Decca Records: Encyclopedia II - Decca Records - The label

Decca Records - The label

Within years of its founding by former stockbroker Edward Lewis, Decca Records Ltd was the second largest record label in the world, calling itself "The Supreme Record Company". The term "Decca" was never determined to signify a specific meaning or name, but some theories cite the opening musical notes of a Beethoven symphony: "D-E-C-C-A". A cameo of Beethoven graced the British Decca label for many years.

Decca Records - Popular music

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, 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 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 affilation 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.

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. 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.

Ironically, the turning down of The Beatles, led indirectly to the signing 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.

Other artists released on British Decca or through one of its licensed or subsidiary labels at at least one point during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s include Wishbone Ash,Bill Haley , Pat Boone, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Bloodstone, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Link Wray, Engelbert Humperdinck, Buddy Holly, The Crickets, Tommy Steele, Terry Dene, The Everly Brothers, Bobby Darin, Ricky Nelson, Lord Rockingham's XI, Duane Eddy, The Coasters, Ray Charles, The Drifters, Eddie Cochran, Del Shannon, Roy Orbison, Leapy Lee, The Crystals, The Ronettes, Ike and Tina Turner, The Bachelors, The Big Three, Dave Berry, Anthony Newley, The Zombies, Billy Fury, Eden Kane, Jess Conrad, Bobby Vee, Brenda Lee, Tom Jones, Glass Harp, The Who, David Bowie, The Fortunes, Kathy Kirby, Jet Harris & Tony Meehan, Louise Cordet, Heinz, Marc Bolan, The Move, Graham Bond, John Mayall, Rod Stewart, The Nashville Teens, Paul & Barry Ryan, The Animals, The Tornados, Unit Four Plus Two, The Caravelles, Bern Elliott & The Fenmen, The Mojos, Them, Los Bravos, Lulu, The Small Faces, Twinkle, The Alan Price Set, Warm Sounds, Procol Harum, Amen Corner, Denny Laine, Frijid Pink, Brotherhood Of Man, Honeybus, Timebox, Ten Years After, Cat Stevens, White Plains, The Rattles, The Flower Pot Men, Marmalade, Junior Campbell, Camel, Caravan, Giles, Giles and Fripp, Peter Skellern, Matthews' Southern Comfort and Genesis.

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.

Decca Records - 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 (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 Long-Playing record was launched in the USA by Columbia Records (not connected with the British company of the same name). 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.

Culshaw, who joined Decca in 1946 in a junior post, rapidly became a senior producer of classical recordings. He revolutionised recording – 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.

Decca Records - Later history

PolyGram acquired the remains of Decca U.K. within days of Sir Edward Lewis's death in January 1980.

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 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.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The label", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki