Record has no cat# on the labels, 500 CG1 / 500 CG2 are matrix numbers. Anyway record was unofficially listed as Gilt-Edge #501 in later distributor ads.
BB Oct 21, 1944 page 17 - "Harlem" Hit Parade (week ending Oct 12, 1944) - "I Wonder"
Not long ago, the release date of this record was changed to May 1945, although I had commented before on a chart entry in November 1944 and a Billboard review in January 1945.
Today, on further research I have found out that the record entered Billboard's "Harlem" Hit Parade even earlier, in the week ending Oct 12, 1944, see the Billboard issue linked in the notes. So I have corrected the release month to September 1944, see also RYM with the same date.
I have the picture disc, a flexible 10" with the 2 songs, Gant has a raised hand on the "Cecil Boogie" side. Very thin, orange disc, "The 20th Century Miracle Record" "Flexible, Unbreakable"
(500 CG 11) and (500 CG 12) Gilt Edge, 500 N Western Ave, Los Angeles, CA.
I am just now going through my late mother's collection of 78's from the 30's, 40's and 50's. This record was inside of a Brunswick boogie woogie piano album, B-1005. I know this thread is from 2014, but I just started searching the details on these records and I just joined this site. I am going to try to get this collection of several hundred records up on Youtube. I don't know how to add a photo at this time, but thanks for the info from all the other commenters.
Label images of standard issue added, with the said matrix numbers but no specific catalog number. As Gant's name is tagged there "the G.I. Sing-sation", sounding like the record was already a hit then, it was possibly not the very first label design.
I can confirm your observation. I have images of the picture disc, too (which apparently was not a preview release but a special edition because "I Wonder" had become possibly the most popular record of any independent record company in the 1940s), and I have different label images of the standard issue (with at least two differently colored designs). None of them has the cat# 501. The standard issue has the same matrix numbers on the labels as the picture disc but without the F: 500 CG1 for "I Wonder" and 500 CG2 for "Cecil Boogie" (CG apparently standing for Cecil Gant).
I may just add that Cecil Gant had recorded "I Wonder" some months before (around June 1944) for the small West coast label, Bronze Record and Recording Co., Los Angeles. The Gilt-Edge re-recording was made in the garage of producer Cliff McDonald, who sold the finished product to Gilt-Edge. It entered Billboard's "Harlem" Hit Parade in the week ending Nov 2, 1944, climbing up to #1 on Feb 17, 1945 in the now called Most Played Juke Box Race Records chart (always listed as on Gilt Edge 500 CG1). A Billboard review was not provided before Jan 6, 1945, complaining the poor sound quality and remarking, "sounds more like something picked up with a machine hidden under a table in a smoky back room".
I have photos of both sides of a picture disc issued by Gilt-Edge, probably as a promo item. If features Pvt. Cecil Gant doing these two selections, both apparently his own compositions, incidentally. There is nothing on the disc that is discernibly an issue number, but there are matrix numbers that I now recognize as the series assigned to Cecil Gant. I read them as 500-CG-1F and 500-CG-2F, probably his first two recordings for Gilt-Edge.I wonder if it became Gilt-Edge 501.