Decca Records
Decca Records is a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its US label was established in late 1934 by Lewis, Jack Kapp (the first president of the Decca Record company of the USA) and Milton Rackmil, who later became American Decca's president too. In 1937, anticipating Nazi aggression leading to World War II, Lewis sold American Decca, and the link between the UK and US Decca label was broken for several decades.[1] The British label was renowned for its development of recording methods, while the American company developed the concept of cast albums in the musical genre.
For the whole group of Decca labels, see Decca Gold.Decca Records
1929
- Decca Music Group (UK)
- Verve Label Group (US)
- Universal Music Group (International)
Various
United Kingdom
Kensington, London, United Kingdom
Both divisions are now part of the Universal Music Group. The US Decca label became MCA Records, which formed half of what is now UMG (Universal Music Group).
Label name[edit]
The name dates back to a portable gramophone called the "Decca Dulcephone" patented in 1914 by musical instrument makers Barnett Samuel and Sons. 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".[2] Samuel, a linguist, chose "Decca" as a brand name as it was easy to pronounce in most languages. That company was eventually renamed the Decca Gramophone Co. Ltd. and then sold to former stockbroker Edward Lewis in 1929. Within years, Decca Records was the second-largest record label in the world, calling itself "The Supreme Record Company". 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.[3]
Spoken word[edit]
American Decca also released several notable spoken word albums, such as a recording of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol starring Ronald Colman as Scrooge, and a recording of the Christmas chapter from The Pickwick Papers read by Charles Laughton. These two separate 78-RPM albums were later combined into one LP. Other spoken word albums included Lullaby of Christmas, narrated by Gregory Peck, a twenty-minute version of Moby Dick, with Charles Laughton as Captain Ahab, and The Littlest Angel, narrated by Loretta Young. British Decca released on LP, in 1968, the most complete version of Man of La Mancha ever put on vinyl records, a 2-LP album featuring most of the dialogue and all of the songs, performed by the show's original London cast. Keith Michell starred as Don Quixote and Cervantes, and Joan Diener was Aldonza/Dulcinea. Around 1970, American Decca enjoyed success with LPS of soundtrack dialogue excerpts from the films of W.C. Fields, the Marx Brothers, and Mae West. The Fields and Marx Brothers albums were narrated by radio personality and cartoon voice actor Gary Owens.
Technology developments[edit]
Full frequency range recording (ffrr) [edit]
Full frequency range recording (ffrr) was a spin-off devised by Arthur Haddy[35] of British 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.[36] 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 60 dB. 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 Stravinsky's Petrushka was key in the development of full frequency range records and alerting the listening public to high fidelity in 1946.[37]
The LP[edit]
The long-playing record was launched in the US 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 to five minutes playing time of the existing records. The new records were made of vinyl (the old discs were made of brittle shellac), which enabled the ffrr recordings to be transferred to disc very realistically. In 1949, in both the UK and the US, Decca took up the LP promptly and enthusiastically[1] giving the British arm 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.
British 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 to the 1970s; most of these recordings have been reissued on CD.
Stereo (ffss)[edit]
The British 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 the first actual stereophonic recording on 13–28 May 1954, at Victoria Hall, Geneva, the first European record company to do so; only two months before, RCA Victor had begun the first actual stereophonic recording in the US, 6–8 March 1954. Decca archives show that Ernest Ansermet and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande recorded Antar by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (Decca's official first actual stereo recording); Stenka Razin by Alexander Glazunov; Tamara by Mily Balakirev; Anatoly Liadov's Baba-Yaga, Eight Russian Folksongs, Kikimora; and Le Martyre de saint Sébastien by Claude Debussy. These performances were initially issued only in monaural sound; and in 1959, the stereo version of Le Martyre de saint Sébastien was issued only in the US as London OSA 1104 (OS 25108); and stereo versions of others were finally issued from the late 1960s to the beginning of the 1970s as part of the "Ace of Diamonds" series and ""Decca Eclipse"" series (in the UK) or "Stereo Treasury" series (in the US on the London label).[38]
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. Even after stereo became standard and into the 1970s, Decca boasted a special sound quality, characterized by aggressive use of the highest and lowest frequencies, novel use of tape saturation and out-of-phase sound to convey a livelier hall ambiance, plus considerable bar-to-bar rebalancing by the recording staff of orchestral voices, known as "spotlighting". In the 1960s and 1970s, the company developed its "Phase 4" process which produced even greater sonic impact through even more interventionist engineering techniques. Big-band leader Ted Heath was an early pioneer of the Decca "Phase 4" sound. Decca recorded some quadrophonic masters that were released in Sansui's quadraphonic system called QS Regular Matrix.
Digital recording and mastering[edit]
Starting in late 1978, British Decca developed its 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 18-bit linear PCM at 48 kHz, with a maximum of eight channels. Later versions of the system used 20-bit recording. Except for 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 Super Audio CD (SACD) and DVD-Audio (DVD-A) formats. Decca is now routinely mastering new recordings in these formats.
Later history[edit]
American Decca bought Universal-International in 1952, and eventually merged with MCA Inc. 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, Dot, Chess, 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 (US Decca recordings) and Coral (US Brunswick and Coral recordings) labels; this arrangement continued until 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 reorganised into MCA Records (Canada) in 1970.[40]
The Decca name was dropped by MCA in America in 1973 in favor of the MCA Records label. The first-run American Decca label's final release, "Drift Away" by Dobie Gray (label No. 33057), reached No. 5 on the Billboard chart and received gold record status.
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. Ironically, PolyGram descended from British Decca's former Dutch distributor Hollandsche Decca Distributie.
In Taiwan, PolyGram acquired 60% of Linfair Magnetic Sound (founded in 1961) in 1992 and renamed it Decca Records Taiwan. The name remained until 2002, when it decided to sell its 60 percent stake, and changed its name to Linfair Records, making the company independent from Universal Music. In addition to the Decca label, Linfair Records also distributes V2 Records' releases and some independent labels. However, Linfair Records' releases outside Taiwan will continue to be released internationally via Universal Music.
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 1996) 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 US, 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: in 2007 its Motown: A Journey Through Hitsville USA by Boyz II Men reached No. 27 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums chart. In 2007 they won the race to sign English teen jazz sensation Victoria Hart and released her first album Whatever Happened to Romance in July.[41] 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.[42] It reentered 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. The London Records pop label that was established in the UK in 1990, run by Roger Ames, and distributed by PolyGram became part of Warner Music Group in 2000 when he was hired to run that company. Universal Music reacquired trademark rights in 2011, and Warner Records 90 Ltd. (formerly London Records 90), a company that controlled most of London's post-1980 catalogue, was acquired by French company Because Music in 2017. They started licensing "London Recordings" name and logo from UMG, and Warner Records 90 was renamed London Music Stream Ltd.
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 sister Universal label Deutsche Grammophon. They include the recordings of guitarist Andrés Segovia.[43] Before Deutsche Grammophon founded its own American branch in 1969, it had a distribution deal with American Decca until 1962 when distribution switched to MGM Records.[44] 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 GRP Records, an imprint of Verve Records. The American Decca rock/pop catalogue is managed by Geffen Records. American distribution of British Decca's rock/pop catalogue is handled by Island Records. The Decca Broadway imprint is used for both newly recorded musical theatre songs and Universal Music Group's vast catalogues of musical theatre recordings from record labels UMG and predecessor companies acquired over the years.
On 10 January 2011, Universal Music Group, which owns the masters to Decca Records, announced that it was donating 200,000 of its master recordings from the 1920s to the 1940s to the United States Library of Congress. The collection of master recordings will be cleaned and digitised. Included in this group are Bing Crosby's original recording of 'White Christmas' and thousands more by Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Judy Garland, Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, the Andrews Sisters, and other famous and lesser-known musicians who recorded during this time. Because of this transaction, once the Library has organised and cleaned the collection, the public will eventually have some degree of access to thousands of recordings that have been commercially unavailable for decades. According to the Los Angeles Times, "[a]s part of the agreement between UMG and the library, Universal retains ownership of the recording copyrights and the right to exploit the cleaned-up and digitized files for commercial purposes."[45]
Today, Decca distributes UMG's jazz holdings led by Blue Note Records and Verve Records along with the classical music holdings led by Decca Classics, Philips Records and Deutsche Grammophon. It also distributes recordings from the Concord Music Group, which includes Rounder Records.[46]