One of the first RCA Australia
45rpm releases,
"Stomp Fever" by
The Denvermen (1963) featuring
the classic RCA "lightning bolt" logo.
An RCA Victor Australian
release by Renee Geyer
(1977) featuring the standard 1970s tan label. Note
the Mushroom Productions logo.
A 1970s RCA
Camden album label featuring
the
modernised RCA logo, introduced in 1968.
History
RCA group history
RCA Records of Australia Pty Ltd was until 1985 (when
it became BMG) a wholly-owned subsidiary
of The Radio Corporation of America (RCA),
the giant US-based broadcasting, recording and
electronics company. The post-WWII structure of the RCA
recording group was the outcome of a long and complicated
series of mergers, takeovers and divestitures that stretched from the
late
1800s to the late 1930s. RCA Records' two principal antecedents were
the Radio Corporation of America, founded in 1919, and the Victor
Talking Machine Comany, founded in 1901.
RCA was incorporated in 1919 to control US patents
held by General
Electric, AT&T, Westinghouse and United Fruit. Later that year
it
acquired British Marconi's controlling interest in American Marconi and
the legendary David Sarnoff became the company's General
Manager. In 1926 RCA, GE and Westinghouse jointly established the
National
Broadcasting Company (NBC), which quickly rose to become the
largest and most powerful radio broadcaster in America and, later
expanded into
television, becoming America's largest TV network.
In 1920 the British-based Gramaphone Company (founded in 1898)
was taken over by the US-based Victor Talking Machine
Company. In 1922 the long-established Columbia Phonograph (USA) sold its UK subsidiary Columbia
Graphophone, but then in 1925 Columbia Graphophone (UK) bought its former parent
for US$2.5 million and in 1927 Columbia UK
acquired a controlling interest in the German Parlophone label. In
1929 RCA moved into the record industry, purchasing the Victor Talking
Machine Company and establishing the RCA and RCA Victor recording
labels. In 1931 RCA merged
The Gramophone Company and the
Parlophone Company with the American Columbia Gramophone
Company. The new Anglo-American group was
incorporated as Electric & Music Industries Ltd (EMI). In 1931, RCA merged its British affiliate The Gramophone
Company with American Columbia and the Parlophone label to form
Electrical and Musical Industries (EMI),
and Victor's majority
shareholding in The Gramophone Company gave
RCA boss David Sarnoff a seat on the EMI board. RCA was the
American distributor for EMI for the next twenty-five years.
Soon after its formation, EMI was forced to divest itself of
the Columbia label because anti-trust concerns raised by its American
competitors, and in 1934, both Columbia and the OKeh label were
acquired by ARC-BRC (American Record Company-Brunswick Record Company).
Then, in 1938 ARC-BRC was taken over by RCA's major rival CBS and the
Columbia label thus became part of the CBS Records group.
However, CBS only had the rights to use the Columbia name in the USA,
Canada and Japan, and EMI retained the right to use the Columbia name
in most other countries
(including the British Empire/Commonwealth).
RCA established a range of labels to market different
categories of recordings -- RCA Records released pop, rock and country
music; RCA Victor covered blues, 'folk (world) music, jazz, musicals
and other genres; RCA Red Seal and its reissue sub-label RCA Gold Seal
dealt with classical music. Prior to its acquisition by RCA, the Victor
company had purchased the American rights to the famous "Nipper"
logo, created by British artist Francis Barraud and used in
Commonwealth countries by the HMV label. Interestingly, contemporary
photographs show that Nipper originally depicted
listening to an Edison-Bell cylinder phonograph, but after the painting
was
purchased by The Gramophone Company they commissioned Barraud
to paint over the Edison-Bell machine and replace it with one
of their own disc gramophones.
RCA sold its stake in EMI in 1935 but retained the rights to
the Nipper logo in America, where it became indelibly associated with
RCA Victor. However RCA was
unable to use the Nipper logo in Commonwealth countries (including
Australia and New Zealand), where it was owned by EMI and used on their
HMV label.
Other subsidaries included RCA Camden (which specialised in
reissuing historic
classical and popular recordings from the RCA catalog), RCA Victrola (a
budget label introduced in the 1960s to reissue classical
recordings from Red Seal catalogue) and RCA
Custom. In the 1950s, RCA also had three subsidiary specialty labels,
Groove, Vik
and X. In 1954 RCA introduced the
'Gruve-Gard' system for its vinyl recordings, in which the center and
edge of the disc was made thicker than the playing area, thus reducing
scuff marks during handling and when used on a turntable with a record
changer, and most of RCA's competitors quickly copied this innovation.
As well as its successful popular, country and classical
repertoire, RCA
released many notable albums of musicals, including the
original Broadway cast recordings of Brigadoon, Paint Your Wagon,
the Mary Martin Peter
Pan, Damn
Yankees, Hello,
Dolly!, Oliver!,
Fiddler on the Roof
and the original American Broadway cast album of Hair, as well as
the film soundtrack albums of South
Pacific, Exodus
and The Sound of Music,
which became one of the best-selling soundtracks of all time.
In 1955, RCA moved decisively into rock'n'roll by purchasing the
recording contract of Elvis Presley from Sun
Records for the then astronomical sum of $35,000. It proved a sound
investment however -- Presley became RCA's biggest selling
recording artist and one of the biggest-selling performers of all
time. In 1957, RCA ended its long association with EMI and signed a
UK distribution deal with Decca
Records,
prompting EMI to purchase Capitol Records and Capitol then became the
main distributor for EMI recordings in North and South America.
RCA distributed its recordings in the UK (through Decca) on the RCA and
RCA Victor labels, but they were obliged to use the RCA "lightning
bolt" logo in Britain
instead of the well-known 'Nipper' logo (which it had long used in
America) since that
trademark was owned by EMI's HMV subsidary in most other countries.
In one of the most controversial chapters in its history, RCA Victor
decided to demolish its Camden NJ warehouse in the early 1960s. This
four-level archive held catalog and vault masters (mostly wax and
metal discs) and matrix ledgers, among which were thousands of unique
test pressings and
lacquer discs of containing alternate takes and
rehearsal recordings of its artists, dating back to the 1920s. A
few days before the demolition took place, staff from the French Vogue
label were allowed to rescue some jazz material, and a group of
collectors from the USA and Europe were allowed to go through the
doomed warehouse and salvage whatever they could carry out with them
for their personal collections. The building was then demolished by
explosives with most of the archive still inside and the rubble was
then
bulldozed into the Delaware River and a pier was
built on top of it. The destruction of masters and discs came back
to haunt RCA, notably in 1973 when the company decided to release all
of Rachmaninoff's recordings on LP to celebrate the centennial of
the composer's birth, and was forced to seek the help of record
collectors to obtain materials.
In 1965, RCA & Lear Jet Corp. teamed up to release the first
stereo 8-track tape cartridges (Stereo-8) which were popular in the
late 1960's and 1970's. In late 1968, RCA modernised its image with
a futuristic new logo, using the letters RCA in modernised
block
outline form. The new logo replaced the old lightning bolt logo,
and both the "Victor" and Nipper trademarks were gradually retired.
In 1970 RCA issued the first Quadraphonic 4-Channel 8-track
tape
cartridges (Quad-8, later called just Q8). followed by quadraphonic
vinyl recordings (primarily of classical music) recorded in the CD-4
"Quadradisc" format, which required a special cartridge, a 4-channel
amplifier and four separate speakers. It competed with the CBS "SQ"
system (which was not compatible) but both systems flopped in the
marketplace and were shelved within a few years. Although Quadraphonic
sound failed at the time, it led to the eventual development of the
hugely successful Surround Sound technology, which has boomed with the
introduction of the DVD.
In the 1960s RCA began to expand and diversify its international
operations, purchasing several major US businesses including Random
House publishing (1965),
Hertz Rent-a-Car (1967) and Ballantine Books (1973). RCA set up its
Australian subsidiary in 1963 (see below) and established its own
British distribution arm in 1971, ending its arrangement with
Decca. Between 1968 and 1976 the RCA Victor label and its trademark
"Nipper" logo were gradually retired.
In 1983, Arista Records (owned by the German Bertelsmann group) sold
50% of its shares to RCA. In 1985, Bertelsmann and RCA formed a joint
venture called RCA-Ariola International. In 1985 General
Electric purchased RCA for US$6.3 billion, primarily to acquire NBC. GE
then sold its 50% stake in RCA-Ariola to its partner
Bertelsmann and the company was renamed the Bertelsmann Music
Group (BMG). BMG brought back the lightning bolt logo to make clear
that RCA Records was no longer co-owned with the other RCA entities
which GE sold or closed. BMG also revived the "RCA Victor" label for
musical genres other than country, pop and rock. In 2004, Bertelsmann
(currently one of the three largest media
conglomerates in the world) and the Japanese Sony Coporation merged
their music holdings into a joint venture called Sony BMG -- a move
which, ironically, united the former RCA labels with those of their
long-time competitor CBS, which had been acquired by Sony in the
late 1980s.
RCA in Australia
Left: "Don't Book Me
Officer" by Sydney folk group The Tolmen (1965)
The earliest known local pop releases by the Australian division of RCA appeared in 1963;
it is probably no coincidence that this was the same
year that its rival CBS
established its own Australian subsidiary. There is very little
information about RCA's
recording activities in Australia, which is unfortunate, given the many
significant Australian performers who recorded for the label over the
years. It appears that the company had already been established for some years in Australia -- Mark Casson's book
Hegemony of International Business 1945-1970
(Routledge, 1970) notes the growing influence of American-owned
companies on the Australian music industry and specifically mentions
the "long-established RCA Australia Pty Ltd".
The only major
"in-house" reisssue of local recordings from RCA was the Glenn A. Baker-compiled 25
Recycled RCA Rock
Relics LP (released in the
1980s). Little of RCA's Australian back-catalogue
has been re-released on CD to date; the main exception is the popular
surf-instrumental material by bands such as The Denvermen, which has been re-released under licence by local label Canetoad.
RCA released many titles sourced from its extensive American
catalogue, so the catalogue numbers for its Australian recordings are
not consecutive. However all RCA singles (whether Australian or
overseas recordings) used a common six-digit catalogue number
prefixed "101" (which turned over to "102" around 1972) and this system
remained in use until at least 1975.
EPs were identified with a
five-digit catalogue number; the earliest known Australian RCA EP (Namatjira
by folk trio The Tolmen) was RCA 20312, released in 1963. Australian
LPs were numbered as part of the same '101' series
as the singles, but were distinguished with the addition of a "L"
prefix. An exception to this sequence was the 1965 self-titled LP by
Max
Merritt & The Meteors, which (for unknown reasons) was
catalogued RPL-3400.
Pioneering Kiwi rocker Johnny
Devlin -- who had previously been behind
John Collins' Teen
label in the late 1950s -- was appointed as the RCA's house
producer and A&R manager in late 1963, even though he
was signed to Festival as a recording artist at the time. Devlin
produced some of RCA's early recordings and penned numerous songs
for RCA
artists including The Denvermen (whom he also managed). In this
period Devlin often
used The Denvermen as the session band for RCA's roster of artists,
which included Lee
Sellers, Del Juliana and Tony Brady.
RCA recorded a wide range of Australian performers in the
Sixties and early 1970s, beginning with a string of
surf-intrumental sides by groups like The Denvermen -- whose classic
HMV single"Surfside" was a #1 hit in Sydney in early 1963 -- The
Renegades and
The Midnighters (which included guitarist-composer Michael Wade, later
a member of the house bands for Hair and Jesus
Christ Superstar.
It's often forgotten that 'surf' music was hugely popular with
young Australan and New Zealand musicians;
-- an entire generation of budding guitarists in the late 50s and early
'60s cite The Shadows' Hank Marvin as their primary formative
inlfuence. Surf culture in general was a
major movement in and around Sydney at the time, a fact demonstrated by
the National Stomping Championship held at Narrabeen in late 1963,
which drew an astounding 45,000 fans.
RCA Australia's original label design (pictured above) was a
black label with
silver lettering, featuring the famous RCA "lightning bolt' logo.
The earliest single by an Australian pop artist listed in Ross Laird's
"First Wave" discography of Australian pop recordings is "Over The
Rainbow"
(RCA 101530), recorded by Digger Revell & The Denvermen and
released in 1963. RCA's first local hit was "Kahuna" by Cronulla surf
group The Renegades, produced by Devlin and recorded at AWA's 3-track
studio
in central Sydney. It reached #8 in Sydney in January 1964.
Other 'pop' acts who recorded for RCA in this period included
Johnny Devlin, The Changing Times, The Flies (with Ronnie Burns), Max
Merritt & The Meteors, The Charades, The Cicadas, Colin
Buckley, The Cardinals (a
vocal trio that included AWA panel operator and future EMI house
producer David Mackay),
The Feelgoods, The Grape Escape, Jon Blanchfield, John Francis (who
became better known in the '70s as John J. Francis), The Chosen Few,
Bobby
& Laurie, Freshwater, Alison MacCallum, Headband, Fraternity,
Bev
Harrell, Glenys Hewett (sister of Colleen), The Beachcombers, Digby
Richards, Brenda Kristian.
RCA released a number of singles that are of interest to Bee
Gees aficionados. Although the Bee Gees themslves were contracted to
the Leedon label, Barry Gibb was emerging as a talented and
very productive writer during 1963-64, and among the many
songs he composed were several that were recorded by RCA performers.
Tony Brady's 1964 single "Let's Stomp, Australia Way" was a
collaboration between
Barry and Johnny Devlin, and it marked Gibb's first ever co-writing
credit; the B-side ("Lucky Me") was a Gibb solo composition. Barry also
wrote Del Juliana's "Never Like This" (1964)
and wrote both sides of Lori Balmer's 1966 single "Who's been writing
on the wall again" / "InÊyour world" on which the young
singer -- then only ten years old -- was backed by The Bee Gees.
Some of the Australian acts who recorded for RCA in the
Sixties and early
Seventies are yet to be identified, since most of the
available discographical information on Australian labels of this
period only covers recordings classified as "pop" or "rock". One of
these acts was Sydney folk group The Tolmen, whose recordings featured
uncredited session guitar and banjo by noted
American-born musician Dave Guard, a former
member of the renowned folk group The Kingston Trio.
RCA introduced its new logo in 1968 in the USA, but the black
label and lightning-bolt logo evidently remained in use in
Australia for some time afterwards, e.g. the 1969 'comeback' single by
Bobby & Laurie, "The Carroll County Accident" was released on
the
older-style black label.
Notable Australian acts signed by RCA in the early
1970s including Perth-based
progressive rock band Bakery and all-star Melbourne band King Harvest,
which was fronted by the renowned Leo De Castro. RCA's most successful
Australian artist of the 1970s was Renee
Geyer. Her first recordings were released and distributed by RCA, but
after her debut LP she signed
an independent production deal with Mushroom
-- her manager at the time was Ray Evans, one of the
directors of Mushroom). The single pictured at left shows Renee's 1977
single "Tender Hooks", which carries the Mushroom Productions
logo.
RCA had released the album by her first band, the jazz-rock
group Sun, and RCA then signed Renee to a solo contract in 1973
and released her debut album, on which she was backed (at her
insistence) by her then band Mother Earth. Her follow up album It's
A Man's Man's World (produced by Tweed Harris) was released
in 1974 and became her
first charting record. The title track, her classic rendition
of the James Brown hit from 1965, was her first hit single. She then
formed her own band, Sanctuary, to promote
the album. By this time Renee had become disenchanted with
RCA's refusal to let her record more original material. She
was prepared to sit out her contract if necessary,
but Mushroom Records was able to strike a deal with RCA,
whereby they would produce her recordings, which were then leased to
RCA, who would release and distribute the albums and singles with the
Mushroom Productions logo stamped on the label.
One
of the most interesting and culturally significant singles on RCA was
the 1971 single "The Gurindji Blues" b/w "The
Tribal Land" (pictured at right), recorded by Gurindji elder Vincent
Lingiari and Yolngnu man Galarrwuy Yunupingu. Lingiari had
been one of the leaders of the legendary Gurindji strike at Wave Hill
station in 1966. The A-side, "The Gurindji Blues" was co-written by
folk singer Ted Egan with Vincent Lingiari and was reportedly
penned in reaction to disparaging comments about Wave Hill dispute made
by
then Interior Minister, Peter Nixon. It is also notable as one of the
first known Australian RCA singles to be released in a picture
sleeve.
Among its extensive international catalogue, RCA's greatest
and
most enduring success in Australia was with its
flagship artist,
Elvis Presely, whose sales and popularity have continued to
grow in the decades since his
death. RCA also enjoyed great pop chart and sales success in the
mid-60s with The
Monkees, who scored several major hits here, and they also released one
of the leading psychedelic rock groups of the period, Jefferson
Airplane. Other notable American pop/rock acts in the RCA
catalogue from this period included Duane Eddy, Sam Cooke, The Mamas
& The Papas, The Archies, The Guess Who, The Youngbloods, Zager
& Evans, Jose Feliciano, Joan Baez, Nilsson, John
Denver and,
from 1971 onwards, The Kinks.
RCA also released popular "mainstream" artists such as Paul
Anka, Harry Belafonte, Jack Jones, Peter Nero, Henry Mancini, Hugo
Montenegro and exotica king Esquivel, country artists including Chet
Atkins,
Charlie Pride, Floyd Cramer, Jim Reeves and Willie Nelson, and jazz
artists such as Paul Desmond, Sonny Rollins and Duke Ellington.
RCA's classical roster included its flagship
artist, renowned pianist Arthur Rubenstein (who
toured
Australia at the same time as The Beatles), Arthur Fiedler &
The
Boston Pops Orchestra, The Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Astor Piazolla,
and The National Philharmonic Orchestra
New international signings continued RCA's critical and
commercial success in the 1970s, spearheaded by David Bowie,
who recorded for RCA during his most creatively successful period,
from the Hunky Dory album in 1971 to Scary
Monsters
in 1979, although the company subsequently lost the rights to Bowie's
back catalogue ca. 1990, when it was acquired by EMI. Bowie's
friend and musical hero Lou Reed also enjoyed his
greatest commercial success in that period, recording a string of
classic albums for RCA in the early 70s. His biggest commercial
successes was the Bowie/Ronson-produced Transformer
(1972)
and its hit single "Walk on the Wild Side"; RCA also did well with
Reed's groundbreaking live album Rock'n'Roll
Animal (1973), as well as the critically acclaimed LPs Berlin
and Sally Can't Dance. Reed's stint with RCA ended
in spectacular fashion with his infamous double album of industrial
noise, Metal
Machine Music (1974), which outraged and/or bemused most Reed
fans, and was returned to the company in
unprecedented quantities, forcing RCA to terminate Reed's contract.
RCA also had considerable success with British glam-rock band
The
Sweet, but by far its biggest success in Australasia
was Swedish mega-group ABBA. Thanks largely to Countdown,
Australia was one of the first countries in which ABBA scored hits, and
Australasia became one of ABBA's biggest
territories. The group toured here in 1976 to scenes of fan frenzy
reminiscent of the heyday of Beatlemania.
Propelled by the rising importance of music video, RCA had
another
major run of success in the Eighties with UK acts Eurythmics (Annie
Lennox and Dave Stewart) and solo
singer-songwriter Joan Armatrading. The ABC's Double Jay/Triple
J was probably the first station in Australia to play Armatrading, who
became one of the most popular solo artists of the late 70s and early
80s.
Countdown was very important in breaking these
performers in Australia -- it had already given exposure to Eurythmics'
predecessor The Tourists (whose version of "I Only Want To Be With You"
became a minor hit here, due almost entirely to the support of Countdown)
and like many
other acts, the Australian success of acts like Eurythmics (supported
by the nationwide
promotional power of Countdown) helped to the group to break into the
all-important US market, where the
concurrent advent of MTV proved crucial to their success.
Discography
Australian recordings 1963-1975
NOTE: like its major competitors CBS, EMI
and Festival, the Australian RCA label signed and recorded a wide range
of
local artists whose work falls outside the "pop-rock"
category.
This includes folk, country, jazz and
"middle of the road" popular vocal and instrumental recordings, as well
as titles sourced from RCA's extensive classical catalogue.
Because the 45rpm discographies used as sources for
this listing concentrate on the pop-rock genre, this discography list
is not complete, and we expect that many more locally-recorded
titles will be
identified in the future.
This listing only covers Australian RCA recordings. The RCA listing on
the Rockzirkus forum, from which many
of these releases were identified, also includes a listing of New
Zealand RCA releases.
One
of the most interesting and culturally significant singles on RCA was
the 1971 single "The Gurindji Blues" b/w "The
Tribal Land" (pictured at right), recorded by Gurindji elder Vincent
Lingiari and Yolngnu man Galarrwuy Yunupingu. Lingiari had
been one of the leaders of the legendary Gurindji strike at Wave Hill
station in 1966. The A-side, "The Gurindji Blues" was co-written by
folk singer Ted Egan with Vincent Lingiari and was reportedly
penned in reaction to disparaging comments about Wave Hill dispute made
by
then Interior Minister, Peter Nixon. It is also notable as one of the
first known Australian RCA singles to be released in a picture
sleeve.