Decca Records
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.
Decca and its American spin-off both built up strong catalogues of popular music. In their first two decades, their artists included Gertrude Lawrence, George Formby, Jack Hylton and Vera Lynn in Britain and Bing Crosby, Al Jolson, the Andrews Sisters and the Mills Brothers in the US. Later performers in their popular catalogues included in the US Bill Haley & His Comets and Buddy Holly plus in the UK Elvis Presley, Tommy Steele, Lonnie Donegan, Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, Eddie Cochran, and the Rolling Stones.
In the classical sphere, Decca became a major player after the Second World War, building up a large catalogue of symphonic, operatic, chamber and other music. Between 1958 and 1965 the company made what has been widely described as the gramophone's greatest achievement – the first complete recording to be released of Wagner's operatic tetralogy, Der Ring des Nibelungen. Decca's advanced technological expertise offered recorded sound of unprecedented realism in the mid-20th century, and it was an early adapter of digital technology.
History
Foundation
The origins of the Decca Record Company were not in making records but in making the gramophones on which to play them. Shortly before the First World War the first Decca product was offered to the public: the "Decca Dulcephone" a portable gramophone, retailing at two guineas. It was manufactured by the musical instrument makers Barnett Samuel and Sons Ltd, a company founded in 1869. There are various theories about the derivation of the name "Decca", but the musicologist Robert Dearling describes it as "a word whose origins are lost".In the 1920s, the company changed its name to "The Decca Gramophone Company" and it was floated on the stock market in 1928. Edward Lewis, a London stockbroker, acted for the company, despite his reservations about its business model:
Lewis tried to convince Decca's board that the way forward was to expand into record production and manufacture, and recommended buying out the struggling Duophone Record Company in south London, arguing that "with the well-known Decca trademark and... distributing organization... a Decca record would surely succeed where others were failing". The Decca directors were unpersuaded and Lewis raised enough capital to acquire not only Duophone but Decca itself.
On 7 February 1929, the Decca Record Company's first discs were recorded: dance music performed by Ambrose and the May Fair Orchestra. The first classical recording took place four days later at the Chenil Galleries in Chelsea, and featured the violist Cecil Bonvallot in an arrangement of J. S. Bach's Komm, süßer Tod, komm selge Ruh. Among the fledgling company's releases in its first year were a set of numbers from William Walton and Edith Sitwell's Façade conducted by the composer and recited by Sitwell and Constant Lambert, and a set of Handel Concerti grossi conducted by Ernest Ansermet, who made more than a hundred recordings for Decca between then and 1968. A premiere recording of Delius's Sea Drift conducted by Julian Clifford was in less than ideal sound, but marked Decca's first association with the baritone Roy Henderson which lasted for the rest of his career.
1930s
The Great Depression of the 1930s hit Decca hard. Lewis, although he remained nominally merely a board member, effectively took over the direction of the company and at his instigation Decca made substantial cuts in the prices of its records. In 1930, Decca acquired the British rights to the German Polydor label, gaining access to a wide range of classical recordings. During the decade Decca also bought the British rights to the and Ultraphon catalogues, but sold its French subsidiary to Edison Bell. Decca bought a majority shareholding in the American Brunswick Record Company from the Warner Brothers film studios; its catalogue contained recordings by leading popular artists such as Bing Crosby, Guy Lombardo and Al Jolson. Decca established an American subsidiary, Decca Records US, in 1934, funded and chaired by Lewis and led by Jack Kapp, Milton Rackmil and E. F. Stevens. American Decca boosted its presence in the popular market by signing the Andrews Sisters and the Mills Brothers. As the Second World War loomed, Lewis, foreseeing a freeze of his overseas assets, sold his holdings in the US company.In 1934, Jack Kapp established a country & western line for the new Decca American subsidiary by signing Frank Luther, Sons of the Pioneers, Stuart Hamblen, The Ranch Boys, and other popular acts based in both New York and Los Angeles. Louisiana singer/composer Jimmie Davis began recording for Decca the same year, joined by western vocalists Jimmy Wakely and Roy Rogers in 1940.
In 1935, the Compo Company became the Canadian distributor of American Decca recordings.
Between 1929 and 1938, record sales in Britain fell by eighty-five per cent, and Lewis sought new ways of keeping Decca afloat. He signed popular artists such as the singers Gertrude Lawrence and George Formby, the best-selling dance-band leader Jack Hylton and the singer Vera Lynn, who later became the first non-American singer to top the Billboard charts. In 1935, Decca made the first recording of Walton's First Symphony and in the same year lured Sir Henry Wood away from EMI, although he later returned there. Other classical artists recruited by the company included the newly formed Boyd Neel Orchestra in 1934, followed by the Griller Quartet in 1935 and Clifford Curzon in 1937. Lewis's biographer Peter Martland writes that "through a combination of Lewis's adroitness, good luck, and a gradual upturn in the global economy, by the time the Second World War broke out in 1939, it appeared that Decca had weathered the storm".
Second World War
Decca had acquired the small Crystalate record company in the late 1930s, and with it its sound engineers Arthur Haddy and Kenneth Wilkinson, as well as its studios in West Hampstead. Recording continued at the studios throughout the Second World War. Although production was hampered by a shortage of the shellac from which records were made, for Decca the positive results of the war far outweighed the disadvantages. Haddy and his team were moved from making commercial recordings to developing vital technology for the war effort. They were tasked with making recording equipment to detect the sonic differences in the water movement around German and British submarine propellers. As the relevant differences were at the high end of the frequency range, unprecedently sensitive equipment had to be invented, and this the Decca engineers did. This was not only an important contribution to the war effort, but made possible greatly enhanced gramophone recordings when the war ended. "We'd got the goods", Haddy later recalled.The American offshoot of Decca was less affected by the war than the British company. It bought out Warner Brothers' residual stake in Brunswick and floated as an independent company on the New York Stock Exchange in 1942. The company's popular music catalogue now included recordings by, among others, the Ink Spots, Jimmy Dorsey, Judy Garland, Count Basie, Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. In 1942, the company released the first recording of "White Christmas" by Bing Crosby. He recorded another version of the song in 1947, also for US Decca; it became and has remained the world's best-selling single. American Decca pioneered original cast albums of musicals with the Broadway cast of Oklahoma! in 1943, and other shows followed, including Carousel, Annie Get Your Gun, Guys and Dolls and The King and I.
Post-war
On 8 June 1945, Decca announced that its ffrr system had been "in daily use for the past twelve months". The company's publicity manager, Francis Attwood, suggested a new trademark consisting of the letters "ffrr" coming out of a human ear. This was adopted and Lewis later observed that Attwood's design was "to become of immense value". The dramatically enhanced frequency range now possible prompted Decca to move its main London recording venue from the West Hampstead studios to the acoustically superb Kingsway Hall in 1944. Ansermet conducted what Dearling calls "the first important ffrr release", Stravinsky's Petrushka, recorded there in February 1946.Another technical advance that greatly benefited Decca was the invention of the long-playing record, pressed on vinyl rather than shellac and playing for five times longer than 78 r.p.m. discs. The technology was pioneered in the US by Columbia Records, and in Europe by Decca. From 1948 to 1950, Decca concentrated its efforts on exporting LPs for the American market, and it was not until June 1950 that Decca LPs became available in Britain. The playing time of LP made recordings of complete operas considerably more viable than hitherto, and Decca recorded Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail in Vienna in June 1950 and Wagner's four-and-a-half-hour Die Meistersinger in 1951–52. Decca's main British rival, EMI, comprising the Columbia, His Master's Voice and Parlophone labels, lagged behind, having initially reached the conclusion that there was no future in LP, devoting itself instead to an unsuccessful two-year attempt to perpetuate the 78 format.
Most recording contracts had expired or lapsed during the war, and consequently many eminent artists, previously exclusive to rival labels, could be enticed by Decca's technical edge. The company instituted an ambitious programme of international classical recordings in many European centres, building up an artist roster comparable with those of its pre-war competitors. For the first time since the 1930s, Decca was able to resume full-price releases. A mainstay of the orchestral catalogue was provided by Ansermet and his Suisse Romande Orchestra in Geneva, who recorded for Decca from 1949 to 1968. Peter Pears signed with the company in 1944, Kathleen Ferrier in 1946, Julius Katchen in 1947 and the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company – hitherto exclusive to EMI – in 1949. In 1950, the Vienna Philharmonic, also contracted to EMI until then, entered into an exclusive contract with Decca. Other former EMI artists who joined Decca were Wilhelm Backhaus and Wilhelm Kempff.
From the late 1940s onward, the American Decca had a sizeable roster of country artists. The main architect of American Decca's success in country music was Owen Bradley, who joined American Decca in 1947, and was later promoted to vice president and head of A&R for the Nashville operations in 1958.
In 1947, Lewis, finding the now independent US Decca uncooperative in distributing British recordings, set up a new American subsidiary, London Records.