - Click To Enlarge
Gateway Top Tune - Click To Enlarge
Kentucky - Click To Enlarge

Carl Burkhardt formed Queen City Records in 1950 with the goal of making popular music available to consumers at a lower price. He hired local musicians and singers to cover the hits of the day and issued the covers on his three main labels - Big 4 Hits, Kentucky and Gateway. While most records were at that time sold for $.89 to $1.29, his sold for only $.49 including Big 4 Hits which gave the consumer 4 songs instead of the normal 2 songs. This was very innovative in the early 1950's. Many issues listed the artist's real names and others used psudonyms they made up.

In the early days, Gateway was also known as Queen City Plastics. Most early releases on Big 4 Hits, Kentucky and Gateway, both 78 and 45 rpm, were pressed by Shaw Record Processing, also located in Cincinnati. Shaw pressings are easily identified by the Shaw account number assigned to Gateway (6) found in the deadwax after the matrix number.

In early 1957 Burkhart sold RITE's discount labels to an outfit in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It appears that Rite continued to press all the records for the new owners. The Philadelphia owners occasionally issued the same exact records with other labels names that were less often used such as; Worthmore, Music Please, hep, Deresco, Super-Value, Coast to Coast and Four.

Rite Labels and Label Numbers Issued:

Big 4 Hits - 10 to 236+ (225 listings)
    Moved to Philadelphia, PA at about release # 212
Gateway Top Tune - 1050 to 1253 (204 listings)
    Moved to Philadelphia, PA at about release # 1212
Gateway Extended Play - 136 to 163 (17 listings)
    These releases are numerically part of the Big 4 Hits listing
Gateway Series (51 listings):
    1000 Series - Pop
    3000 Series - Hillbilly
    4000 Series - Tunes For Tots
    5000 Series - Race
    9000 Series - Polka, Dixieland, R&R, C&W and more.
Kentucky - 501 to 613+ (115 listings)
Arc - Numerous Series (29 listings)
Alcar - 207 to 1503 (32 listings):
    200 Series in mid-1960's
    501 to 619+ Sacred Series
    1500 Pop Series

Chronological listing of Rite In-House Releases by Matrix Numbers from 6161 to 9444
    Note: This is a completely different numbering series than the CP (Custom Pressing) series.


Gateway - Click To Enlarge
Big 4 Hits - Click To Enlarge
Gateway - Click To Enlarge
Worthmore - Click To Enlarge

Dating Guide For Rite House Labels Matrix / Master Numbers:

1952 - 7000 to 8100
1953 - 8101 to 8356
1954 - 8357 to 8596
1955 - 8597 to 8888
1956 - 8889 to 9107
1957 - 9108 to 9276
1958 - 9277 to 9372
1959 - 9373 to 9402


Big 4 Hits - Click To Enlarge
Gateway EP - Click To Enlarge
Alcar - Click To Enlarge
Arc - Click To Enlarge
Super-Value - Click To Enlarge
Worthmore - Click To Enlarge
Deresco - Click To Enlarge
Four - Click To Enlarge