The Beltona label dated back to 1922, and was formed by the Murdoch Trading Company, of London. It was taken over by Edison Bell in 1927, and became the property of Decca in 1933 when that company acquired Edison Bell (Brian Rust, 'The American Record Label Book'). It was reactivated after the war and became primarily an outlet for Scottish material, though in 1956 it began to mix Irish material in with the Scottish. Early 45 rpm records had a blue label; the example shown above dates from c.1955. In 1956 a tartan-patterned label replaced the old blue one, with a red tartan for Scottish product (4) and a green one for Irish (3). Early records had the typical Decca three-pronged push-out centres (1, 2). Singles were numbered in the 2000s: Scottish ones were prefixed 'BL', Irish ones 'BE'. EPs were numbered in the 0s (starting at 1); again there were different prefixes for the different sources, 'SEP' for Scottish, 'IEP' for Irish.
In 1965 Decca began to use Rex (q.v.) as its outlet for Irish records, leaving Beltona to deal with the Scottish ones. In the '70s Beltona appears to have concentrated on issuing albums, and only the few singles that are listed below were released during that decade. It issued its last single, the Jim MacLeod one pictured above (7), in May 1974, but continued to release albums for some time afterwards. The company sleeve (10) dates from 1959; the blue-labelled single was in the brown sleeve shown (9) when it reached me, but may have picked it up on the way.
Copyright 2006 Robert Lyons.