COLUMBIA RECORDS (AUSTRALIA)

Category:	British-owned record label
Date:	1920s? - 1972
Head office:	Sydney, NSW
Ownership:	- subsidiary of Columbia Graphophone (UK) until 1931 - subsidiary of EMI (Australia) Limited, 1931 - present
Australian licencee for:	Columbia USA, Cameo (US), Parkway (US), MGM (US), Regal Zonophone (UK) until 1931 , Laurie (UK), Mercury (UK)

History

Columbia -- the world's oldest surviving record label -- is known by its famous "Magic Notes" logo. The trademark has a long has a complex history, shaped by a long and convoluted series of takeovers, mergers and divestitures which saw the ownership of major US and UK labels change many times. By the end of WWII most of the major labels had become subsidiaries of the so-called "Big Three" three recording companies -- CBS, RCA and EMI. 

From the early 1931 until the 1970s there were in fact two Columbia labels. In England and Commonwealth countries (including Australia, New Zealand and India) Columbia was a subsidary label of the British EMI group, but in the Americas and Japan the name was owned and operated by CBS Records, the recording division of the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) media group. Even more confusingly, Columbia Records had been one of the original partners in CBS, but it cashed out soon after, leaving only the name.

Columbia originated with the Columbia Phonograph Company, a licencee of the North American Phonograph Company, which was set up in the 1880s to control and licence the phonograph patents registered by inventors Charles Sumner Tainter, Chichester A. Bell and Thomas A. Edison.

In 1891 Columbia Phonograph was the first company to offer a catalogue of its phonographs and cylinders. By 1895 it was manufacturing hundreds of cylinders daily, and by the turn of the century it had a catalogue of more than 5000 titles. However by 1901, Emile Berliner's "Gram-O-Phone" disc had established itself as the primary consumer medium, and Columbia began pressing its own discs that year. In the spring of 1903, the company began recording stars of the Metropolitan Opera in New York. In 1904 Columbia introduced the first discs to play at 78 rpm, although this did not become the industry standard until 1925. Columbia was also among the first to produce the new double-sided disc, with recordings stamped on both sides.

In 1912 Columbia ened its cylinder production and in 1913 it became the Columbia Graphophone Company. In 1916, Columbia began recording symphony orchestras, notably the Chicago and New York orchestras. In 1917 the Original Dixieland Jass Band of New Orleans went to Columbia Studios in New York, where they recorded "The Darktown Strutters Ball", the first jazz record to achieve mainstream popularity in the USA. By 1919, Americans were buying more than twenty-five million 78 rpm records every year, and the industry was reporting annual sales of $150 million.

Columbia originated as the Columbia Phonograph Co., which was established in 1889 and which operated in the Washington DC-Baltimore area, selling record players under licence from the American Graphophone Company and the North American Phonograph Company. In 1893 the president of Columbia acquired Control of the American Graphophone Company acquired the controlling interest in American Graphophone and in 1895 the two companies were effectively consolidated, with the American Graphophone handling development and manufacturing and Columbia handling distribution and sales.

In 1920 The Gramophone Company (UK) was taken over by the US Victor Talking Machine Company. In 1922 Columbia Phonograph (USA) sold its UK subsidiary Columbia Graphophone, but then in 1925 Columbia Graphophone UK bought its ailing former parent for US$2.5 million. In 1926 Columbia acquired Odeon Records and Parlophone Records and in 1927 the American company officially registered the Masterworks label for its classical recordings.

In 1926, Columbia took over famous OKeh label (owned by the Otto Heinemann Phonograph Corporation), whose catalogue included many top jazz and blues artists. In 1927, the Columbia Graphophone UK acquired a controlling interest in the German Carl Lindstrǒm Company, which owned the Parlophone label. In 1929 RCA took over Victor, thereby also gaining a controlling interest in The Gramophone Co. The takeover also gave RCA the American rights to the "Nipper" trademark, which it used for its new RCA Victor label.

The next major change came in 1931, when The Gramophone Company and its subsidiary label Parlophone merged with the Columbia Graphophone Company. The new Anglo-American group was incorporated as Electric & Music Industries Ltd. At this point RCA had a majority shareholding in the new company, giving RCA boss David Sarnoff a seat on the EMI board. However, EMI was forced to sell Columbia US due to anti-trust concerns raised by its American competitors. By this time the record industry had been hit hard by the Depression, and in 1934 a much-diminished Columbia was acquired by for just $70,500 by by ARC-BRC (American Record Company-Brunswick Record Company), which also took over the OKeh label.

RCA sold its stake in EMI in 1935 although, confusingly, RCA retained the American rights to the "Nipper" logo (which was used by EMI's HMV label in other countries) because of its ownership of Victor. In 1938 ARC-Brunswick was taken over by CBS, which then operated the Columbia trademark as its flagship label in the the Americas and and Japan. However EMI retained the rights to the Columbia name in most other territories (including the UK, Australia and New Zealand) and it continued operating the label until 1972, when it was replaced by the EMI Records imprint. In 1990, following a series of major takeovers that saw CBS Records acquired by Sony, EMI sold its remaining rights to the Columbia name and it is now operated exclusively throughout the world by CBS Sony.

The Columbia label in Australasia

Columbia and its sister labels HMV and Parlophone were among the most successful and popular labels in Australasia, yet there is suprisingly little information about their history. It is known Columbia Graphophone UK established an Australian subsidiary sometime in the early 1920s, and discographical information published on the New Zealand 78 Records website confirms that the company was manufacturing records in Sydney as early as 1926.

Several early references to the company are contained in items held by the National Library of New Zealand. These include a Columbia Records catalogue for 1923-24, which includes listings "up to and including Supplement No. 79", indicating that the company had already been trading for some time when the catalogue was published. The NLNZ also holds promotional pamphlets dated ca. 1930, which advertise Columbia recordings of Maori traditional music and song. These leaflets, and sound recordings held by the library indicate that Columbia was recording Maori traditional music and New Zealand popular music by the late 1920s. A leaflet advertising Maori music on the Parlophone label indicates that these particular titles were recorded after 1926, when Parlophone was taken over by Columbia Graphophone.

The history of the business relationship between Columbia Graphophone (Australia) and The Gramophone Co. / EMI (Australia) is still unclear. In 1931 Columbia Graphophone (UK), Parlophone and The Gramophone Company UK were merged to create Electrical and Musical Industries (EMI), and it seems likely that the Australian divisions of The Gramophone Co. and Columbia both became wholly-owned subsidiaries of EMI UK at this point. However the Australian division of EMI continued to trade as The Gramophone Co. (Australia) Ltd until 1949, when it became EMI (Australia) Ltd. The New Zealand operation continued to trade as His Masters Voice (NZ) Ltd into the 1950s and possibly later. 

Labels of Australian Columbia 78rpm records from the 1950s carry the credit "Manufactured for Columbia Graphophone (Australia) Pty Ltd", indicating that Columbia was still trading under that name in the late 1950s, but by the time of the release of Johnny Ashcroft's Little Boy Lost" in 1960, the label bore the credit "Made in Australia by EMI (Australia) Ltd". It appears that Columbia Graphophone (Australia) and the Columbia label were formally incororpated into EMI (Australia) ca. 1958, presumably at about the same time that EMI closed down the Regal Zonophone label, discontinued its production of 78rpm records and switched to the new vinyl microgroove format.

EMI dominated the Australasian music industry in the post-war period, and it exerted a tremendous influence over the direction and development of music in Australia. In the 1950s and early 1960s, following the deactivation of the old Regal Zonophone label, Columbia took over a number of Australian artists who had reocrded for RZ, notably country singers Slim Dusty, Reg Lindsay, Smoky Dawson, Buster Noble, Rick & Thel Carey and Chad Morgan; in the 1960s Columbia Australia also gave local release to singles by UK-based Australian performers including Rolf Harris, Frank Ifield and The Seekers.

Producer Ron Wills (who died in 2002) was one of EMI's staff producers during this period and he is believed to have been the A&R manager of Columbia from the late 1950s until he moved to RCA in early 1965. Ron 'discovered' and signed the young Frank Ifield to the label, and among his other production credits for Columbia are recordings by Slim Dusty and a string of successful folk albums by singer-musician-actor 

. Other notable artists released on Columbia in this period included rising young guitar duo The De Kroo Brothers, harmonica virtuoso Horrie Dargie (who later founded the Go!! Records label), Buddy Williams, pioneering Sydney rockers Alan Dale & The Casuals, jazz legend Graeme Bell and singer-songwriter Johnny Ashcroft.

In the 1960s Columbia was one of Australia's most successful pop labels, releasing classic recordings by many top local acts including The Twilights, The Masters Apprentices, The Groove and Russell Morris, as well as giving a local release to the very successful UK recordings by British-based Australian performers like Rolf harris, Frank Ifield and of course The Seekers. Columbia's biggest local pop success in the late 1960s was Russell Morriss, whose first two solo singles "The Real Thing" and its 'sequel' "Part III Into Paper Walls" were back-to-back #1 hits.

In 1968 EMI Australia ended the separate cataloguing systems used on its house labels and on the labels it distributed, including Capitol, Decca, Deram, London, Stateside and Tamla-Motown. They combined all labels into a single unified numbering system which began at 8301. The '8000' series was presumably chosen because Parlophone's cataloguing, the highest range in use at the time, was numbered in the low 8000s.

The Columbia label was retired in Australia in 1972 and replaced by the new EMI Records imprint.

Discography

Australian recordings, ca. 1958-1975

Singles: 3000-4000 series, 1950s-1967