Thanks, that's very interesting information. I've now updated the release date accordingly.
In the past, I have noticed a case or two, I think in connection with ethnic records or smaller labels, where Billboard seems to report a record under Advance Releases that probably had come out significantly earlier. In this case, it seems the label itself assigned a catalog number to a record and then sat on it for an entire two years. Wonder why they'd do that. Did they think in 1947, no, this won't sell right now, but then in late 1949, Leon Beaver And His Kennedy Cowboys suddenly were in great demand, and so they took this record off their shelves and threw it onto the market?
xiphophilos: Rich-R-Tone reputedly did NOT release records in numerical sequence, especially in the 400 series. Release dates are all over the place. Let me give you just one of an enormous number of examples:
RRT 409 by Buffalo Johnson was released (according to the pressing plant files) 1947/12/29 - Billboard puts it in the 1948/08/07 Advance Record Releases section. Was it held back? Did Billboard just receive the information later?
Then, we look back one number at 408 - the plant files show a release date of 1949/07/12!!
So yeah...there's enough to confuse even the brightest scholar.
Quite irritating for someone who, like yours truly, has spent some 9-10 years working on the best possible approximation of a Rich-R-Tone discography ;)
Then I wonder why Rich-R-Tone 420 is announced in
Billboard, Dec. 27, 1947, page 31: Advance Record Releases, Folk. Shouldn't 416 have come out at the same time or a bit earlier? Or did Rich-R-Tone release its records out of numerical sequence?