| Brunswick Records | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Founded | 1916 |
| Founder | Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company |
| Distributor(s) | AMPED Distribution |
| Genre | Various |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Official website | brunswickrecords |
Brunswick Records is an American record label founded in 1916.
Records under the Brunswick label were first produced by the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company, a company based in Dubuque, Iowa which had been manufacturing products ranging from pianos to sporting equipment since 1845. The company first began producing phonographs in 1916, then began marketing their own line of records as an afterthought. These first Brunswick records used the vertical cut system like Edison Disc Records, and were not sold in large numbers. They were recorded in the United States but sold only in Canada. [1]
In January 1920, a new line of Brunswick Records was introduced in the U.S. and Canada that employed the lateral cut system which was becoming the default cut for 78 discs. Brunswick started its standard popular series at 2000 and ended up in 1940 at 8517. However, when the series reached 4999, they skipped over the previous allocated 5000s and continued at 6000. When they reached 6999, they continued at 7301 (because the early 7000s had been previously allocated as their Race series). The parent company marketed them extensively, and within a few years Brunswick became a competitor to America's "big three" record companies, Edison Records, Victor, and Columbia Records.
The Brunswick line of home phonographs were commercially successful. Brunswick had a hit with their Ultona phonograph capable of playing Edison Disc Records, Pathé disc records, and standard lateral 78s. In late 1924, Brunswick acquired the Vocalion Records label.
Audio fidelity of early-1920s, acoustically-recorded Brunswick discs is above average for the era. They were pressed into good quality shellac, although not as durable as that used by Victor. General music director Walter B. Rogers and his colleague Gus Haenschen lured significant classical and popular soloists into Brunswick's roster, including Sigrid Onegin, Marie Tiffany, Michael Bohnen, Mario Chamlee, Richard Bonelli, Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, and popular singers Al Bernard, Ernest Hare, and light-voiced Nick Lucas. Significant Brunswick instrumentalists included pianists Leopold Godowsky and Josef Hofmann, and violinists Bronislaw Huberman and Max Rosen.
In the spring of 1925 Brunswick introduced its own version of electrical recording derived from the Pallophotophone system, developed by Charles A. Hoxie (and licensed from General Electric) using photoelectric cells, which Brunswick called the "Light-Ray" process. These early electric discs have a harsh equalization which does not compare well to early electric Columbias and Victors, and the company's logbooks from 1925–27 show many recordings that were unissued for technical reasons having to do with the GE system's electronic and sonic inconsistencies. (Only Brunswick and Vocalion records pressed at their West Coast plant bore the name "Light-Ray Process" on the labels.)
Once Brunswick's engineers had tentative control of their new equipment, the company expanded its popular music recording activities, exploiting its roster of stars: the dance bands of Bob Haring, Isham Jones, Ben Bernie, Abe Lyman, Earl Burtnett, and banjoist Harry Reser and his various ensembles (especially the Six Jumping Jacks), and Al Jolson [2] (whose record labels proclaimed him "The World's Greatest Entertainer With Orchestra").
Then based in Chicago (although they maintained an office and studio in New York), many of the city's best orchestras and performers recorded for Brunswick. The label's jazz roster included Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington (usually as the Jungle Band), King Oliver, Johnny Dodds, Andy Kirk, Roger Wolfe Kahn, and Red Nichols. Brunswick initiated a 7000 race series (with the distinctive 'lightning bolt' label design, also used for their popular 100 hillbilly series) as well as the Vocalion 1000 race series. These race records series recorded hot jazz, urban and rural blues, and gospel. Brunswick also had a very successful business supplying radio with sponsored transcriptions of popular music, comedy and personalities.
In the early 1920s Brunswick also embarked on an ambitious domestic classical instrumental recording program which carried over into the electrical era, recording violinist Bronislaw Huberman, pianists Josef Hofmann and Leopold Godowsky (both of whom made the majority of their American recordings for Brunswick), and the New York String Quartet. They moved into orchestral recording in 1922 with the renowned "Capitol Grand Orchestra" under Erno Rapee from the Capitol Theatre in New York (at a time when Eugene Ormandy was the orchestra's concertmaster), then contracting with the Minneapolis Symphony under Henri Verbrugghen and the Cleveland Orchestra under Nikolai Sokoloff in 1924, the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera House (39th Street) under Gennaro Papi, and in a tremendous steal from Victor, they put the New York Philharmonic with conductors Willem Mengelberg and Arturo Toscanini on their artists roster - but only briefly. The popular records, which used small performing groups, were difficult enough to make with the photoelectric cell process; symphony orchestra recording, however, further exacerbated the problems of the "Light-Ray" system. Few orchestral records were approved for issue and those that did appear on the market often combined excellent performances with execrable sound, which particularly displeased Toscanini (only two sides he conducted were ever released). Brunswick found it expedient and ultimately cheaper to contract with European companies (whose electrical recording systems surpassed Brunswick's). Among the recordings Brunswick imported and issued under their own label (through an agreement reached with Polydor, Deutsche Grammophon's export branch) were historic performances conducted by Hans Pfitzner and Richard Strauss—the latter conducting critically acclaimed performances of his symphonic poems Don Juan and Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, recorded in Berlin in 1929–30. Some of these recordings have been reissued on CD.
Brunswick itself switched to a conventional condenser microphone recording process (licensed through Western Electric) in 1927, with better results. Prior to this, however, they had introduced the Brunswick Panatrope all-electric phonograph with electric amplification. This phonograph met with critical acclaim, and composer Ottorino Respighi selected the Brunswick Panatrope to play a recording of bird songs in his composition The Pines of Rome . Jack Kapp became the record company executive of Brunswick in 1930. [3]
In April 1930, Brunswick-Balke-Collender sold Brunswick Records to Warner Bros., and the company's headquarters moved to New York. [4] Warner Bros. hoped to make their own soundtrack recordings for their sound-on-disc Vitaphone system. A number of interesting recordings were made by actors during this period, featuring songs from musical films. Actors who made recordings included Noah Beery, Charles King, and J. Harold Murray. During this Warner Brothers period Brunswick signed Bing Crosby, [3] who was to become their biggest recording star, as well as the Mills Brothers, [3] Adelaide Hall, the Boswell Sisters, Cab Calloway, the Casa Loma Orchestra and Ozzie Nelson.
In November 1930, the new budget-line, Melotone, debuted, entering a field of lower-priced electrical records, including Columbia's Clarion, Velvet Tone, Harmony and the labels of the Plaza Music Company, such as Perfect, Banner, and Romeo. Melotone releases before the ARC takeover of December 1931 are not duplicated on these labels. When Vitaphone was abandoned in favor of sound-on-film systems—and record industry sales plummeted due to the Great Depression—Warner Bros. leased the Brunswick record operation to Consolidated Film Industries, the parent company of the American Record Corporation (ARC), [4] in December 1931. In 1932, the UK branch of Brunswick was acquired by British Decca.
Between early 1932 and 1939, Brunswick was ARC's flagship label, selling for 75 cents, while all of the other ARC labels were selling for 35 cents. Best selling artists during that time were Bing Crosby, the Boswell Sisters, the Mills Brothers, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Abe Lyman, Casa Loma Orchestra, Leo Reisman, Ben Bernie, Red Norvo, Teddy Wilson, and Anson Weeks. Many of these artists moved over to Decca in late 1934, causing Brunswick to reissue popular records by these artists on the ARC dime store labels as a means to compete with Decca's 35 cent price. In 1939, the American Record Corp. was bought by the Columbia Broadcasting System for $750,000, which discontinued the Brunswick label in 1940, [3] in favor of reviving the Columbia label (as well as reviving the OKeh label, replacing Vocalion). This, along with the lower than agreed-upon sales/production numbers, violated the Warner lease agreement, resulting in the Brunswick trademark reverting to Warner. In 1941, Warner sold the Brunswick and Vocalion labels to American Decca (which Warner had a financial interest in), with all masters recorded prior to December 1931. Rights to recordings from late December 1931 on were retained by CBS/Columbia.
In 1943, Decca revived the Brunswick label, mostly for reissues of recordings from earlier decades, particularly Bing Crosby's early hits of 1931 and jazz items from the 1920s. Since then, Decca and its successors have had ownership of the historic Brunswick Records archive from this time period. [5] [6]
After World War II, American Decca releases were issued in the United Kingdom on the Brunswick label until 1968 when the MCA Records label was introduced in the UK. During the war, British Decca sold its American branch. By 1952, Brunswick was put under the management of Decca's Coral Records subsidiary. That same year, Brunswick resumed releasing new material, initially as rhythm and blues specialty label, [7] adding pop music in 1957. [8] Later in the 1950s, American Decca made Brunswick its leading rock and roll label, featuring artists such as Buddy Holly & the Crickets, with releases having backup vocals (by The Picks or The Roses) and labeled under the group name without reference to Holly. Hit records by Buddy Holly were released during the same period of his career on the co-owned Coral Records. The records released on Coral by Holly normally were without backup vocals, with the exception of "Rave On" and "Early In The Morning". In 1957, Brunswick became a subsidiary label to Coral. [9] A pre-Four Seasons Nick Massi made his recording debut for Brunswick in 1959. [10]
Starting in the latter part of the 1950s and continuing well into the 1970s, the label recorded mainly R&B/soul acts, such as the label's leading artist in the late 1950s and early/mid 1960s, Jackie Wilson, and later on, the Chi-Lites. Jackie Wilson's manager, Nat Tarnopol, joined the label in 1957 as head of A&R. [3] Brunswick became a separate company and a unit of Decca in 1960 with Tarnopol serving as executive vice-president. [11] He acquired a 50% interest in Brunswick from Decca in 1964 and then the rest of Brunswick from Decca in 1969 to settle disputes with Decca management. Nat Tarnopol worked with R&B singer Jackie Wilson. [12]
Many of the recordings which established Brunswick as a major force in R&B and soul music in the mid-1960s and into the 1970s were supervised by producer Carl Davis in Chicago. [3] He joined the label after helping to revive Jackie Wilson's recording career with his production on Wilson's 1966 hit, "Whispers". Wilson and Davis collaborated the following year for one of the label's biggest selling singles, "Higher And Higher", which sold over two million copies (No. 1 R&B, No. 5 pop). The Chi-Lites recorded two No. 1 R&B hits in the 1970s for Brunswick, "Have You Seen Her" and "Oh Girl", both co-written and co-produced by lead singer, Eugene Record. "Oh Girl" also topped the Billboard Hot 100. Davis formed a sister label, Dakar Records, in 1969, with Tyrone Davis (no relation) becoming its main artist and a major-selling R&B act. Dakar was first distributed by Atlantic Records for two years, but moved under Brunswick distribution from January 1972, after the company became independent from Decca.
Brunswick and Dakar artists included the Chi-Lites, [13] [14] Hamilton Bohannon, Tyrone Davis, Jackie Wilson, Barbara Acklin, Young-Holt Unlimited, Gene Chandler, the Artistics, Otis Leavill, the Lost Generation, Walter Jackson, Erma Franklin, Willie Henderson & the Soul, Maryann Farra & Satin soul, Strutt, Touch, Sunny Nash [15] and Little Richard. Main producers for the labels, along with Davis, were Eugene Record, Willie Henderson and later, Leo Graham, while staff arrangers during the Chicago years included Sonny Sanders, Tony Moulton Quinton Joseph and Willie Henderson.
The Chi-Lites' "Oh Girl" was the label's only release from post-1957 to reach the top of the Billboard Hot 100, but Brunswick and Dakar managed to top the R&B chart a total of 10 times during the same period, six by Jackie Wilson and two each by Tyrone Davis and the Chi-Lites.
Legal problems caused Brunswick to become dormant after 1982, in which Tarnopol licensed Brunswick recordings from 1957 onwards to the special products unit of Columbia Records. Brunswick had its last chart hits in 1982. [16] Although Brunswick was eventually cleared of the charges, the situation, which had resulted in court action, left both the label and Tarnopol in financial difficulties. By then, Carl Davis and most of the artists had left the company. Tarnopol blamed his legal problems on a personal vendetta led by Lew Wasserman, the head of Decca's parent corporation, MCA Inc. [17] Tarnopol died in 1987 at age 56. [18]
The Tarnopol family only claims ownership of Brunswick recordings since Tarnopol joined Brunswick in 1957. [19] Decca's parent company, Universal Music controls the Decca-era pre-Tarnopol Brunswick recordings (excluding the late 1931–1939 era, which is still controlled by Columbia Records' parent, Sony Music Entertainment). The Decca-era Brunswick jazz catalogue is managed by the Verve Music Group [20] (which is also part of Universal). [21]
The official Brunswick Records web site has a detailed history of the Tarnopol-era Brunswick Records. The label was revived in 1995 by Nat's children. [19] and many of the Chicago soul recordings have been re-issued in recent years. Brunswick's catalog is distributed by AMPED Distribution (a division of Alliance Entertainment).
Decca Records is a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis after his acquisition of a gramophone manufacturer, The Decca Gramophone Company. It set up an American subsidiary under the Decca name, which became an independent company just before the Second World War. The American spin-off became a subsidiary of MCA Inc. in 1962. Known for its technical innovations, the British parent company grew to become the second most successful recording company in Britain and celebrated fifty years of existence in 1979, shortly before being sold to PolyGram. Both Decca and its former subsidiary were subsequently acquired by Universal Music.
Jack Leroy Wilson Jr., also known as Jackie Wilson, was an American singer who was a prominent figure in the transition of rhythm and blues into soul. Nicknamed "Mr. Excitement", he was considered a master showman and one of the most dynamic singers and performers in soul, R&B, and rock and roll history.
Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Music Group, the American division of multinational conglomerate Sony. Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in the recorded sound business, and the second major company to produce records. From 1961 to 1991, its recordings were released outside North America under the name CBS Records to avoid confusion with EMI's Columbia Graphophone Company. Columbia is one of Sony Music's four flagship record labels: Epic Records, and former longtime rivals, RCA Records and Arista Records as the latter two were originally owned by BMG before its 2008 relaunch after Sony's acquisition alongside other BMG labels.
OKeh Records is an American record label founded by the Otto Heinemann Phonograph Corporation, a phonograph supplier established in 1916, which branched out into phonograph records in 1918. The name was spelled "OkeH" from the initials of Otto K. E. Heinemann but later changed to "OKeh". In 1965, OKeh became a subsidiary of Epic Records, a subsidiary of Sony Music. OKeh has since become a jazz imprint, distributed by Sony Masterworks.
Chicago soul is a style of soul music that arose during the 1960s in Chicago. Along with Detroit, the home of Motown, and Memphis, with its hard-edged, gritty performers, Chicago and the Chicago soul style helped spur the album-oriented soul revolution of the early 1970s.
American Record Corporation (ARC), also referred to as American Record Company, American Recording Corporation, or ARC Records, was an American record company in operation from 1929 to 1938, and again from 1978 to 1982.
Benjamin Bernard Selvin was an American musician, bandleader, and record producer. He was known as the Dean of Recorded Music.
Chi-Sound Records is an independent record label set up in 1976 by established Chicago record producer Carl Davis. He had been involved in the music industry since the early 1960s working with locally based record labels, including Vee-Jay and Okeh, a subsidiary of the major Columbia Records. He produced the number one hit by Gene Chandler, "Duke of Earl" for Vee-Jay. Later, as A&R chief for Okeh, he produced a run of hits with writer/singer Curtis Mayfield, for another Chicago artist, Major Lance, including "The Monkey Time" and "Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um". Davis left Okeh after it was merged with Epic Records in a dispute with Epic management over side projects outside Epic/Okeh.
Barbara Jean Acklin was an American soul singer and songwriter, who was most successful in the 1960s and 1970s. Her biggest hit as a singer was "Love Makes a Woman" (1968). As a songwriter, she is best known for co-writing the multi-million-selling "Have You Seen Her" (1971) with Eugene Record, lead singer of the Chi-Lites.
Eugene Booker Record was an American singer, songwriter, arranger, and record producer. He was best known as the lead vocalist of the Chicago-based vocal group The Chi-Lites. He had international hits with "Oh Girl," "Have You Seen Her," "Soulful Strut," and "(For God's Sake) Give More Power to the People". His writing contributions earned him a Grammy Award.
Irving Harold Mills was a music publisher, musician, lyricist, and jazz promoter. He often used the pseudonyms Goody Goodwin and Joe Primrose.
"Ko Ko Mo (I Love You So)" is a popular rock novelty song written in late 1954 by the rhythm and blues partnership of Forest Gene Wilson and Eunice Levy, and also credited to Jake Porter. One of the earliest rock and roll songs, it was probably "the most extensively recorded rock 'n' roll song of that time".
"The Nearness of You" is a popular song written in 1937 by Hoagy Carmichael with lyrics by Ned Washington. Intended for an unproduced Paramount film titled Romance In The Rough, the studio's publishing division Famous Music reregistered and published the song in 1940. It was first recorded by Chick Bullock and his Orchestra on Vocalion. Despite numerous accounts to the contrary, the song was never scheduled for and does not appear in the 1938 Paramount film Romance in the Dark.
"Para Vigo me voy", known in English as "Say Si Si", is a popular song written in 1935 by Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona with lyrics by Francia Luban and Al Stillman. Early bands to record the song include Xavier Cugat's orchestra (1935) and Lecuona Cuban Boys (1937). The song was copyrighted in the United States in 1940. It became a hit in the US when it was recorded by The Andrews Sisters and Glenn Miller in 1940, and The Mills Brothers in 1953.
Nat Tarnopol was an American record producer. He played a vital role in producing and shaping R&B music throughout the 1960s and 1970s as the president of Brunswick Records, a subsidiary label of Decca Records. Responsible for launching the careers of The Chi-Lites, Jackie Wilson, Tyrone Davis, Barbara Acklin and The Young-Holt Unlimited, Tarnopol scored 150 songs on the Billboard charted singles between 1957 and 1981.
Dick Jacobs was an American musician, conductor, arranger, orchestrator, music director and an artists-and-repertoire director for several record labels. He helped Jackie Wilson, Buddy Holly, Bobby Darin and others early in their careers in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia 1933–1944 is a 10-CD box set compiling the complete known studio master recordings, plus alternate takes, of Billie Holiday during the time period indicated, released in 2001 on Columbia/Legacy, CXK 85470. Designed like an album of 78s, the medium in which these recordings initially appeared, the 10.5" × 12" box includes 230 tracks, a 116-page booklet with extensive photos, a song list, discography, essays by Michael Brooks, Gary Giddins, and Farah Jasmine Griffin, and an insert of appreciations for Holiday from a diversity of figures including Tony Bennett, Elvis Costello, Marianne Faithfull, B.B. King, Abbey Lincoln, Jill Scott, and Lucinda Williams. At the 44th Grammy Awards on February 27, 2002, the box set won the Grammy Award for Best Historical Album of the previous year.
"Lonely Teardrops" is a song written by Berry Gordy Jr., Gwen Gordy and Roquel "Billy" Davis, first recorded and released as a single in 1958 by R&B singer Jackie Wilson, on the Brunswick label. The single was commercially successful, reaching the top ten on the Billboard Hot 100, and number-one on the R&B chart. It is ranked as the 57th biggest U.S. hit of 1959.
Ellingtonia, Vol. One is a compilation album of phonograph records assembled by Brunswick Records during the American Federation of Musicians strike, cataloguing the early, experimental Brunswick and Vocalion recordings of Duke Ellington in the middle of the Harlem Renaissance. During the later Swing era, the recordings were praised for accurately predicting the developments in the Big band genre several years in advance.
Marshall Thompson, is an American singer and musician. Thompson is best known as an original member of the Chicago, Illinois–based Soul/R&B vocal group The Chi-Lites. Their songs included Pop and R&B hits" Oh Girl", "Have You Seen Her", "The Coldest Days of My Life ", "Stoned Out of My Mind" and "(For God's Sake) Give More Power to the People". Twenty-one of their recordings appeared on the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Chart and thirty-nine appeared on Billboard Soul/R&B Chart, with 11 making the Top Ten list.
