Decca Records is a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934 by Lewis, along with American Decca's first president Jack Kapp and later American Decca president Milton Rackmil. In 1937, anticipating Nazi aggression leading to World War II, Lewis sold American Decca and the link between the UK and U.S. Decca labels was broken for several decades. 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. Both wings are now part of the Universal Music Group, which is co-owned by Vivendi, a media conglomerate headquartered in Paris, and Tencent, a Chinese tech company. The US Decca label was the foundation company that evolved into UMG.
Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. It was founded on January 15, 1889, evolving from the American Graphophone Company, the successor to the Volta Graphophone Company. Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in the recorded sound business, and the second major company to produce records. From 1961 to 1990, Columbia 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, alongside former longtime rival RCA Records, as well as Arista Records and Epic Records.
RCA Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside RCA's former long-time rival Columbia Records; also Arista Records, and Epic Records. The label has released multiple genres of music, including pop, classical, rock, hip hop, afrobeat, electronic, R&B, blues, jazz, and country. Its name is derived from the initials of its defunct parent company, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). It was fully acquired by Bertelsmann in 1986, making it a part of Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG); however, RCA Records became a part of Sony BMG Music Entertainment, a merger between BMG and Sony Music, in 2004, and was acquired by the latter in 2008, after the dissolution of Sony BMG and the restructuring of Sony Music. It is the second-oldest record label in American history, after sister label Columbia Records.
Mercury Records was an American record label that had significant success as an independent operation in the 1940s and 1950s and that later became owned by Philips, PolyGram, and Universal Music Group. In the US, it operated through Island Records; in the UK, it was distributed by Virgin EMI Records.
MGM Records was a record label founded by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio in 1946 for the purpose of releasing soundtrack recordings of their musical films. It transitioned into a pop music label which continued into the 1970s. The company also released soundtrack albums of the music for some of their non-musical films as well, and on rare occasions, cast albums of off-Broadway musicals such as The Fantasticks and the 1954 revival of The Threepenny Opera. In one instance, it released the highly successful soundtrack album of a film made by another studio, Columbia Pictures's Born Free (1966).
Vee-Jay Records is an American record label founded in the 1950s, located in Chicago and specializing in blues, jazz, rhythm and blues and rock and roll.
Discography is the study and cataloging of published sound recordings, often by specified artists or within identified musical genres. The exact information included varies depending on the type and scope of the discography, but a discography entry for a specific recording will often list such details as the names of the artists involved, the time and place of the recording, the title of the piece performed, release dates, chart positions, and sales figures.
An album is a collection of audio recordings issued as a collection on compact disc (CD), vinyl, audio tape, or another medium. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early 20th century as individual 78-rpm records collected in a bound book resembling a photograph album; this format evolved after 1948 into single vinyl LP records played at 33 1⁄3 rpm.
In the Court of the Crimson King is the debut studio album by English rock band King Crimson, released on 10 October 1969 by Island Records. The album is one of the first and most influential of the progressive rock genre, where the band combined the blues influences that rock music was founded upon with elements of jazz, classical, and symphonic music.
Contemporary Records was a jazz record company and label founded by Lester Koenig in Los Angeles in 1951. Contemporary produced music from a variety of jazz styles and players.
Philips Records is a record label founded by the Dutch electronics company Philips. In 1946, Philips acquired the company which pressed records for British Decca's Dutch outlet in Amsterdam.
Record collecting is the hobby of collecting sound recordings, usually of music, but sometimes "spoken word", in some cases, other recorded sounds. Although the typical focus is on vinyl records, all formats of recorded music can be collected.
Song of Innocence is the debut album by American composer and producer David Axelrod. It was released in October 1968 by Capitol Records.
Space age pop is a subgenre of pop and easy listening music associated with Mexican and American composers and songwriters in the space age of the 1950s and 1960s. It is also called bachelor pad music or lounge music. Space age pop was inspired by the spirit of those times, an optimism based on the strong post-war economy and technology boom, and excitement about humanity's early forays into space. Although there is no exact album, date, or year when the genre was born, producer Irwin Chusid identifies its heyday as "roughly 1954 to 1963—from the dawn of high-fidelity (hi-fi) to the arrival of the Beatles."
RCA Victrola was a budget record label introduced by RCA Victor in the early 1960s to reissue classical recordings originally released on the RCA Victor "Red Seal" label. The name 'Victrola' was the trademark for early console phonographs with enclosed horns first marketed by the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1906. The 'Victrola' trademark also appeared on most Red Seal records issued in the US from around 1909 until 1914, then from 1917 until early 1934. The RCA Victrola label replaced the older RCA Camden label for budget classical reissues, the Camden label now mostly reissuing budget recordings drawn from RCA Victor's pop and country catalog. Many early reissues on the RCA Victrola label included recordings from the historic RCA Victor "Living Stereo" series first released in 1958, using triple channel stereophonic tapes recorded as early as 1954. There were also some first stereo issues of recordings that had previously been available only in monophonic versions. For several years, Victrola released both stereo and mono versions of many albums, many of them in "reprocessed" (fake) stereo.
Everest Records was a record label based in Bayside, Long Island, started by Harry D. Belock and Bert Whyte in May 1958. It was devoted mainly to classical music.
The LP is an analog sound storage medium, a phonograph record format characterized by a speed of 33 1⁄3 rpm, a 12- or 10-inch diameter, and use of the "microgroove" groove specification. Introduced by Columbia in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry. Apart from a few relatively minor refinements and the important later addition of stereophonic sound, it remained the standard format for record albums until its gradual replacement from the 1980s to the early 21st century, first by compact discs and then by streaming media.
The World Record Club Ltd. was the name of a company in the United Kingdom which issued long-playing records and reel-to-reel tapes, mainly of classical music and jazz, through a membership mail-order system during the 1950s and 1960s.
Gene Rains is a vibraphonist and leader of the Gene Rains Group, a jazz quartet from Hawaii that played a musical style known as Exotica. Rains' short career spanned the early to the mid-1960s and consisted of 4 LP recordings released on Decca Records and the Vocalion label. These LPs were released during the golden era of Hawaiian and Exotica music and the Tiki culture in the United States. The Gene Rains Group repertoire featured popular Hawaiian and Polynesian Island melodies as well as popular American tunes of the era.
Heard Ranier Ferguson is a studio album by 1980s jazz trio Heard Ranier Ferguson, composed of bassist John Heard, pianist Tom Ranier and drummer Sherman Ferguson. All highly experienced musicians with a wealth of recordings behind them.
