Century Record Manufacturing Company was an American custom recording company and record manufacturer. It was founded in 1958 as a division of the former Keysor-Century Corporation, a California corporation based in Saugus. Century Record Manufacturing Company served the music education market (mostly at the collegiate and high school levels) and the music groups of the U.S. Armed Forces, in addition to producing professional recordings. The company went out of business in 1976. Mark Records and Silver Crest Records are comparable labels.
James Bernard ("Bud") Keysor, Jr. (1906–2000) founded Keysor-Century Corporation of Saugus in 1954 and was a partner in Century Record Manufacturing Company. He was also the Corporate Secretary of the company. At its founding, the company was a manufacturer of polyvinyl chloride resins. RCA Records was Keysor-Century's biggest customer. Jim Keysor (1927–2014), son of James Bernard Keysor, Jr., later served as President of Keysor-Century Record Company.
Keysor-Century Corporation was the parent company of Century Record Manufacturing Company. Its executives included Howard Lydell Hill (1940–2001), who served as president from 1981 until his death in 2001; Robert Keysor, Hill's brother-in-law and third son of Bud Keysor, succeeded Hill in 1971 as president. In 2002, Keysor-Century was producing PVC resins for the flooring and packaging markets in Saugus, California. The firm also operated a compounding facility in Newark, Delaware.
The company had been a pioneer in creating PVC resins for the record industry. Keysor-Century produced (i) a black vinyl record compound called KC-B450 in the form of opaque black free flowing pellets (for standard records), (ii) a widely popular translucent red, yellow, green, and blue KC-B460/470 series, and later, (iii) an audiophile grade called KC-600. In two audiophile mass market tests by A&M, Keysor-Century's KC-600 was used in the initial production of Supertramp's L.P., ...Famous Last Words... (fall 1982), and in the initial production (800,000 disks) of Styx's L.P., Kilroy Was Here (February 1983).
In 1982, Keysor-Century had added plants in Delaware City, Delaware, and Ajax, Ontario. At that time, Keysor-Century, Lenahan Chemicals (Murfreesboro, Tennessee), and Tenneco Chemical, Inc., (Burlington & Flemington, New Jersey) were the top three American bulk resin suppliers for records. In 1985, Keysor-Century claimed to be the largest U.S. producer of record compound and its customers included Warner, RCA, Capitol, Motown, CBS, Musical Heritage Society, Nonesuch, Deutsche Grammophon, and A&M.
Outside of the record industry, Keysor-Century was also a top-twenty supplier to general industry. It also supplied bulk resin for injection molding applications in the production of cassette shells and the like, used by the industry as well as its own tape duplicating service.
The Keysor-Century Corporation submitted a voluntary petition on March 19, 2002, in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in San Fernando, California for protection from creditors under Chapter 11, and after 21 months (in December, just before Christmas 2003), it filed to liquidate under Chapter 7. In June 2004 Keysor-Century pleaded guilty to several felony charges by the EPA in connection to hazardous substances.
In 2006, the EPA designated the Keysor-Century plant as a Superfund site.
In 2000, Keysor-Century was the subject of a probe by the EPA in connection over dumping of toxic wastewater into the Santa Clara River. Concern over carcinogens had been an ongoing matter, as evidenced by a 1978 EPA "Survey of Vinyl Chloride Levels in the Vicinity of Keysor-Century, Saugus, California."
Century Records was very much a family business. Bud Keysor, the father, and his wife, had three sons and two daughters: James Brain Keysor (1927–2014), Richard "Dick" Keysor, Robert Keysor, Carolyne Pearl Keysor, and Katherine Keysor. The three sons became involved in the business and moved up to significant areas of responsibility as production manager, sales manager, and finance manager.