Decca Records is a British
record label established in
1929 by
Edward
Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; later the
link with the British company was broken for several decades.
Notable for its development of recording methods (in the United
Kingdom) and for the development of original cast albums (in the
United States) both wings are now part of the
Universal Music Group, which is owned
by
Vivendi, a media conglomerate
headquartered in France.
Label
The name "Decca" dates back to a portable
gramophone called the "Decca Dulcephone" patented
in 1914 by musical instrument makers Barnett Samuel and Sons. That
company was eventually renamed 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." 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
.
Popular music
- For a list of artists using the Decca records label see
List of
Artists under the Decca Records label.
Decca bought out the bankrupt UK branch of
Brunswick Records in 1932, which added
such stars as
Bing Crosby and
Al Jolson to its roster. Decca also bought out the
Melotone and Edison Bell record
companies. By 1939, Decca and
EMI were the only
record companies in the UK.
In 1934, a United States branch of Decca was launched. Decca became
a major player in the depressed American record market thanks to
its roster of popular artists, particularly Bing Crosby, and the
shrewd management of former US Brunswick General Manager
Jack Kapp.
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.)
Artists signed to Decca in the 1930s and 1940s included
Louis Armstrong,
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 subsequenrtly
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.
Al Jolson, who had recorded for the
Victor Talking Machine,
Columbia Records, and
Brunswick Records, made a series of
recordings for Decca from 1946 until his death in 1950, following
the success of
Columbia Pictures
Technicolor film biography
The Jolson Story (1946).
In 1942, Decca released the first recording of "
White Christmas" by
Bing Crosby. He recorded another version of the
song in 1947 for Decca, which became the best-selling single ever
at that time (and remained so until 1997).
In 1943,
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 utilizing
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, and the influence of these releases
influenced the recording of theatrical shows in U.S continues - in
Decca's home country, the UK original cast albums had been a
fixture for years. Columbia
Records followed with theater recording albums, starting with
the 1946 revival of
Show Boat. In
1947,
RCA Victor in released an original
cast album of
Brigadoon. By the
1950s, many recording companies released Broadway show albums
recorded by their original casts.
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.
During the 1950s, American Decca released a number of soundtrack
recordings of popular motion pictures, notably
Michael 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.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 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.
Ironically, 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. Singer Elkie Brooks recorded a version of the
Etta James song "Something Got a Hold on Me", released on Decca in
1964.
British Decca lost a key source for American records when
Atlantic Records switched British
distribution to
Polydor Records in
1966 in order for Atlantic to gain access to British recording
artists which they didn't have under Decca distribution.
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.
Mendl was sidelined by a heart attack in 1979; during his
convalescence Sir Edward Lewis died and Decca was taken over by
PolyGram, and when he returned to work he discovered that his
office had been cleaned out and his diaries—which would have
provided a vital insight into the company's history—had been thrown
away.
The company's fortunes declined steadily 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. The Rolling Stones left the
label in 1970, and other artists followed. Decca's deals with
numerous other record labels began to fall apart;
RCA Records, 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.
Although Decca had set up the first of the British "progressive"
labels,
Deram Records, in 1966, by the
time the punk era set in 1977, Decca had become known primarily as
a classical label which had only sporadic pop success with such
acts as
John Miles, novelty
creation
Father Abraham and
The Smurfs, and productions by longtime
Decca associate
Jonathan King. Decca
sadly became a label of last resort, dependent on re-releases from
its back catalogue. Contemporary signings, such as the pre-stardom
Adam Ant and
Slaughter & The Dogs, were
firmly second division and second rate when compared to likes of
PolyGram,
CBS, EMI, and newcomer
Virgin's rosters of hitmakers.
Country music
Short-lived Decca Records country
music label logo.
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.
Classical music
In classical music, Decca had a long way to go from its modest
beginnings to catching up with the established
HMV and
Columbia labels (later merged
as
EMI). Decca's emergence as a major classical
label may be attributed to three concurrent events: the 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.
Decca logo used for classical music
releases.
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. American Decca made a modest number of
classical recordings released with distinctive gold labels,
primarily with the
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra
conducted by
Max Rudolf and guitarist
Andres Segovia.
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
lieder recordings for
Decca.
FFRR
FFRR (full frequency range recording) was a spin-off devised by
Arthur Haddy of Decca's development during the Second World War of
a
high fidelity hydrophone capable of detecting and cataloguing
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
Igor
Stravinsky'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 Records (not connected with the
British company of the
same name at the time). It enabled recordings to play for up to
half an hour without a break, compared with the three minutes
playing time of the existing records. The new records were made of
vinyl (the old discs were made of
shellac), which enabled the FFRR recordings to be
transferred to disc very realistically. In the UK Decca took up the
LP promptly and enthusiastically, in 1949, giving the company an
enormous advantage over EMI, which for some years tried to stick
exclusively to the old format, thereby forfeiting competitive
advantage to Decca, both artistically and financially.
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.
Stereo (FFSS)
The Decca recording engineers Arthur Haddy, Roy Wallace and
Kenneth Wilkinson 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
Tamar 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. In the 1960s and 1970s, the company developed its "Phase
4" process which produced even greater sonic impact. 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, Decca developed their own
digital audio 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
Decca Special Products developed a number of ground-breaking
products for the audio marketplace. These included:
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
cantilever 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 arms were
fluid-damped 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.
Decca Special Products was spun off, and is now known as
London Decca.
John Culshaw
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.
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.
Later history
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.
The American branch of Decca functioned separately for many years
as it was sold off during World War II; it bought
Universal Pictures in 1952, and
eventually merged with
MCA in 1962, becoming a
subsidiary company under MCA. 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 utilizing the
MCA Records label, with distribution fluctuating
between British Decca and other English companies over time.
In Canada, the
Compo Company was
reorganized into MCA Records (Canada) in 1970.
[20759]
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.
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
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.
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 Universal Music. However, the MCA Classics
recordings are distributed by sister Universal label
Deutsche Grammophon. They include the
recordings of guitarist
Andrés
Segovia.
[20760] Before Deutsche Grammophon founded its own
American branch in 1969, it had a distribution deal with American
Decca.
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
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 theater recordings from record
labels UMG and predecessor companies acquired over the years.
It should be noted, however, that 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.
See also
Notes
References
- - See the chapter on "Getting on Record", pp. 62-75, about
the early record industry and Fred
Gaisberg and Walter Legge and FFRR
(Full Frequency Range Recording).
External links
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