DECCA RECORDS

Category: British-owned record label Date: 1929-present Location: based in UK/USA, no Australian division Distributor: EMI (Australia) Limited

History

The UK-based Decca Records was one of the most important and influential recording companies of the 20th century. As well as its renowned classical and jazz catalogues, Decca is famous for its association with The Rolling Stones, who recorded all of their 1960s albums and singles for the label. Decca's engineers made many major technical breakthroughs, most notably the famous "FFRR" (Full Frequency Range Recording) system developed during WWII, which for the first time made it possible to record sounds across the full range of human hearing in a bandwidth from 80-15000 Hz, with a signal-to-noise ratio of 60dB.

Decca was founded in the UK by Edward Lewis in 1929. The 'Decca' trade name was first used in 1914 for a portable gramophone manufactured by Barnett Samuel & Sons Ltd, a company acquired by Lewis in 1934. Decca gradually expanded into other countries, mainly through licencing deals with other labels. H.W. van Zoelen became the Decca distributor in The Netherlands in 1929 and formed Hollandsche Decca Distributie (HDD) in 1931 as the exclusive Decca distributor for the Netherlands and its colonies. 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 1934 it established an American subsidary, and in 1935 Deutsche Gramophon became Decca's German licensee. By 1939, Decca and EMI were the only record companies in the UK.

Decca's American branch was sold off during WWII and operated as an independent company thereafter. Decca UK became 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, from 1947 Decca UK marketed its records in America on the London Records label. In Britain and Commonwealth countries, London became a major licensing outlet for recordings sourced from American 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 until 1967, when a UK branch of MCA was established utilizing the MCA Records imprint, with distribution fluctuating between British Decca and other English companies over time.

In 1952 Decca acquired a controlling interest in Universal Pictures and ten years later, in 1962, MCA Inc. and Universal Pictures officially merged when MCA acquired American Decca, Universal's parent company. The Decca name was phased out by MCA in America in 1973 in favour of the MCA Records label; the final American Decca release, "Drift Away" by Dobie Gray, became  a major hit, reaching #5 on the Billboard chart and earning a gold record. 

In 1979 Decca and London Records were acquired by Polygram, then jointly owned by Philips and the German Siemens group, and British Decca's pop catalogue was taken over by Polydor Records. A proposed 1983 merger between Polygram and Warner Music was forbidden by both the US Federal Trade Commission and Germany's cartel office. Philips then acquired 40% of Polygram from Siemens, buying the remaining shares in 1987. Two years later, Philips sold 16% of Polygram in a deal that valued the record group at US$5 billion. In the mid-1990s, MCA Nashville Records revived Decca in the US as a country music label. 

In 1998, as part of large-scale restructuring at Philips (amid speculation that the group would collapse) Polygram was sold to Seagram for US$10 billion. Seagram then combined Polygram with Motown and its other recording interests to create the Universal Music Group. Two years later Seagram was acquired by Vivendi for US$34 billion, becoming Vivendi Universal. 

The Decca label is currently in owned by the Universal Music Group worldwide. In 1998 PolyGram, British Decca's parent company, was acquired by Universal Studios (which officially dropped the MCA name after the Seagram buyout) thus consolidating Decca trademark ownership into one company. In the US, the Decca country music label was shut down and the old London classical label was renamed Decca. In 1999, Decca was merged with Philips Records to create the Decca Music Group (known as Universal Music Classics Group in the USA).

Jazz and popular music
Thanks to its US subsidiary, Decca enjoyed enormous success in the jazz and popular music fields in the 1930s and 1940s. Its stellar roster included Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Louis Jordan (one of the biggest-selling artists of that period), Jimmie Lunceford, Bing Crosby, Jane Froman, The Boswell Sisters, Billie Holiday, The Andrews Sisters, Ted Lewis, Judy Garland, The Mills Brothers, Billy Cotton, Guy Lombardo, Chick Webb,  Bob Crosby, The Dorsey Brothers (and subsequenrtly Jimmy Dorsey after the brothers split), Connee Boswell and Jack Hylton, Victor Young, Earl Hines and Claude Hopkins and Al Jolson. In 1942, Decca released the first recording of "White Christmas" by Bing Crosby. Crosby's second version of the song, recorded in 1947 for Decca, became the best-selling single ever released, a record it held until 1997.

In 1943, Decca made history by releasing the first 'original cast' album of a Broadway musical, with a set of 78rpm records comprising nearly all the songs from Rodgers and Hammerstein's hit musical Oklahoma!, performed by the Broadway cast 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, and Decca's lead was soon followed by other major labels including Columbia and RCA.

Country
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, plus several more albums and singles produced after her untimely death in a plane crash in 1963. 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 several decades. Much of the label's success in this field was due to renowned A&R manager and producer Owen Bradley. Decca quickly became the main rival of RCA Records in American country music and remained so for decades.

Classical
After WWII, Decca developed a highly regarded classical catalogue that included renowned European orchestras and conductors such as Ernst Ansermet and Sir Adrian Boult, solosts such as Kathleen Ferrier, Julius Katchen and Radu Lupu, and even film score suites by written and conducted by famed Hollywood composer Bernard Herrmann. In 1954 Decca recording engineers Arthur Haddy and Kenneth Wilkinson developed the famous Decca tree, a stereo microphone recording system for big orchestras. Decca was the first Euopean label to record classical music in stereo, beginning in May 1954, only three months after RCA's first stereo recordings in the USA. Much of Decca's success in teh classical field can be attributed to its technical innovations -- including the FFRR process and its later "Phase 4" stereo system -- and the influence of its senior producer, John Culshaw, who revolutionised the recording of opera. Among the label's most famous and critically acclaimed recordings was its groundbreaking stereo recordings of Wagner's Ring Cycle, begun in 1958, conducted by Sir Georg Solti and produced by John Culshaw. This landmark series was voted the best recording of all time by readers of British music magazine The Gramophone.

Rock'n'roll, pop and rock
In 1954, American Decca released "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley & His Comets. The record's producer, Milt Gabler, had previously worked with million-selling jazz artist Loius Jordan, whose Decca recordings laid much of the groundwork for early rock'n'roll. "Rock Around the Clock" 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 #1 on the American 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. Ironically, Decca's Australian distributor EMI passed on the record and it was snapped up by the fledgling Festival label, enabling Festival to score its first major hit. RCA severed its longtime affiliation with EMI's His Master's Voice (HMV) label in 1957, allowing British Decca to market and distribute Elvis Presley's recordings in the UK.

Decca enjoyed considerable success with its pop-rock roster in the 1960s, although British Decca became somewhat notorious for a string of 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, but a rival version by Ricky Valance, released on EMI's Columbia label, went to #1 on the British charts. In 1962, British Decca executive Dick Rowe famously declined to sign The Beatles in favour of Brian Poole & The Tremeloes. Rowe, then head of Decca's pop division, famously commented about the Beatles, “We don’t like their sound, and ‘guitar music’ is on the way out”. Other notable refusals in this period included The Yardbirds and Manfred Mann. both of whom went on to enormous international success.

Rowe did not repeat his mistake with his next major signing. He snapped up The Rolling Stones soon after, and by 1965 they ranked second only to The Beatles in terms of popularity and sales. They were by far Decca's most successful pop act, and remained with the label until around 1970, when they established their own Rolling Stones Records imprint. The Stones later voiced strong criticism of Decca's handling of their career -- royalties were a key issue, and they also fought (and lost) a famous battle over the infamous "toilet wall" cover for their 1968 album Beggar's Banquet, which was rejected by Decca's management, forcing the group to settle on the so-called "Invitation" design. Other successful Decca pop/rock acts included Irish band Them, led by Van Morrison, and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, whose legendary pair of mid-'60s albums successively made Eric Clapton and Peter Green into heroes of the electric blues guitar.

Decca Guitars
A little-known sideline of Decca's pop activities was the Decca electric guitar range. These were made for the company in the mid-1960s by Teisco, the Japanese guitar company whose products were also variously badged as 'Kingston', 'Kay' and Audition'. The Junk Guitars website features an excellent photo a trio of Teisco 'Decca' guitars made in 1966.

Deram
In the mid-1960s Decca established a new imprint, Deram, which was the first in a wave of "progressive"subsidiary and independent labels that included Harvest, Vertigo and Virgin. The new label's inaugural single was Cat Stevens' "I Love My Dog" (1967); it was followed by his first major hit "Matthew And Son" which reached #2 in the UK later that year. Stevens recorded two LPs for Deram and scored another UK hit with "I'm Gonna Get Me A Gun" in early 1968, but his career was temporarily derailed when he contracted tuberculosis; after his recuperation he moved to Chris Blackwell's Island Records, for whom he recorded a string of hugely successful albums and singles in the early 1970s.

Deram's biggest international act was was The Moody Blues, who released their beat-oriented debut album on Decca in 1965 before shifting to Deram, undergoing a massive stylistic change and recording three hugely successful psychedelic-progressive concept albums-- Days of Future Passed, In Search of the Lost Chord and On The Threshold Of A Dream -- as well as their enduring hit "Nights in White Satin". Subsequent albums were released on the Moodies' own Threshold label, distributed by Decca.

Another big success was blues band Ten Years After, led by guitar ace Alvin Lee, who recorded six LPs for Deram between 1967 and 1972. The young David Bowie scored his few first minor UK hits for Deram, including "Love You Til Tuesday" and "The Laughing Gnome" and these and other early Deram recordings were endlessly repackaged in the wake of his move to RCA and his international breakthrough in the 1970s. Other notable acts who were released on or through Dream include The Move, Caravan, The Brotherhood of Man, Curved Air, Giles Giles and Fripp and Chicken Shack.

Decca in Australia

Despite its international successes and unlike most of its competitors, neither Decca UK nor Decca USA ever established an Australian subsidiary. Instead the Decca group relied on a long-standing deal with its British rival EMI to manufacture and distribute its recordings in Australasia. As a result, it was one of the few major labels that never established a roster of local artists in Australia or New Zealand. One notable and unusual exception was singer and actress Lorrae Desmond, who was signed to Decca while working in the UK in the 1950s and made several recordings for the label.

Decca's single releases in Australia in the 1950s (the '6000' series) were mainly titles by popular mainstream artists such as Winifred Atwell, Kenneth Mackellar, Max Bygraves, Vera Lynn and Tommy Steele, or big band / orchestral acts such as Edmundo Ros, Ted Heath and Mantovani. Decca also released several recordings by The Goons, including the immortal "I'm Walking Backwards for Christmas".

Decca's '7000' series, which began in the late 1950s, still featured many 'MOR' titles (e.g. Anthony Newley, Val Doonican, Eden Kane and later Englebert Humperdinck) but gradually expanded to include pop and and rock acts signed in the Sixties. Significant Australian releases in this genre include Billy Fury, ex-Shadows Jet Harris and Tony Meehan, Brian Poole & The Tremoloes, Heinz, The Mojos, Lulu & The Luvvers, P.J. Proby, Screaming Lord Sutch, The Nashville Teens, Marianne Faithfull, The Zombies, Them, Tom Jones, Unit 4 + 2, the early singles and the first LP by The Small Faces, The Alan Price Set, Hedgehoppers Anonymous, the debut album by Genesis (much repackaged in the wake fo their subsequent success on the Charisma label) and of course The Moody Blues and The Rolling Stones.

Among the more unusual Australian releases on Decca was a 1964 single featuring the original Dr Who theme by the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and a 1965 single by Greek group Forminx, which included future electronic music star Vangelis.

Discography

Decca '6000' series Australian singles discography
http://www.globaldogproductions.info/d/decca-6000-series-oz.html

Decca '7000' series Australian singles discography
http://www.globaldogproductions.info/d/decca-7000-series-oz.html

Deram Australian singles discography
http://www.globaldogproductions.info/d/deram-oz.html

References / Links

Universal Music Group - History
http://new.umusic.com/history.aspx

Wikipedia - Decca Records
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decca_Records

ketupa.net
Polygram/Decca company profiles and history
http://www.ketupa.net/polygram.htm

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