Everything about Columbia Records totally explained
Columbia Records is the oldest surviving
brand name in recorded sound, dating back to
1888, and was the first record company to produce pre-recorded records as opposed to blank cylinders. Today it's a premier subsidiary label of
Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Inc.
Early history
Columbia was originally the local company distributing and selling
Edison phonographs and
phonograph cylinders in
Washington, DC,
Maryland and
Delaware, and derives its name from the
District of Columbia, which was its headquarters. As was the custom of some of the regional phonograph companies, Columbia produced many commercial cylinder recordings of its own, and its catalogue of musical records in 1891 was 10 pages long. Columbia severed its ties to Edison and the
North American Phonograph Company in
1893, and thereafter sold only records and phonographs of its own manufacture.
Columbia began selling
disc records and phonographs in addition to the cylinder system in
1901. For a decade, Columbia competed with both the
Edison Phonograph Company cylinders and the
Victor Talking Machine Company disc records as one of the top three names in recorded sound. In
1908 Columbia introduced mass production of "Double Sided" disc records, with recordings stamped into both sides of the disc.
During this early period, Columbia used the famous "Magic Notes" logo--a pair of
sixteenth notes in a circle—both in the United States and overseas (where this logo would never substantially change).
In July
1912, Columbia decided to concentrate exclusively on disc records and stopped recording new cylinder records and manufacturing cylinder phonographs although they continued pressing and selling cylinder records from their back catalogue for a year or two more.
On February 25, 1925, Columbia began recording with the new electric recording process licensed from
Western Electric. The new "Viva-tonal" records set a benchmark in tone and clarity unequalled during the 78 era. The first electrical recordings were made by
Art Gillham, the popular "Whispering Pianist." In a secret agreement with Victor, both companies didn't make the new recording technology public knowledge for some months, in order not to hurt sales of their existing acoustically recorded catalogue while a new electrically recorded catalogue was being built.
In
1926, Columbia acquired
Okeh Records and its growing stable of jazz and blues artists including
Louis Armstrong. In 1928,
Paul Whiteman, the nation's most popular orchestra leader, left Victor to record for Columbia. That same year, Columbia executive Frank Buckley Walker pioneered some of the first country music or "hillbilly" genre recordings in
Johnson City, Tennessee including artists such as Clarence Greene and the legendary fiddler and entertainer, "Fiddlin" Charlie Bowman. 1929 saw industry legend
Ben Selvin signing on as house bandleader and A. & R. director. Other favorites in the Viva-tonal era included
Ruth Etting,
Fletcher Henderson and
Ted Lewis. Columbia kept using acoustic recording for "budget label" pop product well into 1929 on the Harmony and Velvet Tone labels.
Columbia ownership separation
In 1931, the English
Columbia Graphophone Company (itself originally a subsidiary of American Columbia Records, then to become independent, actually went on to purchase its former parent, American Columbia, in late 1929) merged with the
Gramophone Company to form Electric & Musical Industries Ltd. (
EMI). EMI was forced to sell its American Columbia operations because of anti-trust concerns to the
Grigsby-Grunow Company, makers of the
Majestic Radio. But Majestic soon fell on hard times. A notable marketing ploy was the Columbia "Royal Blue Record," a brilliant blue laminated product with matching label. Royal Blue issues, made from 1932-35, are particularly popular with collectors for their rarity and musical interest. An abortive attempt in 1931 (around the same time that Victor was experimenting with their 33 1/3 "program transcriptions") was the "Longer Playing Record," a finer-grooved 10" 78 with 4:30 to 5:00 playing time per side. Columbia issued about 8 of these (in the 18000-D series), as well as a short-lived series of double-grooved "Longer Playing Record"s on its
Harmony Records,
Clarion Records and
Velvet Tone Records labels. All of these experiments were discontinued by 1932.
But with the Great Depression's tightened economic stranglehold on the country, in a day when the phonograph itself had become a passé luxury, nothing slowed Columbia's decline. Yet, despite this, it was still producing some of the most remarkable records of the day. Grigsby-Grunow went under In 1934, and was forced to sell Columbia for a mere $75,000 to the
American Record Corporation (ARC). This combine already included
Brunswick as its premium label, and Columbia was relegated to slower sellers such as the Hawaiian music of
Andy Iona, and the still unknown
Benny Goodman. By late 1936, pop releases were discontinued, leaving the label essentially defunct.
Then, in 1935, Herbert M. Greenspon, an 18-year-old shipping clerk, led a committee to organize the first trade union shop at at the main manufacturing factory in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Elected as president of the Congress of Industrial Unions (CIO) local, Mister Greenspon negotiated the first contract between factory workers and Columbia management. In a career with Columbia that lasted 30 years, Greenspon retired after achieving the position of executive vice president of the company.
CBS takes over
In
1938 ARC, including the Columbia label in the USA, was bought by
William S. Paley of the
Columbia Broadcasting System for US$750,000. (Columbia Records had originally co-founded CBS, but soon cashed out leaving only the name.) CBS revived the Columbia label in the place of Brunswick and the Okeh label in the place of
Vocalion. The Columbia trademark from this point until the late 1950s was two overlapping circles with the Magic Notes in the left circle and a CBS microphone in the right circle. The Royal Blue labels now disappeared in favor of a deep red, which caused
RCA Victor to claim infringement on its "Red Seal" trademark. (RCA lost the case.) The blue Columbia label was kept for its
classical music Columbia Masterworks Records line until it was later changed to a green label before switching to a gray label in the late 1950s, and then to the bronze that's familiar to owners of its classical and Broadway albums. Columbia Phonograph Company of Canada didn't survive the
Great Depression, so CBS made a distribution deal with
Sparton Records in
1939 to release Columbia records in Canada under the Columbia name.
The LP Record
Columbia's president
Edward (Ted) Wallerstein, instrumental in steering Paley to the ARC purchase, at this time set his talents to the goal (as he saw it) of hearing an entire movement of a symphony on one side of an album. Ward Botsford writing for the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Issue of "High Fidelity Magazine" relates, "He was no inventor—he was simply a man who seized an idea whose time was ripe and begged, ordered, and cajoled a thousand men into bringing into being the now accepted medium of the record business." Despite Wallerstein's stormy tenure, in
1948 Columbia introduced the Long Playing
microgroove (
LP) record (sometimes in early advertisements
Lp) format, which rotated at 33⅓
revolutions per minute, to be the standard for the gramophone record for half a century. CBS research director Dr.
Peter Goldmark played a managerial role in the collaborative effort, but Wallerstein credits engineer Bill Savory with the technical prowess that brought the long-playing disc to the public. By the early 1940s, Columbia had been experimenting with higher fidelity recordings, as well as longer masters, which paved the way for the successful release of the LPs in 1948. One such record that helped set a new standard for music listeners was the 10" LP reissue of
The Voice of Frank Sinatra, originally released on March 4th 1946 as an album of four 78 rpm records, which was the first pop album issued in the new LP format. Sinatra was arguably Columbia's hottest commodity and his artistic vision combined with the direction Columbia were taking the medium of music, both popular and classic, were well suited.
The Voice of Frank Sinatra was also considered to be the first genuine
Concept Album.
Columbia's LPs were particularly well-suited to classical music's longer pieces, so some of the early albums featured such artists as
Eugene Ormandy and the
Philadelphia Orchestra,
Bruno Walter and the
New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and
Sir Thomas Beecham and the
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. The success of these recordings eventually persuaded
Capitol Records to begin releasing LPs in 1949. More significantly, RCA Victor began releasing LPs in 1950, quickly followed by other major American labels. (
Decca Records in the U.K. was the first to release LPs in Europe, beginning in 1949.)
An "original cast recording" of
Rodgers & Hammerstein's
South Pacific with
Ezio Pinza and
Mary Martin was recorded in 1949. Both conventional metal masters and tape were used in the sessions in New York City. For some reason, the taped version wasn't used until Sony released it as part of a set of CDs devoted to Columbia's Broadway albums. Over the years, Columbia joined Decca and RCA Victor in specializing in albums devoted to Broadway musicals with members of the original casts. In the 1950s, Columbia also began releasing LPs drawn from the soundtracks of popular films.
The 1950s
In 1951, Columbia USA began issuing records in the 45 rpm format RCA had introduced two years earlier.
(External Link
) Also that year, Columbia USA severed its decades-long distribution arrangement with EMI and signed a distribution deal with
Philips Records to market Columbia recordings outside North America. EMI continued to distribute Okeh, and later Epic, label recordings for several years into the 1960s. EMI also continued to distribute Columbia recordings in
Australia and
New Zealand.
Columbia became the most successful non-rock record company in the 1950s when they hired impresario
Mitch Miller away from the Mercury label (Columbia was very disinterested in the teenage rock market until the early 1960's). Miller quickly signed on Mercury's biggest artist at the time,
Frankie Laine, and discovered several of the decade's biggest recording stars including
Tony Bennett,
Jimmy Boyd,
Guy Mitchell,
Johnnie Ray,
The Four Lads,
Rosemary Clooney,
Ray Conniff and
Johnny Mathis. In
1953, CBS formed Columbia's sister label
Epic Records.
1954 saw Columbia end its distribution arrangement with Sparton Records and form Columbia Records of Canada.
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With 1955, Columbia USA decisively broke with its past when it introduced its new,
modernist-style "Walking Eye" logo. This logo actually depicts a stylus (the legs) on a record (the eye); however, the "eye" also subtly refers to CBS's main business in
television, and that division's iconic Eye logo. Columbia continued to use the "notes and mike" logo on record labels and even used a promo label showing both logos until the "notes and mike" was phased out in 1958. The original Walking Eye was tall and solid; it was modified in 1960 to the familiar one still used today (pictured on this page).
Columbia changed distributors in Australia and New Zealand in 1956 when the Australian Record Company picked up distribution of U.S. Columbia product to replace the
Capitol Records product which ARC lost when EMI bought Capitol. As EMI owned the Columbia trademark at that time, the U.S. Columbia material was issued in Australia and New Zealand on the
CBS Coronet label.
Stereo
Columbia began recording in stereo in 1956. One of their first stereo releases was an abridged and re-structured performance of
Handel's
Messiah by the
New York Philharmonic and the
Westminster Choir conducted by
Leonard Bernstein (recorded on December 31, 1956, on 1/2 inch tape, using an Ampex 300-3 machine). Bernstein combined the Nativity and Resurrection sections, and ended the performance with the death of Christ. As with RCA Victor, most of the early stereo recordings were of classical artists, including the New York Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by
Bruno Walter,
Dmitri Mitropoulos, and
Leonard Bernstein, and the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by
Eugene Ormandy, who also recorded an abridged
Messiah for Columbia. Some sessions were made with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, an ensemble drawn from leading New York musicians, which had first made recordings with Sir Thomas Beecham in 1949 in Columbia's famous New York City studios.
George Szell and the
Cleveland Orchestra recorded mostly for Epic. When Epic dropped classical music, the roster and catalogue was moved to
Columbia Masterworks Records.
The 1960s
In 1961, CBS ended its arrangement with Philips Records and formed its own international organization, CBS Records, which released Columbia recordings outside the USA and Canada on the CBS label. When Epic's distribution deal with EMI expired, CBS Records distributed Epic recordings on the Epic label outside North America as well. Epic distributed
Ode Records between 1967-1969 and between 1976-1979
With the formation of CBS Records' international arm, it started establishing its own distribution in the early 1960s beginning in
Australia. In 1960 CBS took over its distributor in Australia and New Zealand, the
Australian Record Company (founded in 1936) including
Coronet Records, one of the leading Australian independent recording and distribution companies of the day. The CBS Coronet label was replaced by the CBS label with the 'walking eye' logo in 1963.
(External Link) ARC continued trading under that name until the late 1970s when it formally changed its business name to CBS Australia.
In 1962, Columbia joined in the then red hot
folk music genre by releasing debut albums by the
New Christy Minstrels and, more significantly,
Bob Dylan.
In September 1964, CBS established its own British distribution by purchasing its British distributor, the independent
Oriole Records (UK) label, pressing plant and recording studio (as well as its sold-only-in-Woolworth's Embassy cover version label).
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In 1966, another Columbia subsidiary label, Date, was created mainly for the soul music outlet. This label released the first string of hits for
Peaches & Herb. Date's biggest success was
Time Of The Season by
The Zombies, peaking at #2 in 1969. The label was discontinued in 1972.
Following the appointment of
Clive Davis as president in
1967 the Columbia label became more of a
rock music label, thanks mainly to Davis's fortuitous decision to attend the
Monterey International Pop Festival, where he spotted and signed several leading acts including
Janis Joplin. However, Columbia/CBS still had a hand in traditional pop and jazz and one of its key acquisitions during this period was
Barbra Streisand. She released her first solo album on Columbia in 1963 and remains with the label to this day.
Perhaps the most successful Columbia pop act of this period was
Simon & Garfunkel. The group broke through in 1965 with the
Tom Wilson-produced single "
The Sound of Silence", which helped to usher in the so-called "
folk-rock" boom of the mid-Sixties, and whose valedictory 1970 LP
Bridge Over Troubled Water became one of the biggest selling albums ever released up to that time.
The 1970s
The CBS Records Group was led very successfully by Clive Davis until his shock dismissal in 1972, after it was discovered that Davis has used CBS funds to finance his personal life, including an expensive
bar mitzvah party for his son. He was replaced first by former head
Goddard Lieberson then by the colourful and controversial lawyer
Walter Yetnikoff, who led the company until his dismissal in 1990.
The structure of US Columbia remained the same until 1980, when it spun off the classical/Broadway unit into a separate imprint,
CBS Masterworks Records (now Sony Classical).
In the early 1970s, Columbia began recording in a four-channel process called
quadraphonic, using the "SQ" standard which used an electronic encoding process that could be decoded by special amplifiers and then played through four speakers, with each speaker placed in the corner of a room. Remarkably, RCA Victor countered with another quadraphonic process which required a special cartridge to play the "discrete" recordings for four-channel playback. Both Columbia and RCA's quadraphonic records could be played on conventional stereo equipment. Although the Columbia process required less equipment and was quite effective, many were confused by the competing systems and sales of both Columbia's matrix recordings and RCA's discrete recordings were disappointing. A few other companies also issued some matrix recordings for a few years. Quadraphonic recording was used by both classical artists, including
Leonard Bernstein and
Pierre Boulez, and popular artists such as
Electric Light Orchestra,
Pink Floyd,
Barbra Streisand and
Carlos Santana. Columbia even released a soundtrack album of the movie version of
Funny Girl in quadraphonic. Many of these recordings were later remastered and released in Dolby surround sound on CD.
On May 5, 1979, Columbia Masterworks began
digital recording in a recording session of
Stravinsky's
Petrouchka by the
New York Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by
Zubin Mehta, in New York (using
3M's 32-channnel multitrack digital recorder).
The 1980s
In
1988, the CBS Records Group, including the Columbia Records unit, was acquired by
Sony, who re-christened the parent division
Sony Music Entertainment in 1991. As Sony only had a temporary license on the CBS Records name, it then acquired the rights to the Columbia trademarks outside the U.S., Canada and Japan (Columbia Graphophone) from
EMI, which generally hadn't been used by them since the early 1970s.
CBS Masterworks Records was renamed
Sony Classical Records. In December 2006,
CBS Corporation revived the
CBS Records name for a new minor label closely linked with its television properties.
"Magic Notes" or "Walking Eye"?
The acquisition of rights to the Columbia trademarks from EMI (including the "Magic Notes" logo) presented Sony Music with a dilemma of which logo to use. For much of the 1990s, Columbia released their albums without a logo, just the "COLUMBIA" word mark in the
Bodoni Classic Bold typeface.
(External Link) Columbia experimented with bringing back the "notes and mike" logo but without the CBS mark on the microphone. That logo is currently used in the "Columbia Jazz" series of jazz releases and reissues.
(External Link) A modified "Magic Notes" is found on the logo for Sony Classical. It was eventually decided that the "Walking Eye" (previously the CBS Records logo outside North America) would be Columbia's logo, with the retained Columbia word mark design, world wide except in Japan where Columbia Music Entertainment has the rights to the Columbia trademark to this day and continues to use the "Magic Notes" logo. In Japan, CBS/Sony Records was renamed Sony Records and continues to use the "Walking Eye" logo.
Sony BMG consolidation
Sony merged its music division with Bertelsmann AG's BMG unit in 2004; the combined company,
Sony BMG, continues to use the Columbia Records name and Walking Eye logo in all markets except Japan (where that division is called Sony Records and is still fully owned by Sony). In Japan, the Columbia trademarks (including a modified Magic Notes logo) is still held by the former Nippon Columbia, now called
Columbia Music Entertainment.
Currently,
Legacy Recordings Sony BMG's catalog division, reissues classic albums for Columbia.
Affiliated Labels
American Recording Company (ARC)
In February 1979
Maurice White, founding member of the R&B group
Earth, Wind and Fire launched the
American Recording Company (ARC). The Columbia Records distributed label artist roster included successful R&B, pop singer
Deniece Williams and R&B trio
The Emotions.
Columbia Label Group (UK)
In January 2006, Sony BMG UK split its frontline operations into 2 separate labels. RCA Label Group, mainly dealing with Pop and RnB and Columbia Label Group, mainly dealing with Rock, Dance and Alternative music.
Mike Smith is the Managing Director of Columbia Label Group, Mardi Caught is General Manager, Nick Huggett is Head of A&R.
Aware Records
In
1997, Columbia made an affiliation with unsigned artist promotion label
Aware Records to distribute Aware's artists music. Through this venture, Columbia has had success finding highly successful artists. In
2002, Columbia and Aware accepted the option to continue this relationship.
Columbia Nashville
In 2007, Columbia formed
Columbia Nashville and is part of
Sony BMG Nashville.
Previously affiliated labels
Further Information
Get more info on 'Columbia Records'.
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