49th State served as a successor to Bell Records Honolulu, which released Hawaiian music between 1944 and 1950.
[6] Cord International purchased the rights to The 49th State Hawaii record company and has restored and re-mastered many of the LPs released between 1948 and 1958.
[7] According to the May 18, 2015 obituary of Michael Cord: "In the 1980s, he noticed that many of the important old-time Hawaiian record labels had gone out of business and their releases were out of print.
The purchase was made in order to restore, remaster, and re-release the recordings, which by that point were out of print and in poor quality.
Cord was quoted in the obituary, stating: "There was lots of noise-hisses and pops- and we wanted the listening experience to be just like it was when these recordings were brand new- only better.