Decca Records
Decca Records is a
British record label established in
1929.
The name "Decca" dates back to a portable
gramophone called the "Decca Dulcephone" patented in 1914 by musical instrument makers Barnett Samuel and Sons. That company was eventually renamed to the The Decca Gramophone Co. Ltd. and then sold to former stockbroker
Edward Lewis in 1929. Within years Decca Records Ltd. was the second largest record label in the world, calling itself "The Supreme Record Company". The name "Decca" was coined by Wilfred S. Samuel by merging the word "
Mecca" with the initial D of their logo "Dulcet" or their trademark "Dulcephone."
[Shepherd]Popular music
For a list of artists using the Decca records label see List of Artists under the Decca Records label.Decca bought out the bankrupt UK branch of
Brunswick Records in 1932, which added such stars as
Bing Crosby and
Al Jolson to its roster. Decca also bought out the
Melotone and
Edison Bell record companies. By 1939, Decca was the only record company in UK aside from
EMI.
In 1934 a
US branch of Decca was launched, which quickly became a major player in the depressed American record market thanks to its roster of popular artists, particularly Bing Crosby, and the shrewd management of former US Brunswick General Manager
Jack Kapp.
Artists signed to Decca in the 1930s and 1940s included
Louis Armstrong,
Count Basie,
Billie Holiday, the
Andrews Sisters,
Ted Lewis,
Judy Garland, The
Mills Brothers,
Billy Cotton,
Guy Lombardo,
Chick Webb,
Bob Crosby,
Jimmy Dorsey,
Connee Boswell and
Jack Hylton.
In 1942, Decca released "
White Christmas" by
Bing Crosby, which became the best-selling single of all time.
From the late 1940s on, the US arm of Decca had a sizable roster of
Country artists, including
Kitty Wells,
Johnny Wright,
Ernest Tubb,
Webb Pierce,
Bobbejaan Schoepen, and
Red Foley. In the late 1950s,
Patsy Cline was signed to the US Decca label from
4 Star Records. As part of a leasing deal Patsy's contract was owned by 4 Star though she recorded for Decca as part of this deal she recorded an album but saw little money, in 1960 she signed with Decca outright and released two more albums and numerous singles while she was alive and several more albums and singles produced after her untimely death in a 1963 plane crash.
Loretta Lynn signed to Decca in the early
1960s and remained with the label for the next several decades. Owen Bradley was the A&R man for all of these artists.
The American
RCA label severed its longtime affiliation with
EMI's
His Master's Voice (
HMV) label in 1957, which allowed British Decca to market and distribute
Elvis Presley's recordings in the UK on the
RCA and RCA Victor labels
British Decca had several missed opportunies. In 1960, they refused to release "
Tell Laura I Love Her" by
Ray Peterson and even destroyed thousands of copies of the single. A
cover version by
Ricky Valance was released by EMI on the
Columbia label which was #1 on the British charts for three weeks. In 1962 British Decca executive
Dick Rowe turned down a chance to record a young group from
Liverpool called
The Beatles in favor of local beat combo
Brian Poole and the Tremeloes. Dick Rowe, head of the pop division, said of the Beatles, "We don't like their sound, and ‘guitar music' is on the way out". (see
The Decca audition) In retrospect this was a historic mistake, and
the Decca audition has subsequently accumulated significant legend. Later refusals of note include
The Yardbirds and
Manfred Mann. However they earlier accepted another Merseyside singer,
Billy Fury.
Ironically, the turning down of The Beatles, led indirectly to the signing of one of Decca's biggest Sixties artists,
The Rolling Stones. Dick Rowe was judging a talent contest with
George Harrison, and Harrison mentioned to him that he should take a look at The Stones, whom he had just seen live for the first time a couple of weeks before. Rowe saw the Stones, and quickly signed them to a contract.
British Decca lost a key source for American records when
Atlantic Records switched British distribution to
Polydor Records in 1966 in order for Atlantic to gain access to British recording artists which they didn't have under Decca distribution.
The 1970s were disastrous for Decca. The Rolling Stones left the label in 1970, and other artists followed. Decca's deals with numerous other record labels began to fall apart;
RCA abandoned Decca to set up its own UK office in 1971.
The Moody Blues were the only international rock act that remained on the label. Although Decca had set up the first of the British "progressive" labels,
Deram Records, in 1966, by the time the punk era set in 1977, Decca had become known primarily as a classical label which had only sporadic pop success with such acts as
John Miles, novelty creation
Father Abraham and the Smurfs, and productions by longtime Decca associate
Jonathan King. Decca sadly became a label of last resort, dependent on re-release of its back catalogue. Contemporary signings such as the pre-stardom
Adam Ant and
Slaughter & The Dogs were firmly second division and second rate when compared to likes of
PolyGram,
CBS, EMI, and newcomer
Virgin's rosters of hitmakers.
Classical music
In classical music, Decca had a long way to go from its modest beginnings to catching up with the established
HMV and
Columbia labels (later merged as
EMI). Decca's emergence as a major classical label may be attributed to three concurrent events: the development of the FFRR technique, the introduction of the
long-playing record, and the recruitment of
John Culshaw to Decca's London office.
FFRR
FFRR (full frequency range recording) was a spin-off of Decca's technical work during the
Second World War in the field of
radar, and enabled a greatly enhanced frequency range (high and low notes) to be captured on recordings. Critics regularly commented on the startling realism of the new Decca recordings. The Decca recording engineers Arthur Haddy and
Kenneth Wilkinson developed in 1954 the famous
Decca tree, a stereo main microphone recording system for big orchestras.
The LP
The Long-Playing record was launched in the USA by
Columbia Records (not connected with the British company of the same name at the time). It enabled recordings to play for up to half an hour without a break, compared with the three minutes playing time of the existing records. The new records were made of vinyl (the old discs were made of shellac), which enabled the FFRR recordings to be transferred to disc very realistically. In the UK Decca took up the LP promptly and enthusiastically, giving the company an enormous advantage over EMI, which for some years tried to stick exclusively to the old format, thereby forfeiting competitive advantage to Decca, both artistically and financally.
John Culshaw
John Culshaw, who joined Decca in 1946 in a junior post, rapidly became a senior producer of classical recordings. He revolutionised recording â€" of opera, in particular. Hitherto, the practice had been to put microphones in front of the performers and simply record what they performed. Culshaw was determined to make recordings that would be ‘a theatre of the mind', making the listener's experience at home not second best to being in the opera house, but a wholly different experience. To that end he got the singers to move about in the studio as they would onstage, used discreet sound effects and different acoustics, and recorded in long continuous takes. His skill, coupled with the incomparable Decca engineering, took Decca into the first flight of recording companies. His pioneering recording (begun in 1958) of
Wagner's
Der Ring des Nibelungen conducted by
Georg Solti was a huge artistic and commercial success (to the chagrin of other companies). In the wake of Decca's lead, artists such as
Herbert von Karajan,
Joan Sutherland and later
Luciano Pavarotti were keen to join the company's roster.
In the 1970s, after Culshaw had left the company, the classical division began to lose its way, rather as the popular music side of the company did at the same time. By the start of the present century, Decca was making comparatively few major classical recordings, and its roster of stars was much diminished, with
Cecilia Bartoli being perhaps the best-known. Its back catalogue, however, remains one of the glories of classical music. The Solti
Ring was voted best recording of all time by readers of the influential magazine
The Gramophone.
Later history
PolyGram acquired the remains of Decca U.K. within days of Sir Edward Lewis's death in January 1980.
|
1960s American Decca logo with the harlequin holding a globe which was American Decca's trademark. This was similar to the first MCA Records logo introduced in the United Kingdom in 1968. |
The American branch of Decca functioned separately for many years as it was sold off during
World War II; it bought
Universal Pictures in 1952, and eventually merged with
MCA in 1962, becoming a subsidiary company under MCA. Because MCA held the rights to the name Decca in the US and Canada, British Decca sold its records in the United States and Canada under the label
London Records. In Britain, London Records became a mighty catch-all licensing label for foreign recordings from the nascent post-WW II American independent and semi-major labels such as Cadence, ABC-Paramount, and Liberty.Conversely, US Decca recordings were marketed in Britain by UK Decca on
Brunswick Records and
Coral Records through 1968 when it began using the
MCA Records imprint. The Decca name was dropped by MCA in 1973 in favor of the
MCA Records label. The final pop hit for American Decca was "
Drift Away" by
Dobie Gray in
1973. The Decca label is currently in use by
Universal Music Group worldwide; this is possible because
Universal Studios (which officially dropped the MCA name after the
Seagram buyout in 1997) acquired PolyGram, British Decca's parent company in 1998, thus consolidating Decca trademark ownership.
Today, Decca is a leading label for both classical music and Broadway scores; its most recent hit was
Wicked (2003), which reached #140 on the
Billboard Top 200 Albums chart. It is also the parent label of
Point Music, a
progressive music label.
*
Point Music*
List of Artists under the Decca Records label.
*
List of record labels{{cite web
url=http://www.concentric.net/~oakapple/gasdisc/decca_meaning.htm | title=Explanation of the Word "Decca" | last=Shepherd | first=Marc | work=A Gilbert and Sullivan Discography | accessdate=2006-03-28 | year=2001* Official site
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