On 1/10/2011 12:41 PM, Tom Fine wrote:
> Working off memory here, fact-checking much appreciated!
Your description is pretty accurate. U.S. Decca was founded by Jack
Kapp of Brunswick with seed money from British Decca, but were always
independent of each other from the very beginning. Both were mainly pop
labels at the time and a few masters changed hands in the 1930s -- some
of the American Decca masters being issued in England using the
Brunswick label even into the 1950s. By the end of the 30s British
masters were rarely seen on American Decca and the financial ties had
already been broken. British Decca set up a NY office after the war and
started to import classical pressings using the London label. As I
said, American Decca masters still showed up in England on British Decca
pressings on the Brunswick label, and British Decca even started
pressing RCA Victor recordings on the dogless RCA label after EMI bought
Capitol in the mid-50s. (Elvis started out in England on HMV but was
soon shifted to RCA!) So the interrelationships among the different
labels, label names, and trademarks have been very complicated over the
years.
Mike Biel [log in to unmask]
>
> I think this is a stretch. What's now called Universal Music Group
> grew out of MCA-Universal, which was consolidated and then sold to the
> Japanese Matsutshita and then sold to a group that included Seagram
> scion Edgar Bronfman. This entity then merged with Vivendi, which had
> bought Polygram from Philips a few years earlier. MCA did conglomerate
> American Decca (and ABC-Paramount and others), but I don't think MCA
> the music company stems directly from American Decca.
>
> After Universal and Vivendi merged, Bronfman was forced out. He now
> runs Warner Music Group, which I think is a stand-alone company.
>
> As for American Decca, I think British Decca lost control of its
> American affiliate during the Depression. British Decca's recordings
> were indeed released on the London label in the USA, and in fact so
> were CD's that were manufactured in the USA until after the
> Universal-Vivendi merger. British Decca was acquired by
> Philips-Polygram in the 70's or 80's, forgot exactly when.
>
> I think the American Decca label was pretty much dormant by the end of
> the LP era. MCA had an active reissue program from the Decca vaults
> on-going by the early 1990's. MCA had conglomerated a bunch of small
> labels including ABC-Paramount, Chess/Argo/Checker, Westminster,
> Command, Impulse, Duke-Peacock, etc. MCA also reissued some of their
> classical material as discounted 2-fers, sometimes paring Command and
> Westminster material, as an example. I don't recall if any of the
> American Decca classical material was reissued on CD by MCA.
>
> Finally, there were some American Decca classical recordings in the LP
> era. Plus many Broadway soundtracks and jazz releases under the Cadet
> and Decca labels. The jazz holdings ended up under the Verve Music
> Group, Universal had a seprate Broadway reissue program for a while
> but I'm not sure where all that ended up, I think under Decca Music
> Group, and all of the Universal classical holdings ended up under
> what's called Decca Classics.
>
> -- Tom Fine
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard L. Hess"
> <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Monday, January 10, 2011 11:30 AM
> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Decca US / was Your taxpayer dollars being
> given to the Universal Music Group.
>
>
>> From the lengthy article posted a few moments ago, I find:
>>
>> On 2011-01-10 11:14 AM, Karl Miller wrote:
>>> The Universal Music Group, today the largest group of labels in the
>>> beleaguered recording industry, began its life in 1934 as Decca
>>> Records, the American affiliate of the British recording company of
>>> the same name.
>> I am so confused by this. If this is the case, why were all the Decca
>> (UK) recordings sold on the "London" label in the U.S.?
>>
>> Maybe everyone but me knows this, and if so, I apologize for my
>> ignorance.
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Richard
>>
>> --
>> Richard L. Hess
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