Pickwick Records
Encyclopedia
Pickwick Records was an American
record label
and distributor known for its budget album releases of sound-alike
recordings, bargain bin
reissue
s and repackagings under the brands Design, Bravo (later changing their name to International Award), Hurrah, Grand Prix, and children's records on the Cricket and Happy Time labels.
The label is also known for distributing music by smaller labels like Sonny Lester's Groove Mechant, Chart Records and the Swedish label Sonet Records
(for which it distributed late-1960s recordings by Bill Haley & His Comets
in Canada and the US). They also issued records from Britain's Hallmark Records
label.
, whose first business was a prerecorded greeting card
service that in 1946 turned into Voco Records, a label of children's records. In 1957, after successfully marketing their Cricket children's label of 78 and 45rpm records, Pickwick entered the LP
market with low-priced records, beginning with their Design label. The albums from the 1960s into the early 1970s bore the "Pickwick/33" imprint.
Singer-songwriter
Lou Reed
once worked as a staff songwriter
for Pickwick Records, and gained experience in their small recording studio
. Several of Pickwick's soundalike albums from 1964-65 feature Reed as an uncredited session musician
. Two of his songs, "Cycle Annie" (credited to The Beachnuts) and "You're Driving Me Insane" (as The Roughnecks), both appeared on the Soundsville! compilation in 1965. "The Ostrich" and "Sneaky Pete", two earlier songs by Reed, united him with John Cale
, leading to their founding the Velvet Underground.
Amos Heilicher and his brother Daniel Heilicher merged their Musicland
retail chain with Pickwick International in the late 1960s. Capitol Records
had an early interest in Pickwick, and many of its artists had items on Pickwick; however, Capitol sold its share in the company in 1970. Pickwick was sold in 1977 to American Can Company, who relocated their corporate headquarters from Long Island City, New York to Minneapolis, Minnesota.
In the 1970s the label changed direction, and began reissuing LPs that had been deleted from catalogs of the major record labels, in particular the RCA Records
subsidiary RCA Camden
, itself a reissue label. Besides the RCA Camden catalog, the company also put out an edited reissue of Elvis Presley
's soundtrack album
to Frankie and Johnny, and a two-LP set of mostly movie songs entitled Double Dynamite. After Presley's death in August 1977, RCA Victor began reissuing Presley's catalog, and Pickwick's Presley series ended.
Pickwick also reissued numerous LPs from the Motown catalog during the 1970s. On many of these albums, the cover art was changed, and/or the track listing was altered (with two or more songs deleted). In the early 1980s Motown began re-releasing its own catalog albums, thus ending Pickwick's series.
The company also started subsidiary labels P.I.P & De-Lite
, to issue original material. De-Lite hit it big in 1974 and 1975 with million-selling single
s & albums by funk band Kool & The Gang
. P.I.P had a couple of big dance club hits with "7-6-5-4-3-2-1 (Blow Your Whistle)" and "Drive My Car" by The Gary Toms Empire in 1975.
Pickwick's assets were purchased by PolyGram
Records in the late 1970s. PolyGram maintained the De-Lite Records label for releases by Kool & the Gang, who experienced a second wave of success after the addition of new lead singer J.T. Taylor, beginning with 1979's "Ladies Night". Polygram later did away with the De-lite imprint, and subsequent Kool & The Gang records were issued by PolyGram's Mercury
label.
Pickwick's catalog (including the entire De-lite/Mercury catalog of Kool & The Gang) is now owned by Universal Music, which merged with PolyGram in 1998.
The Hallmark name has since been revived as a budget record label, owned by the Pickwick Group.
Pickwick was well known for its "sound-a-like" records which would often claim to be original, but had nothing more than in-house bands or singers covering. When they released The Everly's in 1984, all the songs were in fact covered by a singing duo called "Twice Divided".
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
record label
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,...
and distributor known for its budget album releases of sound-alike
Sound-alike
A sound-alike is a recording intended to imitate the sound of a popular record, the style of a popular recording artist, or a current musical trend; the term also refers to the artists who perform on such recordings. In the voice-over world, it may also refer to those who recreate the voice and...
recordings, bargain bin
Bargain bin
A bargain bin refers to an unsorted selection of merchandise, particularly softwares, tools and CDs, which have been discounted in price. Reasons for the discount can range from the closure of a production company to a steep decline in an item's popularity in the aftermath of a fad or scandal....
reissue
Reissue
A reissue is the repeated issue of a published work. In common usage, it refers to an album which has been released at least once before and is released again, sometimes with alterations or additions....
s and repackagings under the brands Design, Bravo (later changing their name to International Award), Hurrah, Grand Prix, and children's records on the Cricket and Happy Time labels.
The label is also known for distributing music by smaller labels like Sonny Lester's Groove Mechant, Chart Records and the Swedish label Sonet Records
Sonet Records
Sonet Records is a jazz record label operating as an imprint of Universal Music Sweden. It was founded in Sweden in 1956.Sonet Records was established by Sven Lindholm and Gunnar Bergström, who managed the label into the 1980s. Dag Haeggqvist, the owner of Gazell Records, became an executive of the...
(for which it distributed late-1960s recordings 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...
in Canada and the US). They also issued records from Britain's Hallmark Records
Hallmark Records
Hallmark Records is a British record label. It was founded in the 1960s and recently revived. The revived company has since become a major publisher of budget CDs in the UK, issuing both public domain and copyrighted material. The company has also re-issued some of its albums from the 1960s and...
label.
History
Pickwick Records (originally formed as Pickwick Sales Corporation, later Pickwick International) was founded in 1950 by Cy LeslieCy Leslie
Seymour Marvin "Cy" Leslie was the founder of Pickwick Records, and the first president and founder of MGM/UA Home Entertainment Group. Pickwick Records aimed to make music more affordable, and carried such artists as Elvis Presley at various times...
, whose first business was a prerecorded greeting card
Greeting card
A greeting card is an illustrated, folded card featuring an expression of friendship or other sentiment. Although greeting cards are usually given on special occasions such as birthdays, Christmas or other holidays, they are also sent to convey thanks or express other feeling. Greeting cards,...
service that in 1946 turned into Voco Records, a label of children's records. In 1957, after successfully marketing their Cricket children's label of 78 and 45rpm records, Pickwick entered the LP
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...
market with low-priced records, beginning with their Design label. The albums from the 1960s into the early 1970s bore the "Pickwick/33" imprint.
Singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriter
Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...
Lou Reed
Lou Reed
Lewis Allan "Lou" Reed is an American rock musician, songwriter, and photographer. He is best known as guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of The Velvet Underground, and for his successful solo career, which has spanned several decades...
once worked as a staff songwriter
Songwriter
A songwriter is an individual who writes both the lyrics and music to a song. Someone who solely writes lyrics may be called a lyricist, and someone who only writes music may be called a composer...
for Pickwick Records, and gained experience in their small recording studio
Recording studio
A recording studio is a facility for sound recording and mixing. Ideally both the recording and monitoring spaces are specially designed by an acoustician to achieve optimum acoustic properties...
. Several of Pickwick's soundalike albums from 1964-65 feature Reed as an uncredited session musician
Session musician
Session musicians are instrumental and vocal performers, musicians, who are available to work with others at live performances or recording sessions. Usually such musicians are not permanent members of a musical ensemble and often do not achieve fame in their own right as soloists or bandleaders...
. Two of his songs, "Cycle Annie" (credited to The Beachnuts) and "You're Driving Me Insane" (as The Roughnecks), both appeared on the Soundsville! compilation in 1965. "The Ostrich" and "Sneaky Pete", two earlier songs by Reed, united him with John Cale
John Cale
John Davies Cale, OBE is a Welsh musician, composer, singer-songwriter and record producer who was a founding member of the experimental rock band The Velvet Underground....
, leading to their founding the Velvet Underground.
Amos Heilicher and his brother Daniel Heilicher merged their Musicland
Musicland
The Musicland Group, Inc. was an entertainment company which ran Sam Goody, Suncoast Motion Picture Company and the Media Play Superstore Chain. Musicland filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in January 2006. Trans World Entertainment which runs FYE, and sells CDs, DVDs, and video games, purchased...
retail chain with Pickwick International in the late 1960s. Capitol Records
Capitol Records
Capitol Records is a major United States based record label, formerly located in Los Angeles, but operating in New York City as part of Capitol Music Group. Its former headquarters building, the Capitol Tower, is a major landmark near the corner of Hollywood and Vine...
had an early interest in Pickwick, and many of its artists had items on Pickwick; however, Capitol sold its share in the company in 1970. Pickwick was sold in 1977 to American Can Company, who relocated their corporate headquarters from Long Island City, New York to Minneapolis, Minnesota.
In the 1970s the label changed direction, and began reissuing LPs that had been deleted from catalogs of the major record labels, in particular the 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...
subsidiary RCA Camden
RCA Camden
RCA Camden was a budget record label of recordings, first introduced by RCA Victor.-History:The label was named after Camden, New Jersey, original home to the Victor Talking Machine Company, later RCA Records. It specialized in reissuing historic classical and popular recordings from the RCA catalog...
, itself a reissue label. Besides the RCA Camden catalog, the company also put out an edited reissue of 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 soundtrack album
Soundtrack album
A soundtrack album is any album that incorporates music directly recorded from the soundtrack of a particular feature film or television program. In some cases, not all the tracks from the movie are included in the album; however there are rare cases of songs in the trailers that do not appear in...
to Frankie and Johnny, and a two-LP set of mostly movie songs entitled Double Dynamite. After Presley's death in August 1977, RCA Victor began reissuing Presley's catalog, and Pickwick's Presley series ended.
Pickwick also reissued numerous LPs from the Motown catalog during the 1970s. On many of these albums, the cover art was changed, and/or the track listing was altered (with two or more songs deleted). In the early 1980s Motown began re-releasing its own catalog albums, thus ending Pickwick's series.
The company also started subsidiary labels P.I.P & De-Lite
De-Lite Records
De-Lite Records whose formal name was De-Lite Recorded Sound Corporation was a record label specializing in R&B music. It was founded in 1969 by music producer Gene Redd and one of the label's first signings was Kool and the Gang whose self-titled instrumental was their first big R&B hit in that...
, to issue original material. De-Lite hit it big in 1974 and 1975 with million-selling single
Single (music)
In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...
s & albums by funk band Kool & The Gang
Kool & the Gang
Kool & the Gang are an American jazz, R&B, soul, and funk group, originally formed as the Jazziacs in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1964.They went through several musical phases during the course of their recording career, starting out with a purist jazz sound, then becoming practitioners of R&B and...
. P.I.P had a couple of big dance club hits with "7-6-5-4-3-2-1 (Blow Your Whistle)" and "Drive My Car" by The Gary Toms Empire in 1975.
Pickwick's assets were purchased by 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:...
Records in the late 1970s. PolyGram maintained the De-Lite Records label for releases by Kool & the Gang, who experienced a second wave of success after the addition of new lead singer J.T. Taylor, beginning with 1979's "Ladies Night". Polygram later did away with the De-lite imprint, and subsequent Kool & The Gang records were issued by PolyGram's Mercury
Mercury Records
Mercury Records is a record label operating as a standalone company in the UK and as part of the Island Def Jam Motown Music Group in the US; both are subsidiaries of Universal Music Group. There is also a Mercury Records in Australia, which is a local artist and repertoire division of Universal...
label.
Pickwick's catalog (including the entire De-lite/Mercury catalog of Kool & The Gang) is now owned by Universal Music, which merged with PolyGram in 1998.
The Hallmark name has since been revived as a budget record label, owned by the Pickwick Group.
Promotional material
From the liner notes featured on virtually all 1965-69 Design releases:Criticism
In the early 1980s, Pickwick manufactured so-called "audiophile" pressings on heavy vinyl (usually 180-240 grams). However, some audio aficionados found sound quality in these pressings inferior to that of normal vinyl. These LPs were quickly deleted and taken off the shelves to a point where some record collectors are willing to pay fortunes for these pressings. In 2003, a copy of The Beach Boys Greatest Hits sold for just over $2,500 at auction, and in 2008 a copy of James Bond—The Themes (which was, in actual fact, cover singers, a purely sound-a-like record) sold for $4,000 in mint-sealed condition.Pickwick was well known for its "sound-a-like" records which would often claim to be original, but had nothing more than in-house bands or singers covering. When they released The Everly's in 1984, all the songs were in fact covered by a singing duo called "Twice Divided".
See also
- List of record labels
- Drugstore recordsDrugstore RecordsBudget albums were low-priced vinyl record LPS released during the 1950s to 1970s consisting either of previously released material or material recorded especially for the line Budget albums (also known as drugstore records) were low-priced vinyl record LPS released during the 1950s to 1970s...
- http://forbiddeneye.com/labels/pickwick.html
External links
- Pickwick Group UK official site
- The Pickwick Story from BSN Pubs
- American Pickwick Records 1965 advert http://books.google.com.au/books?id=EEwEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA150-IA2&lpg=PA150-IA2&dq=%22parris+mitchell+strings%22&source=bl&ots=WZ1bPtDnZj&sig=tYA5z1gNOI-PMYR7bIAKgyqd5HU&hl=en&ei=HMHLS735PJT-sgOOlOiBAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAUQ6AEwADgU#v=onepage&q=%22parris%20mitchell%20strings%22&f=false