RCA Camden was a budget record label of RCA Victor, originally created in 1953 [1] to reissue recordings from earlier 78rpm releases. The label was named "Camden", after Camden, New Jersey where the offices, factories and studios of RCA Victor and its predecessor, the Victor Talking Machine Company had been located since 1901.
RCA Victor originally created the Camden label to reissue select older 78rpm Red Seal classical recordings on LP records. In the mid 1950s, RCA Camden began releasing some rhythm & blues and, later, pop, country and rock and roll recordings. For example, Camden issued a 1956 LP of Little Richard's very first recordings made for RCA Victor in 1951 and 1952, expanded with four tracks by Buck Ram and his Rock n' Ram Orchestra. In 1958, Camden released some albums in the new stereophonic format and subsequently issued popular stereo recordings by the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, The Living Strings and Living Voices. Camden also produced a "Designed for Dancing" [2] series, with titles by Xavier Cugat and Perez Prado, and others.
The Camden label was headed by long-time RCA Victor record producer Ethel Gabriel beginning in the late 1950s. RCA Camden Records was the company’s budget line, and by the late 50s, Ethel Gabriel was earning producer credits, something she continued to do into the 1980s.
In 1959 she began the “Living Strings” series of easy-listening albums, consisting of orchestral renditions of popular and classical tunes (“Living Strings Play Music of the Sea,” “Living Strings Play Music for Romance” and many more), most of which were released on Camden. The line soon branched out into “Living Voices,” “Living Guitars” and other subsets and became a big profit-generator for RCA — which was not, Ms. Gabriel said, what the boss expected when he put her in charge of Camden, a struggling label at the time. New York Times, "Ethel Gabriel, a Rare Woman in the Record World, Dies at 99" Neil Genzlinger, April 9, 2021.
“I’m sure he thought it was a way to get rid of me,” she told The Express-Times of Easton, Pa., in 1992 (too diplomatic to name the boss). “Well, I made a multimillion-dollar line out of it, conceived, programmed and produced the entire thing.” Ethel Gabriel, a Rare Woman in the Record World, Dies at 99
RCA Victor originally reissued its older 78rpm Red Seal classical symphonic recordings on the Camden label using the actual names of the symphony orchestras involved; but soon, to avoid competing with recent full-priced recordings by the same orchestras, a series of pseudonyms were used, drawn primarily from the names of hotels in nearby Philadelphia, across the Delaware River from RCA Victor's headquarters in Camden. Here is a partial listing of the real orchestras and their pseudonyms:
The RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra was assembled for recording sessions mostly during the 1940s and '50s; It primarily consisted of members from the NBC Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. [3] The New York City Symphony Orchestra, created by Leopold Stokowski in the 1940s, recorded for RCA Victor and some of its recordings were reissued on Camden LPs under the name "Sutton Symphony Orchestra," not to be confused with a British orchestra with the same name.
In 1960, RCA Victor launched the RCA Victrola budget label to reissue lower priced classical and operatic recordings drawn from the Red Seal catalog. With a few exceptions, RCA Camden ceased reissuing former Red Seal titles and began offering many more albums by RCA Victor's pop and country music artists. In Canada, in addition to handling the U.S. releases on the label for the Canadian market, the RCA Camden imprint was also used to issue both current and compilation albums by RCA Victor Canada's country Artists. Country music sold extremely well in Canada, and RCA Camden issued a number of such albums that were never released in the United States.
From 1968 to 1975, RCA Camden issued a series of compilation albums featuring recordings by Elvis Presley, who recorded for the main RCA Victor label. These albums primarily consisted of repackagings of Presley's 1960s-era movie soundtrack recordings; some albums, such as Elvis Sings Flaming Star also featured previously unreleased material, while another album, Let's Be Friends featured most of the soundtrack to Presley's final scripted film, Change of Habit. Two later compilations, Burning Love and Hits from His Movies, Volume 2 and Separate Ways actually featured then-current chart hits for Presley, originally issued as singles on the RCA Victor label. The inclusion of these hit singles resulted in both Camden albums - which otherwise featured previously released and generally undistinguished movie and studio tracks - making the US charts. In 1975, RCA leased the reissue rights of several different Camden albums, including Presley's, to Pickwick Records, which subsequently reissued several of them under its own branding. Demand for Presley's recordings skyrocketed after his unexpected death in August, 1977; RCA soon terminated the reissue agreement with Pickwick primarily to regain the rights to the Pickwick leased Presley titles, and began reissuing and repackaging several of them.
During the early- to mid-1970s, as the popularity of RCA country artist Dolly Parton, rapidly grew, RCA reissued much of her earlier material in a series of compilations on the Camden label to capitalize on her more recent success. Just the Way I Am, Mine, Just Because I'm a Woman (not to be confused with Parton's 1968 debut RCA Victor solo album of the same name), and I Wish I Felt This Way at Home were all issued between 1972 and 1976, and were largely made up of lesser known material Parton had recorded for RCA Victor during the late 1960s and early '70s. As with the Presley titles, RCA also leased the reissue rights to Parton's Camden albums to Pickwick, which reissued the albums on their own label during the late 1970s.
The RCA Camden label continued well into the compact disc era, and was still active in the UK, Canada, Australia and several other countries until at least the early 2000s. Beginning in the late 1980s, RCA/BMG of Canada reissued several Camden albums on CD in their "RCA Camden Classics" series. Sony Music, the current owner of the RCA Victor archives, continues to reissue material and albums originally issued on the RCA Camden label.
RCA Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America.
Bluebird Records is an American record label best known for its low-cost releases, primarily of children's music, blues, jazz and swing in the 1930s and 1940s. Bluebird was founded in 1932 as a lower-priced subsidiary label of RCA Victor. Bluebird was noted for what came to be known as the "Bluebird sound", which influenced rhythm and blues and early rock and roll. It is currently owned by RCA Records parent company Sony Music Entertainment.
Almost in Love is a compilation album by American singer Elvis Presley, released in November 1970 by RCA Records on their budget label, RCA Camden. It was the first of several albums on the low-priced RCA Camden label to make available in LP format tracks that had previously been available only on 45 rpm singles or EPs.
Pickwick Records was an American record label and British record distributor known for its budget album releases of sound-alike recordings, bargain bin reissues and repackagings under the brands Design, Bravo, Hurrah, Grand Prix, and children's records on the Cricket and Happy Time labels.
Elvis' Christmas Album is the third studio album and first Christmas album by American singer and musician Elvis Presley on RCA Victor, LOC -1035, a deluxe limited edition, released October 15, 1957, and recorded at Radio Recorders in Hollywood. It has been reissued in numerous different formats since its first release. It spent four weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Top Pop Albums chart, and was the first of two Christmas-themed albums Presley would record, the other being Elvis Sings the Wonderful World of Christmas, released in 1971. The publication Music Vendor listed Elvis' Christmas Album on their singles charts for two weeks in December 1957 – January 1958, with a peak position of No. 49.
You'll Never Walk Alone is a compilation album by American singer and musician Elvis Presley, released in 1971 by RCA Records on the RCA Camden budget label. The album contains primarily previously released gospel recordings by Presley dating back as far as 1957, plus two unissued tracks. The album reached number 69 on the Billboard 200 chart and number 20 on the UK Singles Chart.
Separate Ways is a compilation album issued by RCA Records on December 1, 1972 from American singer and musician Elvis Presley. Released on the budget RCA Camden label shortly after another similar compilation, Burning Love and Hits from His Movies, Volume 2, Separate Ways was the second and final attempt by RCA to repackage older Elvis recordings by pairing them with a recent chart hit, in this case "Separate Ways" and its flipside "Always On My Mind".
The Living Strings were a studio orchestra founded in 1959 by RCA Victor for a series of easy listening recordings issued on the RCA Camden budget label. There were also related groups called the Living Voices, Living Brass, Living Guitars, Living Marimbas, Living Jazz, Living Trio, Living Percussion, and Living Organ.
Charles Allan Gerhardt was an American conductor, record producer, and arranger.
Ethel Nagy Gabriel was an American record producer and record executive with a four-decade career at RCA Victor. She produced over 2,500 music albums including 15 RIAA Certified Gold Records and hits by Elvis Presley, Perry Como, Al Hirt, Henry Mancini, and Roger Whittaker among others.
Walk a Mile in My Shoes: The Essential '70s Masters is a five-disc box set compilation of the recorded work of Elvis Presley during the decade of the 1970s. It was released in 1995 by RCA Records, catalog number 66670-2, following similar box sets that covered his musical output in the 1950s and 1960s. This set's initial long-box release included a set of collectable stamps duplicating the record jackets of the LP albums on which the tracks in the box set were originally released by RCA. It also includes a booklet with an extensive session list and discography, as well as a lengthy essay by Dave Marsh, some of it excerpted from his 1982 book on Presley. The box set was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America on July 15, 1999.
Let's Be Friends is a compilation album by American singer and musician Elvis Presley, released by RCA Records CAS 2408, in April 1970. It is the second Presley budget album to appear on the low-priced RCA Camden label. It peaked at number 105 on the Billboard 200 album chart. It was certified Gold on June 15, 1999 and Platinum on January 6, 2004 by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Burning Love and Hits from His Movies, Volume 2 is a compilation album by American singer and musician Elvis Presley. The album was released on November 1, 1972, on the budget label, RCA Camden. The contents of the album consist primarily of soundtrack recordings from various Presley films of the 1960s, augmented by both sides of his 1972 hit single, "Burning Love". Presley's recordings were generally issued by RCA on the standard Victor label, and not the budget Camden label; a similar compilation album, Separate Ways, was issued a month later, which also featured a recent chart hit leading a collection of older, non-hit soundtrack recordings.
Budget albums were low-priced vinyl LPs of popular and classical music released during the 1950s to 1970s consisting either of previously released material or material recorded especially for the line. Prices ranged from as low as 59 U.S. cents to $2.98. In the UK Pickwick Records' Top of the Pops record series, which operated between 1968 and 1985, was the most successful budget album range.
Just the Way I Am is a 1972 compilation album by the singer-songwriter Dolly Parton. Issued by RCA Camden, RCA's budget reissue division, the album was largely made up of material Parton had recorded between 1967 and 1970 and had released on her earlier albums, and was an attempt to capitalize on Parton's early 1970s success by reissuing earlier material that newer fans might not have been familiar with at the time.
Mine is a 1973 compilation album by American singer-songwriter Dolly Parton, issued by RCA's budget compilation division, RCA Camden. As was the case with Parton's 1972 RCA Camden compilation, Just the Way I Am, the album was an attempt by RCA to capitalize on Parton's early 1970s chart success by reissuing some of her lesser known material as a budget release, for newer fans who might not have purchased her earlier albums. The majority of tracks on Mine had first appeared on Parton's 1970 album, The Fairest of Them All.
Historical classical music recordings are generally classical music recordings made prior to the stereo era of vinyl disc recording, which began around 1957.
Mahalo From Elvis is a compilation album by American singer and musician Elvis Presley, released posthumously in 1978.
Frankie and Johnny is the twelfth soundtrack album by American singer and musician Elvis Presley, released on RCA Victor Records in mono and stereo, LPM/LSP 3553, in April 1966. An excursion into Dixieland and ragtime music, it is the soundtrack to the 1966 film of the same name starring Presley. Recording sessions took place at Radio Recorders in Hollywood, California, on May 12, 13, and 14, 1965. It peaked at number 20 on the Top LP's chart. It was certified Gold and Platinum on January 6, 2004, by the Recording Industry Association of America.
Arturo Toscanini was an Italian conductor. He was one of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and 20th century. Toscanini was a prolific recording artist, having conducted many recordings from 1920 until his retirement in 1954.
