Decca Records
Encyclopedia
Decca Records began as a British record label
established in 1929 by Edward Lewis
. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II
, the link with the British company was broken for several decades.
The British label was renowned for its development of recording methods, while the American company developed the concept of cast albums in the musical genre. Both wings are now part of the Universal Music Group
which is owned by Vivendi
, a media conglomerate
headquartered in France
. The American Decca label was the foundation label which evolved into UMG.
called the "Decca Dulcephone" patented in 1914 by musical instrument makers Barnett Samuel and Sons. That company was eventually renamed 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." Samuel, a linguist, chose "Decca" as a brand name as it was easy to pronounce in most languages.
Decca bought the UK branch of Brunswick Records
and continued to run it under that name.
In the 1950s the American Decca studios were located in the Pythian Temple
in New York City.
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. In late 1934, a United States branch of Decca was launched. In establishing the American unit, the founders bought the former Brunswick Records pressing plants in New York City and Muskegon, Michigan
, which were shut down in 1931, from Warner Bros.
in exchange for a financial interest in the new label. Decca became a major player in the depressed American record market thanks to its roster of popular artists, particularly Bing Crosby, the shrewd management of former US Brunswick General Manager Jack Kapp
, and the decision to price Decca at 35 cents. The following year, the pressing and Canadian distribution of US Decca records was licensed to Compo Company
Ltd. in Lachine, Quebec
, a breakaway and rival of Berliner Gram-o-phone
Co. of Montreal, Quebec
. (Compo was acquired by Decca in 1951 although its Apex
label continued in production for the next two decades.) By 1939, Decca and EMI
were the only record companies in the UK. American Decca acquired Brunswick Records
and its sublabel Vocalion Records
in 1941 from Warner Bros.
which had a financial interest in Decca.
In 1939, British Decca head Edward Lewis
sold his interest in American Decca because of World War II
. In 1942, stock in American Decca began trading on the New York Stock Exchange
as Decca Records Inc. Therefore, the two Deccas became separate companies and remained so until American Decca's parent company bought British Decca's parent company in 1998. Artists signed to American Decca in the 1930s and 1940s included Louis Armstrong
, Charlie Kunz
, Count Basie
, Jimmie Lunceford
, Jane Froman
, The Boswell Sisters
, Billie Holiday
, The Andrews Sisters, Ted Lewis
, Judy Garland
, The Mills Brothers
, Billy Cotton
, Guy Lombardo
, Chick Webb
, Louis Jordan
(the #1 R&B artist of the 1940s), Bob Crosby
, The Ink Spots
, Dorsey Brothers (and subsequently Jimmy Dorsey
after the brothers split), Connee Boswell
and Jack Hylton
, Victor Young
, Earl Hines
, Claude Hopkins
, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe
- the original 'soul sister' of recorded music.
In 1940, American Decca released the first album of songs from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz
. However, it was not a soundtrack album but a cover version featuring only Judy Garland
from the film, with other roles taken by the Ken Darby Singers.
In 1942, American Decca released the first recording of "White Christmas
" by Bing Crosby
. He recorded another version of the song in 1947 for Decca; to this day, Crosby's recording of "White Christmas" for Decca remains the best-selling single worldwide of all time. In 1943, American Decca ushered in the age of the original cast album in the United States, when they released an album set of nearly all the songs from Rodgers and Hammerstein
's Oklahoma!
, performed by the same cast who appeared in the show on Broadway
, and using the show's orchestra, conductor, chorus, and musical and vocal arrangements. The enormous success of this album was followed by original cast recordings of Carousel
and Irving Berlin
's Annie Get Your Gun
, both featuring members of the original casts of the shows and utilising those shows' vocal and choral arrangements. Because of the technical restrictions of recording on 78 rpm records, none of these scores were recorded totally complete; they were shorter than cast albums made after LPs
were introduced. But Decca had made history by recording Broadway
musical
s, and the influence of these releases in the recording of theatrical shows in the U.S continues to this day - in Decca's home country, the UK original cast albums had been a fixture for years. Columbia Records
followed with musical theatre albums, starting with the 1946 revival of Show Boat
. In 1947, RCA Victor released the original cast album of Brigadoon. By the 1950s, many recording companies were releasing Broadway show albums recorded by their original casts, and the recording of original cast albums had become standard practice whenever a new show opened.
Decca throughout the 1930s and early-to-mid 1940s was a leading label of blues and jump with such best selling artists as Sister Rosetta Tharpe
and Louis Jordan
(who was the best selling R&B artist of the 1940s). In 1954, American Decca released "Rock Around the Clock
" by Bill Haley & His Comets
. Produced by Milt Gabler
, the recording was initially only moderately successful, but when it was used as the theme song for the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle
, it became the first international rock and roll
hit, and the first such recording to go to No. 1 on the American musical charts. According to the Guinness Book of Records, it went on to sell 25 million copies, returning to the US and UK charts several times between 1955 and 1974.
American Decca embraced the new post-war record formats adopting the LP in 1949 and the 45 rpm record around a year later while continuing to sell 78s. During the 1950s, American Decca released a number of soundtrack recordings of popular motion pictures, notably Mike Todd
's production of Around the World in Eighty Days
(1956) with the music of veteran film composer Victor Young
. Since Decca had access to the stereophonic tracks of the Oscar-winning film, they quickly released a stereo version in 1958. Because American Decca bought Universal Pictures
in 1952, many of these soundtrack albums were of films released by what was then called Universal-International Pictures.
In 1961, American Decca released the soundtrack album of Flower Drum Song
, Universal Pictures's film version of the 1958 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. In a reversal of the usual situation, in which American Decca had released original Broadway cast albums of three Rodgers and Hammerstein shows, this was the only film soundtrack album of a Rodgers and Hammerstein show ever released by Decca, while the Broadway cast album had been released by Columbia Masterworks.
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 opportunities. 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, and it went to #1 on the British charts for three weeks. In 1962, British Decca executive Dick Rowe
turned down a chance to record The Beatles
in favour of local beat combo Brian Poole and the Tremeloes
. Dick Rowe, head of the pop division, famously told The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein: "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. Other refusals of note include The Yardbirds
and Manfred Mann
. However Decca had earlier accepted London born pioneer of rock'n'roll singer Terry Dene
, who was later known as the British Elvis Presley and another Merseyside singer, Billy Fury
. Delia Derbyshire
, an early pioneer of Electronic Music and one of the founders of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was refused an interview for a sound engineer's job because Decca would not employ a woman in such a post.
The turning down of The Beatles
led indirectly to the signing of one of Decca's biggest 1960s 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 earlier. Rowe saw the Stones, and quickly signed them to a contract.
Staff producer Hugh Mendl
(1919–2008) worked for Decca for over 40 years and played a significant role in its success in the popular field from the 1950s to the late 1970s. His first major production credit was pianist Winifred Atwell
and he produced "Rock Island Line", the breakthrough skiffle
hit for Lonnie Donegan
and he is credited as the first executive to spot the potential of singer-actor Tommy Steele
. Mendl's other productions included the first album by humorist Ivor Cutler
, Who Tore Your Trousers? (1961), Frankie Howerd
at The Establishment (1963), a series of recordings with Paddy Roberts
(best known for "The Ballad of Bethnal Green"), numerous "original cast" and soundtrack albums including Oh! What a Lovely War
and even an LP record of the 1966 Le Mans
24-hour race, inspired by his life-long passion for motor-racing. Mendl was a driving force in the establishment of Decca's progressive Deram label, most notably as the executive producer of The Moody Blues
' groundbreaking 1967 LP Days of Future Passed
. He is credited with battling against Decca's notorious parsimonious treatment of their artists, ensuring that the Moody Blues had the time and resources to develop beyond their beat group origins into progressive rock, and he also used profits for pop sales to cross-subsidise recordings by avant garde jazz artists like John Surman
.
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 did not have under Decca distribution.
, for instance, 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. The company's fortunes declined slightly during the 1970s, and it had few major commercial successes; among those were Dana's
1970 two-million selling single, "All Kinds of Everything
", issued on their subsidiary label, Rex Records
.
Although Decca had set up the first of the British "progressive" labels, Deram Records
, in 1966, with such stars as Cat Stevens and The Moody Blues, by the time the punk era set in 1977, Decca had pop success with such acts as John Miles
, novelty creation Father Abraham
and The Smurfs
, and productions by longtime Decca associate Jonathan King
. King had a hit - "Everyone's Gone to the Moon
" - on Decca whilst he was an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge, Sir Edward's Alma Mater; they became good friends and Lewis adopted King as his "mascot", allowing him to run the label in all but name twice for long periods of time. Decca became dependent on re-releases from its back catalogue. Contemporary signings, such as Slaughter & The Dogs
and the pre-stardom Adam and the Ants
(whose sole single with Decca, Young Parisians, would later be a UK Top 10 hit on the back of the band's success at CBS
) were second division when compared to likes of PolyGram
, CBS
, EMI, and newcomer Virgin's
rosters of hitmakers.
's A Christmas Carol
starring Ronald Colman
as Scrooge, and a recording of the Christmas chapter from The Pickwick Papers
read by Charles Laughton
. These two separate 78-RPM albums were later combined onto one LP. Other spoken word albums included Lullaby of Christmas, narrated by Gregory Peck
, a twenty minute version of Moby Dick, with Charles Laughton as Captain Ahab, and The Littlest Angel, narrated by Loretta Young
. The company also released on LP, in 1968, the most complete version of Man of La Mancha
ever put on vinyl records, a 2-LP album featuring most of the dialogue and all of the songs, performed by the show's original London cast. Keith Michell
starred as Don Quixote and Cervantes, and Joan Diener
was Aldonza/Dulcinea.
In 1934, Jack Kapp established a country & western line for the new Decca label by signing Frank Luther
, Sons of the Pioneers
, Stuart Hamblen
, The Ranch Boys, and other popular acts based in both New York and Los Angeles. Louisiana singer/composer Jimmie Davis
began recording for Decca the same year, joined by western vocalists Jimmy Wakely
and Roy Rogers
in 1940.
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
, Wilburn Brothers, 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. The Wilburn Brothers
were ultimately signed to a lifetime contract with Decca. Doyle Wilburn of the Wilburn Brothers obtained a recording contract for Loretta Lynn
who 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. Decca quickly became the main rival of RCA Records
as the top label for American country music by the early 1950s and remained so for decades.
Decca's country music branch was revived in 1994, with Dawn Sears
being the first act signed to the newly-reformed label. Other artists signed to the label would include Rhett Akins
, Gary Allan
, Mark Chesnutt
, and Lee Ann Womack
; of these, all but Sears would be shifted to the MCA Nashville roster after parent Universal Music absorbed PolyGram
in 1998 and shut down Decca Nashville.
In 2008, the Decca country division was revived, with One Flew South
becoming the first act signed to the newly re-established label.
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 emphasis on technical innovation (first the development of the FFRR technique, then the early use of stereophonic recording), the introduction of the long-playing record
, and the recruitment of John Culshaw
to Decca's London office.
For many years, Decca's British classical recordings were issued in the US under the London Records
label because the company was not allowed to use its name there. When the MCA and PolyGram labels merged in 1999 and created Universal Music, the practice was eliminated.
Decca released the stereo recordings of Ernest Ansermet
conducting L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, including, in 1959, the first stereo LP album of the complete Nutcracker
, as well as Ansermet's only stereo version of Manuel de Falla
's The Three-Cornered Hat, which the conductor had led at its first performance in 1919.
The pre-War classical repertoire on Decca was not extensive, but was select. The 3-disc 1929 recording of Delius
' Sea Drift
, arising from the Delius Festival that year, suffered by being crammed onto six sides and was withdrawn before 1936, probably as a result of the standardisation on 78 revolutions per minute. However it won Decca the loyalty of the baritone
Roy Henderson, who went on to record for them the first complete Dido and Aeneas
of Purcell
with Nancy Evans
and the Boyd Neel
ensemble (Purcell Club, 14 sides, pre-1936); and Henderson's famous pupil Kathleen Ferrier
was recorded and issued by Decca through the period of transition from 78 to LP (1946–1952). Heinrich Schlusnus
made important pre-war lied
er recordings for Decca.
John 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 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.
Until 1947, American Decca issued British Decca classical music recordings. Afterwards, British Decca took over distribution through its new American subsidiary London Records
. American Decca actively re-entered the classical music field in 1950 with distribution deals from Deutsche Grammophon
and Parlophone
. American Decca began issuing its own classical music recordings in 1956 when Israel Horowitz
joined Decca to head its classical music operations. Among the classical recordings released on Decca's "Gold Label" series were albums by Leroy Anderson
, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra
conducted by Max Rudolf and guitarist Andrés Segovia
. American Decca shut down its classical music department in 1971. Today Decca makes fewer major classical recordings, but still has a full roster of stars including, Cecilia Bartoli
and Renée Fleming
. Its back catalogue 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
and Luciano Pavarotti
remained an exclusive Decca artist throughout his recording career.
hydrophone
capable of detecting and cataloging individual German submarines
by each one's signature engine noise, 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 frequency range of ffrr was 80–15000 Hz, with a signal-to-noise ratio
of 60dB. While Decca's early ffrr releases on 78-rpm discs had some noticeable surface noise, which diminished the effects of the high fidelity sound, the introduction of long-playing records in 1949 made better use of the new technology and set an industry standard that was quickly imitated by Decca's competitors. Nonetheless titles first issued on 78rpm remained in that form in the Decca catalogues into the early 1950s. The ffrr technique became internationally accepted and considered a standard. The Ernest Ansermet
recording of Stravinsky
's Petrushka was key in the development of full frequency range records and alerting the listening public to high fidelity in 1946.
(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 3 to 5 minutes playing time of the existing records. The new records were made of vinyl
(the old discs were made of brittle shellac
), which enabled the ffrr recordings to be transferred to disc very realistically. In both the UK and the US Decca took up the LP promptly and enthusiastically, in 1949, giving the British arm 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 financially.
British Decca recorded high fidelity versions of all the symphonies of Ralph Vaughan Williams
except for the ninth, under the personal supervision of the composer, with Sir Adrian Boult
and the London Philharmonic Orchestra
. Benjamin Britten
conducted recordings of many of his compositions for Decca, from the 1940s through the 1970s; most of these recordings have been reissued on CD
.
developed in 1954 the famous Decca tree
, a stereo
microphone recording system for big orchestras. Decca started recording in stereo on 14–28 May 1954, in Victoria Hall
in Geneva
, the first European record company to do so, only three months after RCA Victor began recording in stereo in the U.S. Decca archives show that Ernest Ansermet
and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande
recorded Tamara by Mily Balakirev
; the overture to Benvenuto Cellini
by Hector Berlioz
; Stenka Razin
by Alexander Glazunov
; and Anatoly Liadov's Baba-Yaga, Eight Russian Folksongs, and Kikimora
. These performances were initially issued only in monaural sound; the stereo versions were finally issued in the 1960s as part of the "Stereo Treasury" series. The Decca Stereo format was called (in succession to ffrr), "ffss", i.e. "full frequency stereophonic sound". with most competitors not using stereo until 1957, the new technique was a distinctive feature of Decca's. Even after stereo became standard and into the 1970s, Decca boasted a special, spectacular sound quality, characterised by aggressive use of the highest and lowest frequencies, daring use of tape saturation and out-of-phase sound to convey a lively and impactful hall ambiance, plus considerable bar-to-bar rebalancing by the recording staff of orchestral voices, known as "spotlighting." In the 1960s and 1970s, the company developed its "Phase 4" process which produced even greater sonic impact through even more interventionist engineering techniques. Big Band leader Ted Heath was a early pioneer of the Decca "Phase 4" sound. Decca recorded some quadrophonic masters that were ultimately released only in stereo, due to the commercial war of incompatible formats that brought an early end to quadrophony.
recorders used in-house for recording, mixing, editing, and mastering albums. Each recorder consisted of a modified IVC model 826P open-reel 1-inch VTR, connected to a custom codec
unit with time code capability (using a proprietary time code
developed by Decca), as well as outboard DAC
and ADC
units connected to the codec unit. The codec recorded audio to tape in 16 bits (although later versions of the system used 20 bits). With the exception of the IVC VTRs (which were modified to Decca's specifications by IVC's UK division in Reading
), all the electronics for these systems were developed and manufactured in-house by Decca (and by contractors to them as well). These digital systems were used for mastering most of Decca's classical music releases to both LP and CD, and were used well into the late 1990s. After the start of the new century, Decca became actively involved in pioneering a new generation of high-resolution and multi-channel recordings, including, for audio recordings, the SACD "Super Audio Compact Disc" format, and for videos, the DVD-As "Digital Versatile Disc" format. Decca is now routinely mastering new recordings in both SACD and DVD-A formats.
Decca Special Products was spun off, and is now known as London Decca
.
The American branch of Decca also marketed its own line of home audio equipment.
American Decca bought Universal-International in 1952, and eventually merged with MCA
in 1962, becoming a subsidiary company under MCA. Dissatisfied with American Decca's promotion of British Decca recordings and because American Decca 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
beginning in 1947. 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, Atlantic, Imperial and Liberty.
Conversely, British Decca retained a non-reciprocal right to license and issue American Decca recordings in the UK on their Brunswick Records
(US Decca recordings) and Coral Records
(US Brunswick and Coral recordings) labels; this arrangement continued through 1967 when a UK branch of MCA was established utilising the MCA Records
label, with distribution fluctuating between British Decca and other English companies over time.
In Canada, the Compo Company
was reorganised into MCA Records (Canada) in 1970. In Taiwan, PolyGram acquired 60% of Linfair Magnetic Sound (founded in 1961) in 1992, and renamed to Decca Records Taiwan. The name remains until 2002, when it decided to sell its 60 percent stake, and changed its name to Linfair Records, making the company independent from Universal Music. In addition to Decca label, Linfair Records also distribute V2 Records' releases, and some independent labels. However, Linfair Records' releases outside Taiwan, will continue to be released internationally via Universal Music.
The Decca name was dropped by MCA in America in 1973 in favour of the MCA Records label. The first-run American Decca label went out with a big bang with its final release, "Drift Away
" by Dobie Gray
in 1973 (label #33057), reaching #5 on the Billboard chart and receiving gold record status.
PolyGram
acquired the remains of Decca UK within days of Sir Edward Lewis's death in January 1980. British Decca's pop catalogue was taken over by Polydor Records
. Ironically, PolyGram descended from British Decca's former Dutch
distributor Hollandsche Decca Distributie.
In the mid-1990s, MCA Nashville Records revived Decca in the US as a country music 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. In the US, the Decca country music label was shut down and the London classical label was renamed as it was able to use the Decca name for the first time because of the merger that created Universal Music. In 1999, Decca absorbed Philips Records
to create the Decca Music Group (half of Universal Music Classics Group
in the USA, with Deutsche Grammophon
being the other half).
Today, Decca is a leading label for both classical music and Broadway scores although it is branching out into pop music from established recording stars; its most recent hit was Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville USA
(2007) by Boyz II Men
, which reached #27 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart. In 2007 they won the race to sign English teen jazz sensation Victoria Hart
and released her first album 'Whatever Happened to Romance' in July. In December 2007, it was announced that Morrissey
would be joining the Decca roster. In August 2009, it was revealed that American Idol
alum, Clay Aiken
had signed with Decca. As mentioned, it is reentering the American country music scene in 2008. There are two Universal Music label groups now using the Decca name. The Decca Label Group is the US label whereas the London-based Decca Music Group runs the international classical and pop releases by such world famous performers as Andrea Bocelli
and Hayley Westenra
. The London Records pop label that was established in the UK in 1990, run by Roger Ames, and distributed by PolyGram became part of WEA in 2000 when he was hired to run that company.
It is also the distributing label of POINT Music
, a joint venture between Universal and Philip Glass
's Euphorbia Productions that folded shortly after the merger that created Universal Music. Ironically, the American Decca classical music catalogue is managed by sister Universal label Deutsche Grammophon
. They include the recordings of guitarist Andrés Segovia
. Before Deutsche Grammophon founded its own American branch in 1969, it had a distribution deal with American Decca until 1962 when distribution switched to MGM Records
. Éditions de l'Oiseau-Lyre
is a wholly owned subsidiary specialising in European classical music of the 15th to 19th centuries. American Decca's jazz
catalogue is managed by GRP Records
, an imprint of Verve Records
. The American Decca rock/pop catalogue is managed by Geffen Records
. The Decca Broadway
imprint is used for both newly recorded musical theatre
songs and Universal Music Group's vast catalogues of musical theatre recordings from record labels UMG and predecessor companies acquired over the years.
On January 10, 2011, Universal Music Group, which owns the masters to Decca records, announced that it was donating 200,000 of its master recordings from the 1920s to the 1940s to the United States Library of Congress. The collection of master recordings will be cleaned and digitized. Included in this group are Bing Crosby's original recording of 'White Christmas' and thousands more by Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Judy Garland, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, the Andrews Sisters and other famous and lesser-known musicians who recorded during this time period. Because of this transaction, once the Library has organized and cleaned the collection, the public will eventually have some degree of access to thousands of recordings that have been commercially unavailable for decades. According to the Los Angeles Times, "[a]s part of the agreement between UMG and the library, Universal retains ownership of the recording copyrights and the right to exploit the cleaned-up and digitized files for commercial purposes."
Category: Decca Records artists
Category: Decca Records albums
Category: Decca Records singles
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...
established in 1929 by Edward Lewis
Edward Lewis (Decca)
Sir Edward Roberts Lewis was an English businessman, best known for leading the Decca recording and technology group for five decades from 1929. He built the company up from nothing to one of the major record labels of the world.A financier by profession, Lewis was professionally engaged by the...
. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the link with the British company was broken for several decades.
The British label was renowned for its development of recording methods, while the American company developed the concept of cast albums in the musical genre. Both wings are now part of the Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group is an American music group, the largest of the "big four" record companies by its commanding market share and its multitude of global operations...
which is owned by Vivendi
Vivendi
Vivendi SA is a French international media conglomerate with activities in music, television and film, publishing, telecommunications, the Internet, and video games. It is headquartered in Paris.- History :...
, a media conglomerate
Media conglomerate
A media conglomerate, media group or media institution is a company that owns large numbers of companies in various mass media such as television, radio, publishing, movies, and the Internet...
headquartered in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. The American Decca label was the foundation label which evolved into UMG.
Label name
The name "Decca" dates back to a portable gramophonePhonograph
The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
called the "Decca Dulcephone" patented in 1914 by musical instrument makers Barnett Samuel and Sons. That company was eventually renamed 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
Mecca
Mecca is a city in the Hijaz and the capital of Makkah province in Saudi Arabia. The city is located inland from Jeddah in a narrow valley at a height of above sea level...
" with the initial D of their logo "Dulcet" or their trademark "Dulcephone." Samuel, a linguist, chose "Decca" as a brand name as it was easy to pronounce in most languages.
Decca bought the UK branch of Brunswick Records
Brunswick Records
Brunswick Records is a United States based record label. The label is currently distributed by E1 Entertainment.-From 1916:Records under the "Brunswick" label were first produced by the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company...
and continued to run it under that name.
In the 1950s the American Decca studios were located in the Pythian Temple
Pythian Temple (New York City)
The Pythian Temple is an historic Knights of Pythias building at 135 West 70th Street between Columbus Avenue and Broadway in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was built in 1927 to serve as a meeting place for the 120 Pythian lodges of New York City...
in New York City.
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
Brunswick Records
Brunswick Records is a United States based record label. The label is currently distributed by E1 Entertainment.-From 1916:Records under the "Brunswick" label were first produced by the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company...
in 1932, which added such stars as Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....
and Al Jolson
Al Jolson
Al Jolson was an American singer, comedian and actor. In his heyday, he was dubbed "The World's Greatest Entertainer"....
to its roster. Decca also bought out the Melotone
Melotone Records (US)
Melotone Records was a United States based record label. In late 1930, Warner/Brunswick Records introduced the Melotone label in the U.S. and Canada as a budget subsidiary issuing 78 rpm disc records. It then became part of the American Record Corporation collection of labels in 1932. The label was...
and Edison Bell record companies. In late 1934, a United States branch of Decca was launched. In establishing the American unit, the founders bought the former Brunswick Records pressing plants in New York City and Muskegon, Michigan
Muskegon, Michigan
Muskegon is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the city population was 38,401. The city is the county seat of Muskegon County...
, which were shut down in 1931, from Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
in exchange for a financial interest in the new label. Decca became a major player in the depressed American record market thanks to its roster of popular artists, particularly Bing Crosby, the shrewd management of former US Brunswick General Manager Jack Kapp
Jack Kapp
Jack Kapp was a record company executive with Brunswick Records who founded Decca Records in 1934. After his death, his brother Dave Kapp took over American Decca. Dave Kapp later founded Kapp Records, based in New York....
, and the decision to price Decca at 35 cents. The following year, the pressing and Canadian distribution of US Decca records was licensed to Compo Company
Compo Company
Compo Company Ltd. was Canada's first independent record company.The Compo Company was founded in 1918 in Lachine, Quebec by Herbert Berliner, an executive of Berliner Gramophone of Canada and the oldest son of disc record inventor Emile Berliner....
Ltd. in Lachine, Quebec
Lachine, Quebec
Lachine was a city on the Island of Montreal in southwestern Quebec, Canada. It is now a borough within the city of Montreal.-History:...
, a breakaway and rival of Berliner Gram-o-phone
Berliner Gramophone
Berliner Gramophone was an early record label, the first company to produce disc "gramophone records" .-History:...
Co. of Montreal, Quebec
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
. (Compo was acquired by Decca in 1951 although its Apex
Apex Records (Canada)
Apex Records was a Canadian record label owned by the Compo Company which lasted as late as 1980.Compo established the Apex label in July, 1921 in Toronto. It released American recordings from Okeh Records and Gennett Records among others...
label continued in production for the next two decades.) By 1939, Decca and EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
were the only record companies in the UK. American Decca acquired Brunswick Records
Brunswick Records
Brunswick Records is a United States based record label. The label is currently distributed by E1 Entertainment.-From 1916:Records under the "Brunswick" label were first produced by the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company...
and its sublabel Vocalion Records
Vocalion Records
Vocalion Records is a record label active for many years in the United States and in the United Kingdom.-History:Vocalion was founded in 1916 by the Aeolian Piano Company of New York City, which introduced a retail line of phonographs at the same time. The name was derived from one of their...
in 1941 from Warner Bros.
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
which had a financial interest in Decca.
In 1939, British Decca head Edward Lewis
Edward Lewis (Decca)
Sir Edward Roberts Lewis was an English businessman, best known for leading the Decca recording and technology group for five decades from 1929. He built the company up from nothing to one of the major record labels of the world.A financier by profession, Lewis was professionally engaged by the...
sold his interest in American Decca because of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. In 1942, stock in American Decca began trading on the New York Stock Exchange
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located at 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at 13.39 trillion as of Dec 2010...
as Decca Records Inc. Therefore, the two Deccas became separate companies and remained so until American Decca's parent company bought British Decca's parent company in 1998. Artists signed to American Decca in the 1930s and 1940s included Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
, Charlie Kunz
Charlie Kunz
Charles Kunz was an American musician.Kunz was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania in 1896, the only son of a master baker who played the French horn. He made his debut aged six and made his first appearance as a prodigy aged seven...
, Count Basie
Count Basie
William "Count" Basie was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. Basie led his jazz orchestra almost continuously for nearly 50 years...
, Jimmie Lunceford
Jimmie Lunceford
James Melvin "Jimmie" Lunceford was an American jazz alto saxophonist and bandleader in the swing era.-Biography:...
, Jane Froman
Jane Froman
Jane Froman was an American singer and actress. During her thirty-year career, Froman performed on stage, radio and television despite chronic injuries that she sustained from a 1943 plane crash...
, The Boswell Sisters
Boswell Sisters
The Boswell Sisters were a close harmony singing group, consisting of sisters Martha Boswell , Connee Boswell , and Helvetia "Vet" Boswell , noted for intricate harmonies and rhythmic experimentation...
, Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing...
, The Andrews Sisters, Ted Lewis
Ted Lewis (musician)
Theodore Leopold Friedman, better known as Ted Lewis , was an American entertainer, bandleader, singer, and musician. He led a band presenting a combination of jazz, hokey comedy, and schmaltzy sentimentality that was a hit with the American public. He was known by the moniker "Mr...
, Judy Garland
Judy Garland
Judy Garland was an American actress and singer. Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years and for her renowned contralto voice, she attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage...
, The Mills Brothers
Mills Brothers
The Mills Brothers, sometimes billed as The Four Mills Brothers, were an American jazz and pop vocal quartet of the 20th century who made more than 2,000 recordings that combined sold more than 50 million copies, and garnered at least three dozen gold records...
, Billy Cotton
Billy Cotton
William Edward Cotton , better known as Billy Cotton, was a British band leader and entertainer, one of the few whose orchestras survived the dance band era. Today, he is mainly remembered as a 1950s and 1960s radio and television personality, although his musical talent emerged as early as the 1920s...
, Guy Lombardo
Guy Lombardo
Gaetano Alberto "Guy" Lombardo was a Canadian-American bandleader and violinist.Forming "The Royal Canadians" in 1924 with his brothers Carmen, Lebert, and Victor and other musicians from his hometown, Lombardo led the group to international success, billing themselves as creating "The Sweetest...
, Chick Webb
Chick Webb
William Henry Webb, usually known as Chick Webb was an American jazz and swing music drummer as well as a band leader.-Biography:...
, Louis Jordan
Louis Jordan
Louis Thomas Jordan was a pioneering American jazz, blues and rhythm & blues musician, songwriter and bandleader who enjoyed his greatest popularity from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as "The King of the Jukebox", Jordan was highly popular with both black and white audiences in the...
(the #1 R&B artist of the 1940s), Bob Crosby
Bob Crosby
George Robert "Bob" Crosby was an American dixieland bandleader and vocalist, best known for his group the Bob-Cats.-Family:...
, The Ink Spots
The Ink Spots
The Ink Spots were a popular vocal group in the 1930s and 1940s that helped define the musical genre that led to rhythm and blues and rock and roll, and the subgenre doo-wop...
, Dorsey Brothers (and subsequently Jimmy Dorsey
Jimmy Dorsey
James "Jimmy" Dorsey was a prominent American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, trumpeter, composer, and big band leader. He was known as "JD"...
after the brothers split), Connee Boswell
Connee Boswell
Constance Foore "Connee" Boswell was an American female vocalist born in Kansas City but raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. With her sisters, Martha and Helvetia "Vet" Boswell, she performed in the 1930s as The Boswell Sisters and became a highly influential singing group during this period via...
and Jack Hylton
Jack Hylton
Jack Hylton was a British band leader and impresario.He was born John Greenhalgh Hilton in the Great Lever area of Bolton, Lancashire, the son of George Hilton, a cotton yarn twister. His father was an amateur singer at the local Labour Club and Jack learned piano to accompany him on the stage...
, Victor Young
Victor Young
Victor Young was an American composer, arranger, violinist and conductor. He was born in Chicago.-Biography:...
, Earl Hines
Earl Hines
Earl Kenneth Hines, universally known as Earl "Fatha" Hines, was an American jazz pianist. Hines was one of the most influential figures in the development of modern jazz piano and, according to one source, is "one of a small number of pianists whose playing shaped the history of jazz".-Early...
, Claude Hopkins
Claude Hopkins
Claude Driskett Hopkins was an American jazz stride pianist and bandleader.-Biography:Claude Hopkins was born in Alexandria, Virginia in 1903. Historians differ in respect of the actual date of his birth. His parents were on the faculty of Howard University...
, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Sister Rosetta Tharpe was an Amercian pioneering gospel singer, songwriter and recording artist who attained great popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and early rock and roll accompaniment...
- the original 'soul sister' of recorded music.
In 1940, American Decca released the first album of songs from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz
The Wizard of Oz may refer to:*The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, a 1900 book by L. Frank Baum and W.W. Denslow*The Wizard of Oz , a musical by L...
. However, it was not a soundtrack album but a cover version featuring only Judy Garland
Judy Garland
Judy Garland was an American actress and singer. Through a career that spanned 45 of her 47 years and for her renowned contralto voice, she attained international stardom as an actress in musical and dramatic roles, as a recording artist and on the concert stage...
from the film, with other roles taken by the Ken Darby Singers.
In 1942, American Decca released the first recording of "White Christmas
White Christmas (song)
"White Christmas" is an Irving Berlin song reminiscing about an old-fashioned Christmas setting. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the version sung by Bing Crosby is the best-selling single of all time, with estimated sales in excess of 50 million copies worldwide.Accounts vary as...
" by Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....
. He recorded another version of the song in 1947 for Decca; to this day, Crosby's recording of "White Christmas" for Decca remains the best-selling single worldwide of all time. In 1943, American Decca ushered in the age of the original cast album in the United States, when they released an album set of nearly all the songs from Rodgers and Hammerstein
Rodgers and Hammerstein
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II were a well-known American songwriting duo, usually referred to as Rodgers and Hammerstein. They created a string of popular Broadway musicals in the 1940s and 1950s during what is considered the golden age of the medium...
's Oklahoma!
Oklahoma!
Oklahoma! is the first musical written by composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. The musical is based on Lynn Riggs' 1931 play, Green Grow the Lilacs. Set in Oklahoma Territory outside the town of Claremore in 1906, it tells the story of cowboy Curly McLain and his romance...
, performed by the same cast who appeared in the show on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
, and using the show's orchestra, conductor, chorus, and musical and vocal arrangements. The enormous success of this album was followed by original cast recordings of Carousel
Carousel (musical)
Carousel is the second stage musical by the team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II . The work premiered in 1945 and was adapted from Ferenc Molnár's 1909 play Liliom, transplanting its Budapest setting to the Maine coastline...
and Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin
Irving Berlin was an American composer and lyricist of Jewish heritage, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history.His first hit song, "Alexander's Ragtime Band", became world famous...
's Annie Get Your Gun
Annie Get Your Gun (musical)
Annie Get Your Gun is a musical with lyrics and music written by Irving Berlin and a book by Herbert Fields and his sister Dorothy Fields. The story is a fictionalized version of the life of Annie Oakley , who was a sharpshooter from Ohio, and her husband, Frank Butler.The 1946 Broadway production...
, both featuring members of the original casts of the shows and utilising those shows' vocal and choral arrangements. Because of the technical restrictions of recording on 78 rpm records, none of these scores were recorded totally complete; they were shorter than cast albums made after LPs
LP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
were introduced. But Decca had made history by recording Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
musical
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
s, and the influence of these releases in the recording of theatrical shows in the U.S continues to this day - in Decca's home country, the UK original cast albums had been a fixture for years. Columbia Records
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
followed with musical theatre albums, starting with the 1946 revival of Show Boat
Show Boat
Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working...
. In 1947, RCA Victor released the original cast album of Brigadoon. By the 1950s, many recording companies were releasing Broadway show albums recorded by their original casts, and the recording of original cast albums had become standard practice whenever a new show opened.
Decca throughout the 1930s and early-to-mid 1940s was a leading label of blues and jump with such best selling artists as Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Sister Rosetta Tharpe was an Amercian pioneering gospel singer, songwriter and recording artist who attained great popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with a unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and early rock and roll accompaniment...
and Louis Jordan
Louis Jordan
Louis Thomas Jordan was a pioneering American jazz, blues and rhythm & blues musician, songwriter and bandleader who enjoyed his greatest popularity from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as "The King of the Jukebox", Jordan was highly popular with both black and white audiences in the...
(who was the best selling R&B artist of the 1940s). In 1954, American Decca released "Rock Around the Clock
Rock Around the Clock
"Rock Around the Clock" is a 12-bar-blues-based song written by Max C. Freedman and James E. Myers in 1952. The best-known and most successful rendition was recorded by Bill Haley and His Comets in 1954...
" by Bill Haley & His Comets
Bill Haley & His Comets
Bill Haley & His Comets was an American rock and roll band that was founded in 1952 and continued until Haley's death in 1981. The band, also known by the names Bill Haley and The Comets and Bill Haley's Comets , was the earliest group of white musicians to bring rock and roll to the attention of...
. Produced by Milt Gabler
Milt Gabler
Milton Gabler was an American record producer, responsible for many innovations in the recording industry of the 20th century.-Early life:...
, the recording was initially only moderately successful, but when it was used as the theme song for the 1955 film Blackboard Jungle
Blackboard Jungle
Blackboard Jungle is a 1955 social commentary film about teachers in an inner-city school. It is based on the novel of the same name by Evan Hunter.-Plot:...
, it became the first international rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
hit, and the first such recording to go to No. 1 on the American musical charts. According to the Guinness Book of Records, it went on to sell 25 million copies, returning to the US and UK charts several times between 1955 and 1974.
American Decca embraced the new post-war record formats adopting the LP in 1949 and the 45 rpm record around a year later while continuing to sell 78s. During the 1950s, American Decca released a number of soundtrack recordings of popular motion pictures, notably Mike Todd
Mike Todd
Michael Todd was an American theatre and film producer, best known for his 1956 production of Around the World in Eighty Days, which won an Academy Award for Best Picture...
's production of Around the World in Eighty Days
Around the World in Eighty Days (1956 film)
Around the World in 80 Days is a 1956 adventure film produced by the Michael Todd Company and released by United Artists. It was directed by Michael Anderson. It was produced by Michael Todd, with Kevin McClory and William Cameron Menzies as associate producers. The screenplay was written by James...
(1956) with the music of veteran film composer Victor Young
Victor Young
Victor Young was an American composer, arranger, violinist and conductor. He was born in Chicago.-Biography:...
. Since Decca had access to the stereophonic tracks of the Oscar-winning film, they quickly released a stereo version in 1958. Because American Decca bought Universal Pictures
Universal Pictures
-1920:* White Youth* The Flaming Disc* Am I Dreaming?* The Dragon's Net* The Adorable Savage* Putting It Over* The Line Runners-1921:* The Fire Eater* A Battle of Wits* Dream Girl* The Millionaire...
in 1952, many of these soundtrack albums were of films released by what was then called Universal-International Pictures.
In 1961, American Decca released the soundtrack album of Flower Drum Song
Flower Drum Song (film)
Flower Drum Song is a 1961 film adaptation of the 1958 Broadway musical Flower Drum Song, written by the composer Richard Rodgers and the lyricist/librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. The film and stage play were based on the 1957 novel of the same name by the Chinese American author C. Y...
, Universal Pictures's film version of the 1958 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. In a reversal of the usual situation, in which American Decca had released original Broadway cast albums of three Rodgers and Hammerstein shows, this was the only film soundtrack album of a Rodgers and Hammerstein show ever released by Decca, while the Broadway cast album had been released by Columbia Masterworks.
The American RCA
RCA
RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...
label severed its longtime affiliation with EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
's His Master's Voice (HMV) label in 1957, which allowed British Decca to market and distribute Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
's recordings in the UK on the RCA
RCA Records
RCA Records is one of the flagship labels of Sony Music Entertainment. The RCA initials stand for Radio Corporation of America , which was the parent corporation from 1929 to 1985 and a partner from 1985 to 1986.RCA's Canadian unit is Sony's oldest label...
and RCA Victor labels.
British Decca had several missed opportunities. In 1960, they refused to release "Tell Laura I Love Her
Tell Laura I Love Her
"Tell Laura I Love Her," a teenage tragedy song written by Jeff Barry and Ben Raleigh, was an American Top Ten popular music hit for singer Ray Peterson in 1960 on RCA Victor Records, reaching #7 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart...
" by Ray Peterson
Ray Peterson
Ray Peterson was an American pop music singer who was best remembered for singing "Tell Laura I Love Her" and "Corrine, Corrina" in the 1960s.-Career:...
and even destroyed thousands of copies of the single. A cover version
Cover version
In popular music, a cover version or cover song, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording of a contemporary or previously recorded, commercially released song or popular song...
by Ricky Valance
Ricky Valance
Ricky Valance is a Welsh singer. He is best known for the number one single, "Tell Laura I Love Her", which sold over a million copies in 1960.-Life and career:...
was released by EMI on the Columbia
Columbia Graphophone Company
The Columbia Graphophone Company was one of the earliest gramophone companies in the United Kingdom. Under EMI, as Columbia Records, it became a very successful label in the 1950s and 1960s...
label, and it went to #1 on the British charts for three weeks. In 1962, British Decca executive Dick Rowe
Dick Rowe
Richard Paul Rowe was an A&R man at Decca Records from the 1950s to the 1960s.He was one of the most important producers and record executives in the United Kingdom in the 1950s and early 1960s and is the man who signed The Rolling Stones, Them , The Moody Blues, The Animals, The Zombies, John...
turned down a chance to record The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
in favour of local beat combo Brian Poole and the Tremeloes
The Tremeloes
The Tremeloes are an English beat group founded in 1958 in Dagenham, Essex, and still active today.-Career:They formed as Brian Poole and the Tremoloes influenced by Buddy Holly and The Crickets...
. Dick Rowe, head of the pop division, famously told The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein: "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. Other refusals of note include The Yardbirds
The Yardbirds
- Current :* Chris Dreja - rhythm guitar, backing vocals * Jim McCarty - drums, backing vocals * Ben King - lead guitar * David Smale - bass, backing vocals...
and Manfred Mann
Manfred Mann
Manfred Mann was a British beat, rhythm and blues and pop band of the 1960s, named after their South African keyboardist, Manfred Mann, who later led the successful 1970s group Manfred Mann's Earth Band...
. However Decca had earlier accepted London born pioneer of rock'n'roll singer Terry Dene
Terry Dene
Terry Dene is a former British pop singer popular in the late 1950s. He achieved three Top Twenty hits between June 1957 and May 1958.-Career:...
, who was later known as the British Elvis Presley and another Merseyside singer, Billy Fury
Billy Fury
Billy Fury, born Ronald William Wycherley , was an internationally successful English singer from the late-1950s to the mid-1960s, and remained an active songwriter until the 1980s. Rheumatic fever, which he first contracted as a child, damaged his heart and ultimately contributed to his death...
. Delia Derbyshire
Delia Derbyshire
Delia Ann Derbyshire was an English musician and composer of electronic music and musique concrète. She is best known for her electronic realisation of Ron Grainer's theme music to the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and for her work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.-Early...
, an early pioneer of Electronic Music and one of the founders of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop was refused an interview for a sound engineer's job because Decca would not employ a woman in such a post.
The turning down of The Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
led indirectly to the signing of one of Decca's biggest 1960s artists, The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in London in April 1962 by Brian Jones , Ian Stewart , Mick Jagger , and Keith Richards . Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early line-up...
. Dick Rowe was judging a talent contest with George Harrison
George Harrison
George Harrison, MBE was an English musician, guitarist, singer-songwriter, actor and film producer who achieved international fame as lead guitarist of The Beatles. Often referred to as "the quiet Beatle", Harrison became over time an admirer of Indian mysticism, and introduced it to the other...
, 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 earlier. Rowe saw the Stones, and quickly signed them to a contract.
Staff producer Hugh Mendl
Hugh Mendl
Hugh Rees Christopher Mendl was a British record producer, A&R representative, and manager who worked for Decca Records for over 40 years....
(1919–2008) worked for Decca for over 40 years and played a significant role in its success in the popular field from the 1950s to the late 1970s. His first major production credit was pianist Winifred Atwell
Winifred Atwell
Una Winifred Atwell Una Winifred Atwell Una Winifred Atwell (27 February or April 1910 or 1914There is some uncertainty over her date and year of birth. Many sources suggest 27 February 1914, but there is a strong suggestion that her birthday was 27 April. Most sources give her year of birth as...
and he produced "Rock Island Line", the breakthrough skiffle
Skiffle
Skiffle is a type of popular music with jazz, blues, folk, roots and country influences, usually using homemade or improvised instruments. Originating as a term in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, it became popular again in the UK in the 1950s, where it was mainly...
hit for Lonnie Donegan
Lonnie Donegan
Anthony James "Lonnie" Donegan MBE was a skiffle musician, with more than 20 UK Top 30 hits to his name. He is known as the "King of Skiffle" and is often cited as a large influence on the generation of British musicians who became famous in the 1960s...
and he is credited as the first executive to spot the potential of singer-actor Tommy Steele
Tommy Steele
Tommy Steele OBE , is an English entertainer. Steele is widely regarded as Britain's first teen idol and rock and roll star.-Singer:...
. Mendl's other productions included the first album by humorist Ivor Cutler
Ivor Cutler
Ivor Cutler was a Scottish poet, songwriter and humorist. He became known for his regular performances on BBC radio, and in particular his numerous sessions recorded for John Peel's influential radio programme, and later for Andy Kershaw's programme...
, Who Tore Your Trousers? (1961), Frankie Howerd
Frankie Howerd
Francis Alick "Frankie" Howerd OBE was an English comedian and comic actor whose career, described by fellow comedian Barry Cryer as "a series of comebacks", spanned six decades.-Early career:...
at The Establishment (1963), a series of recordings with Paddy Roberts
Paddy Roberts (songwriter)
John Godfrey Owen Roberts was a popular songwriter and singer, having previously been a lawyer and a pilot ....
(best known for "The Ballad of Bethnal Green"), numerous "original cast" and soundtrack albums including Oh! What a Lovely War
Oh! What a Lovely War
Oh! What a Lovely War is a musical film based on the stage musical Oh, What a Lovely War! originated by Charles Chilton as a radio play, The Long Long Trail in December 1961, and transferred to stage by Gerry Raffles in partnership with Joan Littlewood and her Theatre Workshop created in 1963,...
and even an LP record of the 1966 Le Mans
Le Mans
Le Mans is a city in France, located on the Sarthe River. Traditionally the capital of the province of Maine, it is now the capital of the Sarthe department and the seat of the Roman Catholic diocese of Le Mans. Le Mans is a part of the Pays de la Loire region.Its inhabitants are called Manceaux...
24-hour race, inspired by his life-long passion for motor-racing. Mendl was a driving force in the establishment of Decca's progressive Deram label, most notably as the executive producer of The Moody Blues
The Moody Blues
The Moody Blues are an English rock band. Among their innovations was a fusion with classical music, most notably in their 1967 album Days of Future Passed....
' groundbreaking 1967 LP Days of Future Passed
Days of Future Passed
Days of Future Passed is the second album and first concept album by The Moody Blues, released in 1967. It was also their first album to feature Justin Hayward and John Lodge, who would play a very strong role in directing the band's sound in the decades to come...
. He is credited with battling against Decca's notorious parsimonious treatment of their artists, ensuring that the Moody Blues had the time and resources to develop beyond their beat group origins into progressive rock, and he also used profits for pop sales to cross-subsidise recordings by avant garde jazz artists like John Surman
John Surman
John Douglas Surman is an English jazz saxophone, bass clarinet and synthesizer player, and composer of free jazz and modal jazz, often using themes from folk music as a basis...
.
British Decca lost a key source for American records when Atlantic Records
Atlantic Records
Atlantic Records is an American record label best known for its many recordings of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and jazz...
switched British distribution to Polydor Records
Polydor Records
Polydor is a record label owned by Universal Music Group, headquartered in the United Kingdom.-Beginnings:Polydor was originally an independent branch of the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft. Its name was first used as an export label in 1924, the British and German branches of the Gramophone...
in 1966 in order for Atlantic to gain access to British recording artists which they did not have under Decca distribution.
RCA Records
RCA Records is one of the flagship labels of Sony Music Entertainment. The RCA initials stand for Radio Corporation of America , which was the parent corporation from 1929 to 1985 and a partner from 1985 to 1986.RCA's Canadian unit is Sony's oldest label...
, for instance, abandoned Decca to set up its own UK office in 1971. The Moody Blues
The Moody Blues
The Moody Blues are an English rock band. Among their innovations was a fusion with classical music, most notably in their 1967 album Days of Future Passed....
were the only international rock act that remained on the label. The company's fortunes declined slightly during the 1970s, and it had few major commercial successes; among those were Dana's
Dana Rosemary Scallon
Dana Rosemary Scallon , known in her singing career simply as Dana, is an Irish singer and former Member of the European Parliament ....
1970 two-million selling single, "All Kinds of Everything
All Kinds Of Everything
"All Kinds of Everything" is a song written by Derry Lindsay and Jackie Smith which as performed by Dana won the Eurovision Song Contest 1970. "All Kinds of Everything" represented a return to the ballad form from the more energetic performances which had dominated Eurovision the previous years...
", issued on their subsidiary label, Rex Records
Rex Records (1933)
Rex Records was a United Kingdom-based record label founded in 1933 by the Crystalate Gramophone Record Manufacturing Company, also the parent of British Imperial Records. Rex Records were sold at the Marks & Spencer chain stores. The label was discontinued in February 1948...
.
Although Decca had set up the first of the British "progressive" labels, Deram Records
Deram Records
Deram Records was a subsidiary record label established in 1966 by Decca Records in the United Kingdom. At this time U.K. Decca was a completely different company than the Decca label in the United States, which was then owned by MCA Inc. Deram recordings were also distributed in the U.S. through...
, in 1966, with such stars as Cat Stevens and The Moody Blues, by the time the punk era set in 1977, Decca had pop success with such acts as John Miles
John Miles (musician)
John Miles is an English rock music vocalist, songwriter, guitarist and keyboard player, best known for his 1976 Top 3 UK hit single, "Music".-Career:...
, novelty creation Father Abraham
Pierre Kartner
Petrus Antonius Laurentius "Pierre" Kartner is a Dutch musician who sings under the alias Father Abraham, and who has written around 1600 songs.- Early life :...
and The Smurfs
The Smurfs (music)
The Smurfs is a Belgian comics series, created by Peyo in 1958, and popularized in the English speaking world mainly through the 1981-1989 Hanna Barbera cartoon series...
, and productions by longtime Decca associate Jonathan King
Jonathan King
Jonathan King is an English singer, songwriter, impresario and record producer. He is also the author of three novels, Bible Two and The Booker Prize Winner , and Beware the Monkey Man , and an autobiography, 65 My Life So Far .King first came to prominence as an...
. King had a hit - "Everyone's Gone to the Moon
Everyone's Gone to the Moon
"Everyone's Gone To The Moon" is a song that was written and recorded as the debut single of the British singer-songwriter, producer and impresario Jonathan King. The song, which was released in 1965 whilst King was still an undergraduate at Cambridge University, immediately shot him to...
" - on Decca whilst he was an undergraduate at Trinity College, Cambridge, Sir Edward's Alma Mater; they became good friends and Lewis adopted King as his "mascot", allowing him to run the label in all but name twice for long periods of time. Decca became dependent on re-releases from its back catalogue. Contemporary signings, such as Slaughter & The Dogs
Slaughter & The Dogs
Slaughter & The Dogs is an English punk rock band that formed in the late 1970s in Manchester, England. They were one of the first UK punk bands to sign for a major label, Decca Records.-Career:...
and the pre-stardom Adam and the Ants
Adam and the Ants
Adam and the Ants were a British rock band active during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The original group, which existed from 1977 to 1980, became notable as a cult band marking the transition from the late-1970s punk rock era to the post-punk and New Wave era...
(whose sole single with Decca, Young Parisians, would later be a UK Top 10 hit on the back of the band's success at CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
) were second division when compared to likes of PolyGram
PolyGram
PolyGram was the name of the major label recording company started by Philips from as a holding company for its music interests in 1945. In 1999 it was sold to Seagram and merged into Universal Music Group.-Hollandsche Decca Distributie , 1929-1950:...
, CBS
Sony Music Entertainment
Sony Music Entertainment ' is the second-largest global recorded music company of the "big four" record companies and is controlled by Sony Corporation of America, the United States subsidiary of Japan's Sony Corporation....
, EMI, and newcomer Virgin's
Virgin Records
Virgin Records is a British record label founded by English entrepreneur Richard Branson, Simon Draper, and Nik Powell in 1972. The company grew to be a worldwide music phenomenon, with platinum performers such as Roy Orbison, Devo, Genesis, Keith Richards, Janet Jackson, Culture Club, Lenny...
rosters of hitmakers.
Spoken word
American Decca also released several notable spoken word albums, such as a recording of Charles DickensCharles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
's A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol is a novella by English author Charles Dickens first published by Chapman & Hall on 17 December 1843. The story tells of sour and stingy Ebenezer Scrooge's ideological, ethical, and emotional transformation after the supernatural visits of Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of...
starring Ronald Colman
Ronald Colman
Ronald Charles Colman was an English actor.-Early years:He was born in Richmond, Surrey, England, the second son and fourth child of Charles Colman and his wife Marjory Read Fraser. His siblings included Eric, Edith, and Marjorie. He was educated at boarding school in Littlehampton, where he...
as Scrooge, and a recording of the Christmas chapter from The Pickwick Papers
The Pickwick Papers
The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club is the first novel by Charles Dickens. After the publication, the widow of the illustrator Robert Seymour claimed that the idea for the novel was originally her husband's; however, in his preface to the 1867 edition, Dickens strenuously denied any...
read by Charles Laughton
Charles Laughton
Charles Laughton was an English-American stage and film actor, screenwriter, producer and director.-Early life and career:...
. These two separate 78-RPM albums were later combined onto one LP. Other spoken word albums included Lullaby of Christmas, narrated by Gregory Peck
Gregory Peck
Eldred Gregory Peck was an American actor.One of 20th Century Fox's most popular film stars from the 1940s to the 1960s, Peck continued to play important roles well into the 1980s. His notable performances include that of Atticus Finch in the 1962 film To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he won an...
, a twenty minute version of Moby Dick, with Charles Laughton as Captain Ahab, and The Littlest Angel, narrated by Loretta Young
Loretta Young
Loretta Young was an American actress. Starting as a child actress, she had a long and varied career in film from 1917 to 1953...
. The company also released on LP, in 1968, the most complete version of Man of La Mancha
Man of La Mancha
Man of La Mancha is a musical with a book by Dale Wasserman, lyrics by Joe Darion and music by Mitch Leigh. It is adapted from Wasserman's non-musical 1959 teleplay I, Don Quixote, which was in turn inspired by Miguel de Cervantes's seventeenth century masterpiece Don Quixote...
ever put on vinyl records, a 2-LP album featuring most of the dialogue and all of the songs, performed by the show's original London cast. Keith Michell
Keith Michell
Keith Michell is an Australian actor, particularly noted for his television and film performances as King Henry VIII of England.- Early life :He was born in Adelaide and brought up in Warnertown, near Port Pirie...
starred as Don Quixote and Cervantes, and Joan Diener
Joan Diener
Joan Diener was an American theatre actress and singer with a three-and-a-half-octave range.Born in Columbus, Ohio, Diener majored in psychology at Sarah Lawrence College and moonlighted as an actress while still a student...
was Aldonza/Dulcinea.
Country music
In 1934, Jack Kapp established a country & western line for the new Decca label by signing Frank Luther
Frank Luther
Frank Luther was an American country music singer, dance band vocalist, playwright, songwriter and pianist.-Early life:...
, Sons of the Pioneers
Sons of the Pioneers
The Sons of the Pioneers are one of America's earliest Western singing groups whose classic recordings set a new standard for performers of Western music. Known for the high quality of their vocal performances, musicianship, and songwriting, they produced finely-crafted and innovative recordings...
, Stuart Hamblen
Stuart Hamblen
Stuart Hamblen , born Stuart Carl Hamblen, was one of American radio's first singing cowboys in 1926, and later became a Christian songwriter, temperance supporter and recurring candidate for political office....
, The Ranch Boys, and other popular acts based in both New York and Los Angeles. Louisiana singer/composer Jimmie Davis
Jimmie Davis
James Houston Davis , better known as Jimmie Davis, was a noted singer of both sacred and popular songs who served two nonconsecutive terms as the 47th Governor of Louisiana...
began recording for Decca the same year, joined by western vocalists Jimmy Wakely
Jimmy Wakely
James Clarence Wakeley , better known as Jimmy Wakely, was an American country-Western singer and actor, one of the last crooning cowpokes following World War II...
and Roy Rogers
Roy Rogers
Roy Rogers, born Leonard Franklin Slye , was an American singer and cowboy actor, one of the most heavily marketed and merchandised stars of his era, as well as being the namesake of the Roy Rogers Restaurants franchised chain...
in 1940.
From the late 1940s on, the US arm of Decca had a sizable roster of Country
Country music
Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...
artists, including Kitty Wells
Kitty Wells
Ellen Muriel Deason , known professionally as Kitty Wells, is an American country music singer. Her 1952 hit recording, "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels", made her the first female country singer to top the U.S. country charts, and turned her into the first female country star...
, Johnny Wright
Johnnie Wright
Johnnie Robert Wright, Jr. , known professionally as Johnnie Wright, was an American country music singer-songwriter who spent much of his career working with Jack Anglin as the popular duo Johnnie & Jack, and was also the husband of Kitty Wells.-Early life and career:Born in Mount Juliet,...
, Ernest Tubb
Ernest Tubb
Ernest Dale Tubb , nicknamed the Texas Troubadour, was an American singer and songwriter and one of the pioneers of country music. His biggest career hit song, "Walking the Floor Over You" , marked the rise of the honky tonk style of music...
, Webb Pierce
Webb Pierce
Webb Michael Pierce was one of the most popular American honky tonk vocalists of the 1950s, charting more number one hits than any other country artist during the decade. His biggest hit was "In The Jailhouse Now," which charted for 37 weeks in 1955, 21 of them at number one...
, Wilburn Brothers, Bobbejaan Schoepen
Bobbejaan Schoepen
Bobbejaan Schoepen is a pseudonym of Modest Schoepen was a Flemish pioneer in Belgian pop music, vaudeville, and European country music...
, and Red Foley
Red Foley
Clyde Julian Foley , better known as Red Foley, was an American singer, musician, and radio and TV personality who made a major contribution to the growth of country music after World War II....
. In the late 1950s, Patsy Cline
Patsy Cline
Patsy Cline , born Virginia Patterson Hensley in Gore, Virginia, was an American country music singer who enjoyed pop music crossover success during the era of the Nashville sound in the early 1960s...
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. The Wilburn Brothers
The Wilburn Brothers
The Wilburn Brothers were a popular American country music duo from the 1950s to the 1970s consisting of brothers Doyle Wilburn and Teddy Wilburn .-Biography:...
were ultimately signed to a lifetime contract with Decca. Doyle Wilburn of the Wilburn Brothers obtained a recording contract for Loretta Lynn
Loretta Lynn
Loretta Lynn is an American country music singer-songwriter, author and philanthropist. Born in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky to a coal miner father, Lynn married at 13 years old, was a mother soon after, and moved to Washington with her husband, Oliver Lynn. Their marriage was sometimes tumultuous; he...
who signed to Decca in the early 1960s and remained with the label for the next several decades. Owen Bradley
Owen Bradley
Owen Bradley was an American record producer who, along with Chet Atkins and Bob Ferguson, was one of the chief architects of the 1950s and 1960s Nashville sound in country music and rockabilly.-Before the fame:...
was the A&R man for all of these artists. Decca quickly became the main rival of RCA Records
RCA Records
RCA Records is one of the flagship labels of Sony Music Entertainment. The RCA initials stand for Radio Corporation of America , which was the parent corporation from 1929 to 1985 and a partner from 1985 to 1986.RCA's Canadian unit is Sony's oldest label...
as the top label for American country music by the early 1950s and remained so for decades.
Decca's country music branch was revived in 1994, with Dawn Sears
Dawn Sears
Dawn Sears is an American country music artist. In addition to her work as a backing vocalist in Vince Gill's band, Dawn has recorded three solo studio albums, of which two were released on major labels...
being the first act signed to the newly-reformed label. Other artists signed to the label would include Rhett Akins
Rhett Akins
Thomas Rhett Akins Sr. is an American country singer and songwriter. Signed to Decca Records between 1994 and 1997, he released two albums for the label , followed by 1998's What Livin's All About on MCA Nashville. Friday Night in Dixie was released in 2002 on Audium Entertainment...
, Gary Allan
Gary Allan
Gary Allan Herzberg is an American country music artist, known professionally as Gary Allan.Signed to Decca Records in 1996, Allan made his debut on the United States country music scene with the release of his single "Her Man", the lead-off to his gold-certified debut album Used Heart for Sale,...
, Mark Chesnutt
Mark Chesnutt
Mark Nelson Chesnutt is an American country music singer. Chesnutt recorded and released his first album, Doing My Country Thing, in the late-1980s on private independent record label, Axbar Records, with the vinyl album version now a collector's item...
, and Lee Ann Womack
Lee Ann Womack
Lee Ann Womack is an American country music singer and songwriter, who is best known for her old fashioned-styled country music songs that often discuss subjects such as cheating and lost love....
; of these, all but Sears would be shifted to the MCA Nashville roster after parent Universal Music absorbed PolyGram
PolyGram
PolyGram was the name of the major label recording company started by Philips from as a holding company for its music interests in 1945. In 1999 it was sold to Seagram and merged into Universal Music Group.-Hollandsche Decca Distributie , 1929-1950:...
in 1998 and shut down Decca Nashville.
In 2008, the Decca country division was revived, with One Flew South
One Flew South
One Flew South is an American country music group composed of Eddie Bush, Chris Roberts, and Royal Reed, all three of whom sing lead vocals and play acoustic guitar. The group's first recording was a song for the soundtrack to the 2006 Disney animated film The Fox and the Hound 2...
becoming the first act signed to the newly re-established label.
Classical music
HMV
His Master's Voice is a trademark in the music business, and for many years was the name of a large record label. The name was coined in 1899 as the title of a painting of the dog Nipper listening to a wind-up gramophone...
and Columbia
Columbia Graphophone Company
The Columbia Graphophone Company was one of the earliest gramophone companies in the United Kingdom. Under EMI, as Columbia Records, it became a very successful label in the 1950s and 1960s...
labels (later merged as EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
). Decca's emergence as a major classical label may be attributed to three concurrent events: the emphasis on technical innovation (first the development of the FFRR technique, then the early use of stereophonic recording), the introduction of the long-playing record
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
, and the recruitment of John Culshaw
John Culshaw
John Royds Culshaw OBE was a pioneering English classical record producer for Decca Records. He recorded a wide range of music, but is best known for masterminding the first studio recording of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, begun in 1958.Largely self-educated musically, Culshaw worked for...
to Decca's London office.
For many years, Decca's British classical recordings were issued in the US under the London Records
London Records
London Records, referred to as London Recordings in logo, is a record label headquartered in the United Kingdom, originally marketing records in the United States, Canada and Latin America from 1947 to 1979, then becoming a semi-independent label....
label because the company was not allowed to use its name there. When the MCA and PolyGram labels merged in 1999 and created Universal Music, the practice was eliminated.
Decca released the stereo recordings of Ernest Ansermet
Ernest Ansermet
Ernest Alexandre Ansermet was a Swiss conductor.- Biography :Ansermet was born in Vevey, Switzerland. Although he was a contemporary of Wilhelm Furtwängler and Otto Klemperer, Ansermet represents in most ways a very different tradition and approach from those two musicians. Originally he was a...
conducting L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, including, in 1959, the first stereo LP album of the complete Nutcracker
The Nutcracker
The Nutcracker is a two-act ballet, originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto is adapted from E.T.A. Hoffmann's story "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King". It was given its première at the Mariinsky Theatre in St...
, as well as Ansermet's only stereo version of Manuel de Falla
Manuel de Falla
Manuel de Falla y Matheu was a Spanish Andalusian composer of classical music. With Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados and Joaquín Turina he is one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century....
's The Three-Cornered Hat, which the conductor had led at its first performance in 1919.
The pre-War classical repertoire on Decca was not extensive, but was select. The 3-disc 1929 recording of Delius
Frederick Delius
Frederick Theodore Albert Delius, CH was an English composer. Born in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family of German extraction, he resisted attempts to recruit him to commerce...
' Sea Drift
Sea Drift (Delius)
Sea Drift is among the larger-scale musical works by the composer Frederick Delius. Completed in 1903-1904 and first performed in 1906, it is a setting for baritone, chorus and orchestra of words by Walt Whitman.- The poem adaptation :...
, arising from the Delius Festival that year, suffered by being crammed onto six sides and was withdrawn before 1936, probably as a result of the standardisation on 78 revolutions per minute. However it won Decca the loyalty of the baritone
Baritone
Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...
Roy Henderson, who went on to record for them the first complete Dido and Aeneas
Dido and Aeneas
Dido and Aeneas is an opera in a prologue and three acts by the English Baroque composer Henry Purcell to a libretto by Nahum Tate. The first known performance was at Josias Priest's girls' school in London no later than the summer of 1688. The story is based on Book IV of Virgil's Aeneid...
of Purcell
Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell – 21 November 1695), was an English organist and Baroque composer of secular and sacred music. Although Purcell incorporated Italian and French stylistic elements into his compositions, his legacy was a uniquely English form of Baroque music...
with Nancy Evans
Nancy Evans
Nancy Evans OBE was an English mezzo-soprano who had a notable career as a concert and opera singer. She is particularly associated with Benjamin Britten who wrote his song cycle, A Charm of Lullabies, and the role of Nancy in his opera Albert Herring for her.-Biography:Evans was born in Liverpool...
and the Boyd Neel
Boyd Neel
Louis Boyd Neel was an English conductor and academic. He is perhaps best known for revitalizing the genre of the chamber orchestra.-Early years:...
ensemble (Purcell Club, 14 sides, pre-1936); and Henderson's famous pupil Kathleen Ferrier
Kathleen Ferrier
Kathleen Mary Ferrier CBE was an English contralto who achieved an international reputation as a stage, concert and recording artist, with a repertoire extending from folksong and popular ballads to the classical works of Bach, Brahms, Mahler and Elgar...
was recorded and issued by Decca through the period of transition from 78 to LP (1946–1952). Heinrich Schlusnus
Heinrich Schlusnus
Heinrich Schlusnus was Germany's foremost lyric baritone of the period between World War I and World War II. He sang opera and lieder with equal distinction.-Career:...
made important pre-war lied
Lied
is a German word literally meaning "song", usually used to describe romantic songs setting German poems of reasonably high literary aspirations, especially during the nineteenth century, beginning with Carl Loewe, Heinrich Marschner, and Franz Schubert and culminating with Hugo Wolf...
er recordings for Decca.
John Culshaw
John Culshaw
John Royds Culshaw OBE was a pioneering English classical record producer for Decca Records. He recorded a wide range of music, but is best known for masterminding the first studio recording of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, begun in 1958.Largely self-educated musically, Culshaw worked for...
, 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 Decca engineering, took Decca into the first flight of recording companies. His pioneering recording (begun in 1958) of Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
's Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen
Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas by the German composer Richard Wagner . The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied...
conducted by Georg Solti
Georg Solti
Sir Georg Solti, KBE, was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor. He was a major classical recording artist, holding the record for having received the most Grammy Awards, having personally won 31 as a conductor, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to his...
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
Herbert von Karajan
Herbert von Karajan was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor. To the wider world he was perhaps most famously associated with the Berlin Philharmonic, of which he was principal conductor for 35 years...
, Joan Sutherland
Joan Sutherland
Dame Joan Alston Sutherland, OM, AC, DBE was an Australian dramatic coloratura soprano noted for her contribution to the renaissance of the bel canto repertoire from the late 1950s through to the 1980s....
and later Luciano Pavarotti
Luciano Pavarotti
right|thumb|Luciano Pavarotti performing at the opening of the Constantine Palace in [[Strelna]], 31 May 2003. The concert was part of the celebrations for the 300th anniversary of [[St...
were keen to join the company's roster.
Until 1947, American Decca issued British Decca classical music recordings. Afterwards, British Decca took over distribution through its new American subsidiary London Records
London Records
London Records, referred to as London Recordings in logo, is a record label headquartered in the United Kingdom, originally marketing records in the United States, Canada and Latin America from 1947 to 1979, then becoming a semi-independent label....
. American Decca actively re-entered the classical music field in 1950 with distribution deals from Deutsche Grammophon
Deutsche Grammophon
Deutsche Grammophon is a German classical record label which was the foundation of the future corporation to be known as PolyGram. It is now part of Universal Music Group since its acquisition and absorption of PolyGram in 1999, and it is also UMG's oldest active label...
and Parlophone
Parlophone
Parlophone is a record label that was founded in Germany in 1896 by the Carl Lindström Company as Parlophon. The British branch was formed in 1923 as "Parlophone" which developed a reputation in the 1920s as a leading jazz label. It was acquired in 1927 by the Columbia Graphophone Company which...
. American Decca began issuing its own classical music recordings in 1956 when Israel Horowitz
Israel Horowitz (producer)
Israel Horowitz was an American record producer who became an editor and columnist on classical music at Billboard magazine....
joined Decca to head its classical music operations. Among the classical recordings released on Decca's "Gold Label" series were albums by Leroy Anderson
Leroy Anderson
Leroy Anderson was an American composer of short, light concert pieces, many of which were introduced by the Boston Pops Orchestra under the direction of Arthur Fiedler...
, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra
As the fifth oldest orchestra in the United States, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra has a legacy of fine music making as reflected in its performances in historic Music Hall, recordings, and international tours...
conducted by Max Rudolf and guitarist Andrés Segovia
Andrés Segovia
Andrés Torres Segovia, 1st Marquis of Salobreña , known as Andrés Segovia, was a virtuoso Spanish classical guitarist from Linares, Jaén, Andalucia, Spain...
. American Decca shut down its classical music department in 1971. Today Decca makes fewer major classical recordings, but still has a full roster of stars including, Cecilia Bartoli
Cecilia Bartoli
Cecilia Bartoli is an Italian coloratura mezzo-soprano opera singer and recitalist. She is best-known for her interpretation of the music of Mozart and Rossini, as well as for her performances of lesser-known Baroque and classical music...
and Renée Fleming
Renée Fleming
Renée Fleming is an American soprano specializing in opera and lieder. Fleming has a full lyric soprano voice.Fleming has performed coloratura, lyric, and lighter spinto soprano repertoires. She has sung roles in Italian, German, French, Czech, and Russian, aside from her native English. She also...
. Its back catalogue remains one of the glories of classical music. The Solti
Georg Solti
Sir Georg Solti, KBE, was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor. He was a major classical recording artist, holding the record for having received the most Grammy Awards, having personally won 31 as a conductor, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition to his...
Ring was voted best recording of all time by readers of the influential magazine The Gramophone
The Gramophone
Gramophone is a magazine published monthly in London by Haymarket devoted to classical music and jazz, particularly recordings. It was founded in 1923 by the Scottish author Compton Mackenzie...
and Luciano Pavarotti
Luciano Pavarotti
right|thumb|Luciano Pavarotti performing at the opening of the Constantine Palace in [[Strelna]], 31 May 2003. The concert was part of the celebrations for the 300th anniversary of [[St...
remained an exclusive Decca artist throughout his recording career.
ffrr
ffrr (full frequency range recording) was a spin-off devised by Arthur Haddy of British Decca's development during the Second World War of a high fidelityHigh fidelity
High fidelity—or hi-fi—reproduction is a term used by home stereo listeners and home audio enthusiasts to refer to high-quality reproduction of sound or images, to distinguish it from the poorer quality sound produced by inexpensive audio equipment...
hydrophone
Hydrophone
A hydrophone is a microphone designed to be used underwater for recording or listening to underwater sound. Most hydrophones are based on a piezoelectric transducer that generates electricity when subjected to a pressure change...
capable of detecting and cataloging individual German submarines
U-boat
U-boat is the anglicized version of the German word U-Boot , itself an abbreviation of Unterseeboot , and refers to military submarines operated by Germany, particularly in World War I and World War II...
by each one's signature engine noise, 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 frequency range of ffrr was 80–15000 Hz, with a signal-to-noise ratio
Signal-to-noise ratio
Signal-to-noise ratio is a measure used in science and engineering that compares the level of a desired signal to the level of background noise. It is defined as the ratio of signal power to the noise power. A ratio higher than 1:1 indicates more signal than noise...
of 60dB. While Decca's early ffrr releases on 78-rpm discs had some noticeable surface noise, which diminished the effects of the high fidelity sound, the introduction of long-playing records in 1949 made better use of the new technology and set an industry standard that was quickly imitated by Decca's competitors. Nonetheless titles first issued on 78rpm remained in that form in the Decca catalogues into the early 1950s. The ffrr technique became internationally accepted and considered a standard. The Ernest Ansermet
Ernest Ansermet
Ernest Alexandre Ansermet was a Swiss conductor.- Biography :Ansermet was born in Vevey, Switzerland. Although he was a contemporary of Wilhelm Furtwängler and Otto Klemperer, Ansermet represents in most ways a very different tradition and approach from those two musicians. Originally he was a...
recording of Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
's Petrushka was key in the development of full frequency range records and alerting the listening public to high fidelity in 1946.
The LP
The Long-Playing record was launched in the USA in 1948 by Columbia RecordsColumbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
(not connected with the British company
Columbia Graphophone Company
The Columbia Graphophone Company was one of the earliest gramophone companies in the United Kingdom. Under EMI, as Columbia Records, it became a very successful label in the 1950s and 1960s...
of the same name at the time). It enabled recordings to play for up to half an hour without a break, compared with the 3 to 5 minutes playing time of the existing records. The new records were made of vinyl
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
(the old discs were made of brittle shellac
Shellac
Shellac is a resin secreted by the female lac bug, on trees in the forests of India and Thailand. It is processed and sold as dry flakes , which are dissolved in ethyl alcohol to make liquid shellac, which is used as a brush-on colorant, food glaze and wood finish...
), which enabled the ffrr recordings to be transferred to disc very realistically. In both the UK and the US Decca took up the LP promptly and enthusiastically, in 1949, giving the British arm 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 financially.
British Decca recorded high fidelity versions of all the symphonies of Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
except for the ninth, under the personal supervision of the composer, with Sir Adrian Boult
Adrian Boult
Sir Adrian Cedric Boult CH was an English conductor. Brought up in a prosperous mercantile family he followed musical studies in England and at Leipzig, Germany, with early conducting work in London for the Royal Opera House and Sergei Diaghilev's ballet company. His first prominent post was...
and the London Philharmonic Orchestra
London Philharmonic Orchestra
The London Philharmonic Orchestra , based in London, is one of the major orchestras of the United Kingdom, and is based in the Royal Festival Hall. In addition, the LPO is the main resident orchestra of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera...
. Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
conducted recordings of many of his compositions for Decca, from the 1940s through the 1970s; most of these recordings have been reissued on CD
Compact Disc
The Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
.
Stereo (ffss)
The British Decca recording engineers Arthur Haddy, Roy Wallace and Kenneth WilkinsonKenneth Wilkinson
Kenneth Ernest Wilkinson was an audio engineer for Decca Records, known for engineering classical recordings with superb sound quality....
developed in 1954 the famous Decca tree
Decca tree
The Decca Tree is a spaced microphone array most commonly used for orchestral recording.It was originally developed as a sort of stereo A–B recording method adding a center fill. It is the most commonly used spaced-pair technique...
, a stereo
Stereophonic sound
The term Stereophonic, commonly called stereo, sound refers to any method of sound reproduction in which an attempt is made to create an illusion of directionality and audible perspective...
microphone recording system for big orchestras. Decca started recording in stereo on 14–28 May 1954, in Victoria Hall
Victoria Hall (Geneva)
The Victoria Hall is a concert hall located in downtown Geneva, Switzerland.It was built in 1891–1894 by the architect John Camoletti and financed by the consul of England, Daniel Fitzgerald Packenham Barton, who dedicated it to Queen Victoria and gave it to the city of Geneva.Currently, the...
in Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
, the first European record company to do so, only three months after RCA Victor began recording in stereo in the U.S. Decca archives show that Ernest Ansermet
Ernest Ansermet
Ernest Alexandre Ansermet was a Swiss conductor.- Biography :Ansermet was born in Vevey, Switzerland. Although he was a contemporary of Wilhelm Furtwängler and Otto Klemperer, Ansermet represents in most ways a very different tradition and approach from those two musicians. Originally he was a...
and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande
The Orchestre de la Suisse Romande is a Swiss symphony orchestra, based in Geneva at the Victoria Hall...
recorded Tamara by Mily Balakirev
Mily Balakirev
Mily Alexeyevich Balakirev ,Russia was still using old style dates in the 19th century, and information sources used in the article sometimes report dates as old style rather than new style. Dates in the article are taken verbatim from the source and therefore are in the same style as the source...
; the overture to Benvenuto Cellini
Benvenuto Cellini (opera)
Benvenuto Cellini is an opera in two acts with music by Hector Berlioz and libretto by Léon de Wailly and Henri Auguste Barbier. It was the first of Berlioz's operas. The story is loosely based on the memoirs of the Florentine sculptor Benvenuto Cellini. The opera is technically very challenging...
by Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...
; Stenka Razin
Stenka Razin
Stepan Timofeyevich Razin Тимофеевич Разин, ; 1630 – ) was a Cossack leader who led a major uprising against the nobility and Tsar's bureaucracy in South Russia.-Early life:...
by Alexander Glazunov
Alexander Glazunov
Alexander Konstantinovich Glazunov was a Russian composer of the late Russian Romantic period, music teacher and conductor...
; and Anatoly Liadov's Baba-Yaga, Eight Russian Folksongs, and Kikimora
Kikimora
Kikimora is a legendary creature, a female house spirit in Slavic mythology, fin: Kikke Mörkö , sometimes said to be married to the Domovoi...
. These performances were initially issued only in monaural sound; the stereo versions were finally issued in the 1960s as part of the "Stereo Treasury" series. The Decca Stereo format was called (in succession to ffrr), "ffss", i.e. "full frequency stereophonic sound". with most competitors not using stereo until 1957, the new technique was a distinctive feature of Decca's. Even after stereo became standard and into the 1970s, Decca boasted a special, spectacular sound quality, characterised by aggressive use of the highest and lowest frequencies, daring use of tape saturation and out-of-phase sound to convey a lively and impactful hall ambiance, plus considerable bar-to-bar rebalancing by the recording staff of orchestral voices, known as "spotlighting." In the 1960s and 1970s, the company developed its "Phase 4" process which produced even greater sonic impact through even more interventionist engineering techniques. Big Band leader Ted Heath was a early pioneer of the Decca "Phase 4" sound. Decca recorded some quadrophonic masters that were ultimately released only in stereo, due to the commercial war of incompatible formats that brought an early end to quadrophony.
Digital recording & mastering
Starting in the late 1970s, British Decca developed their own digital audioDigital audio
Digital audio is sound reproduction using pulse-code modulation and digital signals. Digital audio systems include analog-to-digital conversion , digital-to-analog conversion , digital storage, processing and transmission components...
recorders used in-house for recording, mixing, editing, and mastering albums. Each recorder consisted of a modified IVC model 826P open-reel 1-inch VTR, connected to a custom codec
Codec
A codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding or decoding a digital data stream or signal. The word codec is a portmanteau of "compressor-decompressor" or, more commonly, "coder-decoder"...
unit with time code capability (using a proprietary time code
Time code
A timecode is a sequence of numeric codes generated at regular intervals by a timing system.- Video and film timecode :...
developed by Decca), as well as outboard DAC
Digital-to-analog converter
In electronics, a digital-to-analog converter is a device that converts a digital code to an analog signal . An analog-to-digital converter performs the reverse operation...
and ADC
Analog-to-digital converter
An analog-to-digital converter is a device that converts a continuous quantity to a discrete time digital representation. An ADC may also provide an isolated measurement...
units connected to the codec unit. The codec recorded audio to tape in 16 bits (although later versions of the system used 20 bits). With the exception of the IVC VTRs (which were modified to Decca's specifications by IVC's UK division in Reading
Reading, Berkshire
Reading is a large town and unitary authority area in England. It is located in the Thames Valley at the confluence of the River Thames and River Kennet, and on both the Great Western Main Line railway and the M4 motorway, some west of London....
), all the electronics for these systems were developed and manufactured in-house by Decca (and by contractors to them as well). These digital systems were used for mastering most of Decca's classical music releases to both LP and CD, and were used well into the late 1990s. After the start of the new century, Decca became actively involved in pioneering a new generation of high-resolution and multi-channel recordings, including, for audio recordings, the SACD "Super Audio Compact Disc" format, and for videos, the DVD-As "Digital Versatile Disc" format. Decca is now routinely mastering new recordings in both SACD and DVD-A formats.
Decca Special Products
Decca Special Products developed a number of products for the audio marketplace. These include:- The Decca Ribbon Tweeter: A series of Decca London phonograph cartridgesMagnetic cartridgeA magnetic cartridge is a transducer used for the playback of gramophone records on a turntable or phonograph. It converts mechanical vibrational energy from a stylus riding in a spiral record groove into an electrical signal that is subsequently amplified and then converted back to sound by a...
: The Decca phono cartridges were a unique design, with fixed magnets and coils. The stylus shaft was composed of the diamond tip, a short piece of soft iron, and an L-shaped cantileverCantileverA cantilever is a beam anchored at only one end. The beam carries the load to the support where it is resisted by moment and shear stress. Cantilever construction allows for overhanging structures without external bracing. Cantilevers can also be constructed with trusses or slabs.This is in...
made of non-magnetic steel. Since the iron was placed very close to the tip (within 1 mm), the motions of the tip could be tracked very accurately. Decca engineers called this "positive scanning". Vertical and lateral compliance was controlled by the shape and thickness of the cantilever. Decca cartridges had a reputation for being very musical; however, early versions required more tracking force than competitive designs - making record wear a concern - The Decca International tone arm: The Decca International tone arms were fluid-dampedDampingIn physics, damping is any effect that tends to reduce the amplitude of oscillations in an oscillatory system, particularly the harmonic oscillator.In mechanics, friction is one such damping effect...
unipivot designs. They were designed to complement the Decca phono cartridges. They would enjoy a brief renaissance in the 21st century as they were almost a drop-in replacement for the pick-up arms of Lenco GL75 record turntables from the 1970s. The arm damping was via a viscous silicon fluid held in a well, and magnetic repelling force supported the arm, and provided anti-skate (bias compensation). New Old Stock arms rapidly sold out by 2008 as vintage hifi enthusiasts sought them for refurbishment projects. - The Decca Record Brush.
Decca Special Products was spun off, and is now known as London Decca
London Decca
London Decca is a manufacturer of phonograph tonearms and pick-up cartridges. The London Decca cartridges may be unique in that they do not employ a "proper" cantilever, neither are they "moving magnet" nor "moving coil" designs. These products are critically acclaimed for their sonic detail....
.
The American branch of Decca also marketed its own line of home audio equipment.
Later history
Music Corporation of America
MCA, Inc. was an American talent agency. Initially starting in the music business, they would next become a dominant force in the film business, and later expanded into the television business...
in 1962, becoming a subsidiary company under MCA. Dissatisfied with American Decca's promotion of British Decca recordings and because American Decca 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
London Records
London Records, referred to as London Recordings in logo, is a record label headquartered in the United Kingdom, originally marketing records in the United States, Canada and Latin America from 1947 to 1979, then becoming a semi-independent label....
beginning in 1947. 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, Atlantic, Imperial and Liberty.
Conversely, British Decca retained a non-reciprocal right to license and issue American Decca recordings in the UK on their Brunswick Records
Brunswick Records
Brunswick Records is a United States based record label. The label is currently distributed by E1 Entertainment.-From 1916:Records under the "Brunswick" label were first produced by the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company...
(US Decca recordings) and Coral Records
Coral Records
Coral Records was a Decca Records subsidiary formed in 1949. It recorded pop artists McGuire Sisters and Teresa Brewer, as well as rock and roller Buddy Holly....
(US Brunswick and Coral recordings) labels; this arrangement continued through 1967 when a UK branch of MCA was established utilising the MCA Records
MCA Records
MCA Records was an American-based record company owned by MCA Inc., which later gave way to the larger MCA Music Entertainment Group , of which MCA Records was still part. MCA Records was absorbed by Geffen Records in 2003...
label, with distribution fluctuating between British Decca and other English companies over time.
In Canada, the Compo Company
Compo Company
Compo Company Ltd. was Canada's first independent record company.The Compo Company was founded in 1918 in Lachine, Quebec by Herbert Berliner, an executive of Berliner Gramophone of Canada and the oldest son of disc record inventor Emile Berliner....
was reorganised into MCA Records (Canada) in 1970. In Taiwan, PolyGram acquired 60% of Linfair Magnetic Sound (founded in 1961) in 1992, and renamed to Decca Records Taiwan. The name remains until 2002, when it decided to sell its 60 percent stake, and changed its name to Linfair Records, making the company independent from Universal Music. In addition to Decca label, Linfair Records also distribute V2 Records' releases, and some independent labels. However, Linfair Records' releases outside Taiwan, will continue to be released internationally via Universal Music.
The Decca name was dropped by MCA in America in 1973 in favour of the MCA Records label. The first-run American Decca label went out with a big bang with its final release, "Drift Away
Drift Away
"Drift Away" is a song written by Mentor Williams and originally recorded by John Henry Kurtz on his 1972 album Reunion. In 1973 the song became Dobie Gray's biggest hit, peaking at number five on the Billboard Hot 100, though it did not enter the charts in the United Kingdom.This song is also a...
" by Dobie Gray
Dobie Gray
Dobie Gray is an African American singer and songwriter, whose musical career has spanned soul, country, pop and musical theater...
in 1973 (label #33057), reaching #5 on the Billboard chart and receiving gold record status.
PolyGram
PolyGram
PolyGram was the name of the major label recording company started by Philips from as a holding company for its music interests in 1945. In 1999 it was sold to Seagram and merged into Universal Music Group.-Hollandsche Decca Distributie , 1929-1950:...
acquired the remains of Decca UK within days of Sir Edward Lewis's death in January 1980. British Decca's pop catalogue was taken over by Polydor Records
Polydor Records
Polydor is a record label owned by Universal Music Group, headquartered in the United Kingdom.-Beginnings:Polydor was originally an independent branch of the Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft. Its name was first used as an export label in 1924, the British and German branches of the Gramophone...
. Ironically, PolyGram descended from British Decca's former Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
distributor Hollandsche Decca Distributie.
In the mid-1990s, MCA Nashville Records revived Decca in the US as a country music label. The Decca label is currently in use by Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group
Universal Music Group is an American music group, the largest of the "big four" record companies by its commanding market share and its multitude of global operations...
worldwide; this is possible because Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
(which officially dropped the MCA name after the Seagram
Seagram
The Seagram Company Ltd. was a large corporation headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, Canada that was the largest distiller of alcoholic beverages in the world. Toward the end of its independent existence it also controlled various entertainment and other business ventures...
buyout in 1997) acquired PolyGram, British Decca's parent company in 1998, thus consolidating Decca trademark ownership. In the US, the Decca country music label was shut down and the London classical label was renamed as it was able to use the Decca name for the first time because of the merger that created Universal Music. In 1999, Decca absorbed Philips Records
Philips Records
Philips Records is a record label that was founded by Dutch electronics company Philips. It was started by "Philips Phonographische Industrie" in 1950. Recordings were made with popular artists of various nationalities and also with classical artists from Germany, France and Holland. Philips also...
to create the Decca Music Group (half of Universal Music Classics Group
Universal Music Classics Group
Decca Label Group is Universal Music Group's classical music record label group based in the United States - in addition to new releases, it also manages the vast classical back catalog of UMG . The Decca Label Group comprises two divisions: Universal Musical Classical and the American operations...
in the USA, with Deutsche Grammophon
Deutsche Grammophon
Deutsche Grammophon is a German classical record label which was the foundation of the future corporation to be known as PolyGram. It is now part of Universal Music Group since its acquisition and absorption of PolyGram in 1999, and it is also UMG's oldest active label...
being the other half).
Today, Decca is a leading label for both classical music and Broadway scores although it is branching out into pop music from established recording stars; its most recent hit was Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville USA
Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville USA
Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville USA is a Grammy nominated album by Boyz II Men that was released on November 13, 2007 by Decca Records. The album was produced by American Idols Randy Jackson and Boyz II Men. David Simone and Winston Simone were Executive Producers for the album...
(2007) by Boyz II Men
Boyz II Men
Boyz II Men is an American R&B vocal group best known for emotional ballads and a cappella harmonies. They are the most successful R&B group of all time, having sold more than albums worldwide. In the 1990s, Boyz II Men found fame on Motown Records as a quartet, but original member Michael McCary...
, which reached #27 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart. In 2007 they won the race to sign English teen jazz sensation Victoria Hart
Victoria Hart
Victoria Hart is a California-born English jazz-pop singer.-Early years:Hart studied vocals at London music school Vocaltech ....
and released her first album 'Whatever Happened to Romance' in July. In December 2007, it was announced that Morrissey
Morrissey
Steven Patrick Morrissey , known as Morrissey, is an English singer and lyricist. He rose to prominence in the 1980s as the lyricist and vocalist of the alternative rock band The Smiths. The band was highly successful in the United Kingdom but broke up in 1987, and Morrissey began a solo career,...
would be joining the Decca roster. In August 2009, it was revealed that American Idol
American Idol
American Idol, titled American Idol: The Search for a Superstar for the first season, is a reality television singing competition created by Simon Fuller and produced by FremantleMedia North America and 19 Entertainment...
alum, Clay Aiken
Clay Aiken
Clayton Holmes "Clay" Aiken is an American singer, songwriter, actor, producer and author who began his rise to fame on the second season of the television program American Idol in 2003. RCA Records offered him a recording contract, and his multi-platinum debut album Measure of a Man was released...
had signed with Decca. As mentioned, it is reentering the American country music scene in 2008. There are two Universal Music label groups now using the Decca name. The Decca Label Group is the US label whereas the London-based Decca Music Group runs the international classical and pop releases by such world famous performers as Andrea Bocelli
Andrea Bocelli
Andrea Bocelli, is an Italian tenor, multi-instrumentalist and classical crossover artist. Born with poor eyesight, he became blind at the age of twelve following a soccer accident....
and Hayley Westenra
Hayley Westenra
Hayley Dee Westenra is a New Zealand soprano, classical crossover artist, songwriter and UNICEF Ambassador. Her first internationally released album, Pure, reached No. 1 on the UK classical charts in 2003 and has sold more than two million copies worldwide...
. The London Records pop label that was established in the UK in 1990, run by Roger Ames, and distributed by PolyGram became part of WEA in 2000 when he was hired to run that company.
It is also the distributing label of POINT Music
Point Music (label)
POINT Music was a record label that was started in 1992 as a joint venture between Philips Classics and Michael Riesman & Philip Glass’s Euphorbia Productions. In 1999, Decca Records became its distributor when it absorbed Philips in the aftermath of the merger that created Universal Music...
, a joint venture between Universal and Philip Glass
Philip Glass
Philip Glass is an American composer. He is considered to be one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century and is widely acknowledged as a composer who has brought art music to the public .His music is often described as minimalist, along with...
's Euphorbia Productions that folded shortly after the merger that created Universal Music. Ironically, the American Decca classical music catalogue is managed by sister Universal label Deutsche Grammophon
Deutsche Grammophon
Deutsche Grammophon is a German classical record label which was the foundation of the future corporation to be known as PolyGram. It is now part of Universal Music Group since its acquisition and absorption of PolyGram in 1999, and it is also UMG's oldest active label...
. They include the recordings of guitarist Andrés Segovia
Andrés Segovia
Andrés Torres Segovia, 1st Marquis of Salobreña , known as Andrés Segovia, was a virtuoso Spanish classical guitarist from Linares, Jaén, Andalucia, Spain...
. Before Deutsche Grammophon founded its own American branch in 1969, it had a distribution deal with American Decca until 1962 when distribution switched to MGM Records
MGM Records
MGM Records was a record label started by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio in 1946, for the purpose of releasing soundtrack albums of their musical films. Later it became a pop label, lasting into the 1970s...
. Éditions de l'Oiseau-Lyre
Éditions de l'Oiseau-Lyre
Éditions de l'Oiseau-Lyre is a music publishing company financed and established in Paris in 1932 by Louise Dyer , an Australian pianist and philanthropist....
is a wholly owned subsidiary specialising in European classical music of the 15th to 19th centuries. American Decca's jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
catalogue is managed by GRP Records
GRP Records
GRP Records is an American jazz record company, owned by Universal Music Group and operates through its Verve Music Group. The company's name has had different meanings. In its early days, it stood for "Grusin/Rosen Productions," after the founders...
, an imprint of Verve Records
Verve Records
Verve Records is an American jazz record label now owned by Universal Music Group. It was founded by Norman Granz in 1956, absorbing the catalogues of his earlier labels, Clef Records and Norgran Records , and material which had been licensed to Mercury previously.-Jazz and folk origins:The Verve...
. The American Decca rock/pop catalogue is managed by Geffen Records
Geffen Records
Geffen Records is an American record label, owned by Universal Music Group, and operated as one third of UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M label group.-Beginnings:...
. The Decca Broadway
Decca Broadway
Decca Broadway Records is an American record label specializing in musical theater recordings founded in 1999 by Decca Records and is a unit of Universal Music Group....
imprint is used for both newly recorded musical theatre
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
songs and Universal Music Group's vast catalogues of musical theatre recordings from record labels UMG and predecessor companies acquired over the years.
On January 10, 2011, Universal Music Group, which owns the masters to Decca records, announced that it was donating 200,000 of its master recordings from the 1920s to the 1940s to the United States Library of Congress. The collection of master recordings will be cleaned and digitized. Included in this group are Bing Crosby's original recording of 'White Christmas' and thousands more by Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Judy Garland, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, the Andrews Sisters and other famous and lesser-known musicians who recorded during this time period. Because of this transaction, once the Library has organized and cleaned the collection, the public will eventually have some degree of access to thousands of recordings that have been commercially unavailable for decades. According to the Los Angeles Times, "[a]s part of the agreement between UMG and the library, Universal retains ownership of the recording copyrights and the right to exploit the cleaned-up and digitized files for commercial purposes."
See also
- Decca StudiosDecca StudiosDecca Studios was a recording facility in Broadhurst Gardens, West Hampstead, North London, England.Famously, The Beatles failed their audition with Decca Records at the location on 1 January 1962, and subsequently signed with Parlophone instead....
, London, England
Category: Decca Records artists
Category: Decca Records albums
Category: Decca Records singles
- List of artists under the Decca Records label
- List of record labels
- The Decca audition by The BeatlesThe BeatlesThe Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
in 1962 - Point MusicPoint Music (label)POINT Music was a record label that was started in 1992 as a joint venture between Philips Classics and Michael Riesman & Philip Glass’s Euphorbia Productions. In 1999, Decca Records became its distributor when it absorbed Philips in the aftermath of the merger that created Universal Music...
- Decca BroadwayDecca BroadwayDecca Broadway Records is an American record label specializing in musical theater recordings founded in 1999 by Decca Records and is a unit of Universal Music Group....
- MCA RecordsMCA RecordsMCA Records was an American-based record company owned by MCA Inc., which later gave way to the larger MCA Music Entertainment Group , of which MCA Records was still part. MCA Records was absorbed by Geffen Records in 2003...