Mercury Records
Mercury Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group. It had significant success as an independent operation in the 1940s and 1950s. Smash Records and Fontana Records were sub labels of Mercury. Mercury Records released rock, funk, R&B, doo wop, soul, blues, pop, rock and roll, and jazz records. In the United States, it is operated through Republic Records; in the United Kingdom and Japan, it is distributed by EMI Records.
Background
Mercury Records was started in Chicago in 1945 and over several decades saw great success. The success of Mercury has been attributed to the use of alternative marketing techniques to promote records. The conventional method of record promotion used by major labels such as RCA Victor, Decca Records, and Capitol Records was dependent on radio airplay, but Mercury Records co-founder Irving Green decided to promote new records using jukeboxes instead. By lowering promotion costs, Mercury was able to compete with the more established record labels, and thus became an established record label itself.Beginnings
Mercury Record Corporation was formed in Chicago in 1945 by Irving Green, Berle Adams, Ray Greenberg, and Arthur Talmadge. The company was a major force in R&B, doo wop, soul, pop doo wop, pop soul, blues, pop, rock and roll, jazz and classical music. Early in the label's history, Mercury opened two pressing plants, one in Chicago and the other in St. Louis, Missouri. By hiring two promoters, Tiny Hill and Jimmy Hilliard, they penetrated the pop market with names such as Frankie Laine, Vic Damone, Tony Fontane, and Patti Page.In 1946, Mercury hired Eddie Gaedel, an American with dwarfism, most notable for participating in a Major League Baseball game, to portray the "Mercury Man", complete with a winged hat similar to its logo, to promote Mercury recordings. Some early Mercury recordings featured a caricature of him as their logo.
In 1947, Jack Rael, a musician and publicist/manager, persuaded Mercury to let Patti Page record a song that had been planned to be done by Vic Damone, "Confess". The budget was too small for them to hire a second singer to provide the "answer" parts to Page, so at Rael's suggestion, she did both voices. Though "overdubbing" had been used occasionally on 78-rpm discs in the 1930s, for Lawrence Tibbett recordings, among others, this became the first documented example of "overdubbing" using tape.
The company released an enormous number of recordings under the Mercury label, as well as its subsidiaries. In addition, they leased and purchased material by independent labels and redistributed them. Under their own label, Mercury released a variety of recording styles from classical music to psychedelic rock. Its subsidiaries, though, focused on their own specialized categories of music.
Mercury's jazz division
From 1947 to 1952, John Hammond was a vice-president of Mercury Records. Mercury, under its EmArcy label, released LPs by many post-swing and bebop artists, including Clifford Brown and Max Roach, Kenny Drew, Dinah Washington, Nat Adderley, Cannonball Adderley, Ernestine Anderson, Sarah Vaughan, Maynard Ferguson, Walter Benton, Herb Geller.In the late 1950s, Mercury released jazz recordings of multiple artists, including Max Roach, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie, and Buddy Rich. During the 1960s albums were released by artists including Gene Ammons, Quincy Jones, Buddy Rich, Cannonball Adderley, Dinah Washington, Max Roach, Paul Bley and Jimmy Smith.
Later history: 1950s–present
During the 1950s, Mercury released hits of musicians such as the Platters, Brook Benton, the Diamonds, and Patti Page.In 1961, Philips, a Dutch electronics company and owner of Philips Records, which had lost its distribution deal with Columbia Records outside North America, played a key role in Mercury's future by signing an exchange agreement with the American record company. A year later, Mercury was sold to Consolidated Electronics Industries Corp., which was an affiliate of Philips under its U.S. Trust division; in 1963, Mercury switched British distribution from EMI to Philips. In 1962, Mercury began marketing a line of phonographs made by Philips bearing the Mercury brand name.
In July 1967, Mercury Records became the first U.S. record label to release cassette music tapes. In 1969, Mercury changed its corporate name to Mercury Record Productions Inc., while its parent Conelco became North American Philips Corp. after Philips bought control of the company.
Philips and German electronics giant Siemens reorganized their joint-ventured record operations, Grammophon-Philips Group, home of Deutsche Grammophon, Philips Records, and Polydor to become PolyGram in 1972. That year, PolyGram bought Mercury from NAPC. Mercury's corporate name was changed to Phonogram Inc. to match a related company in the UK that operated the Mercury label there. During the 1970s, Mercury released hits by musicians such as Paper Lace, Rod Stewart, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, William Bell, Thin Lizzy, 10cc, Rush, Jerry Butler, and Melba Moore.
From late 1974 to early 1983, the company's label design featured a painting of three famous buildings that are located in Chicago: Marina City, John Hancock Center, and One IBM Plaza, the latter which was Mercury's headquarters during that period, having moved from its long-time address at 35 East Wacker Drive. Mercury released soul musicians such as the Dells and Marvin Sease. From the 1970s through the early 1980s, Mercury released albums of funk musicians such as Ohio Players, the Bar-Kays, Con Funk Shun, Cameo, Kool&the Gang, and Hamilton Bohannon. Mercury released albums by Kool & the Gang, the first three albums of the 1979-86 self titled series of the Gap Band and Cameo. And the label released early rapper Kurtis Blow's hit "The Breaks" also. Mercury released blues musician Robert Cray.
In 1980, Phonogram moved its headquarters from Chicago to New York City. In 1981, Mercury, along with other U.S. PolyGram-owned labels, which included Polydor, RSO Records, and Casablanca, consolidated under the new name PolyGram Records, Inc.. Under PolyGram, Mercury absorbed the artists and catalogue of Casablanca Records, which consisted of hard rockers Kiss and disco stars Donna Summer and the Village People, and primarily became a rock/pop/new wave label with Van Morrison, Thin Lizzy, All About Eve, Julian Cope, Scorpions, Rush, John Cougar Mellencamp, Big Country, Tears for Fears, Bon Jovi, Animotion, Cinderella, and Def Leppard as well as the Oklahoma-based three-piece Hanson. Mercury, by having Thin Lizzy, Bon Jovi, Cinderella, Def Leppard, Kiss, the Scorpions, and various other rock acts on their roster, became a premiere label for hard rock music. Most of these bands were on Vertigo Records in Europe.
During the 1990s, Mercury released Funk Essentials series such as the Bar-Kays, Con Funk Shun, Leon Haywood, Yarbrough & Peeples, Rene & Angela, Stephanie Mills, and Junior.In late 1998, PolyGram was bought by Seagram, which then absorbed the company into its Universal Music Group unit. Under the reorganization, Mercury Records was closed and folded into the newly formed The Island Def Jam Music Group. Mercury's pop roster was predominantly taken over by Island Records, while its hip-hop acts found a new home at Def Jam Recordings, and some of Mercury's R&B acts were moved to the newly created Def Soul Records. Mercury's former country unit became Mercury Nashville Records. However, Mercury Records was relaunched in 2007 as a label under The Island Def Jam Music Group, appointing record executive David Massey as the President and CEO of the new venture. The label was defunct in 2015.
On April 11, 2022, Republic Records announced that they had acquired Mercury Records, and it will continue as their imprint.
The Mercury name also survives on the Mercury Records division of UMG France, the Mercury Studios film division, the classical music label Mercury KX, and catalogue reissues in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Japan, and Brazil, as well. In 2024, Mercury Studios announced a global licensing deal with pay-per-view concert streaming service On Air. In 2024, Mercury Records became part of Universal Music Group-owned Republic Corps, joining sister labels Republic Records, Island Records, Casablanca Records and Def Jam Recordings.
Mercury Living Presence series
In 1951, under the direction of recording engineer C. Robert Fine and recording director David Hall, Mercury Records initiated a recording technique using a single microphone to record symphony orchestras. From 1951 to 1956, David Hall recorded Mercury's Living Presence Series LPs. Robert Fine had for several years used a single microphone for Mercury small-ensemble classical recordings produced by John Hammond and later Mitch Miller. The first record in this new Mercury Olympian Series was Pictures at an Exhibition performed by Rafael Kubelík and the Chicago Symphony. The group that became the best known using this technique was the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, which, under the leadership of conductor Antal Doráti, made a series of classical albums that were well reviewed and sold briskly, including the first-ever complete recordings of Tchaikovsky's ballets Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker. Dorati's 1954 one-microphone monaural recording and 1958 three-microphone stereo rerecording of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture included dramatic overdub recordings of 1812-era artillery and the bells of the Yale University Carillon. A stereo release in 1960 featured new recordings of the cannon shots, and the bells of the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Carillon at the Riverside Church in Chicago. Besides Mercury's mono and stereo versions of the 1812, only one other classical album rang up gold-record sales in the 1950s in the U.S.The New York Times music critic Howard Taubman described the Mercury sound on Pictures at an Exhibition as "being in the living presence of the orchestra" and Mercury eventually began releasing their classical recordings under the 'Living Presence' series' name. The recordings were produced by Mercury vice president Wilma Cozart, who later married Bob Fine. Cozart took over recording director duties in 1953 and also produced the CD reissues of more than half of the Mercury Living Presence catalog in the 1990s. By the late 1950s, the Mercury Living Presence crew included session musical supervisors Harold Lawrence and Clair van Ausdall and associate engineer Robert Eberenz. Besides the recordings with the Chicago and Minneapolis orchestras, Mercury also recorded Howard Hanson with the Eastman Rochester Orchestra, Frederick Fennell with the Eastman Wind Ensemble, and Paul Paray with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.In late 1955, Mercury began using three omnidirectional microphones to make stereo recordings on three-track tape.
The original LP releases of the classical recordings continued through 1968. The Mercury classical-music catalogue is currently managed by Decca Label Group through Philips Records, which reissued the recordings on LP and then CD. In turn, Mercury now manages the pop/rock catalog of Philips Records.
In 2012, Decca Classics, the current owner of the Mercury Living Presence label, issued a value-priced 51-CD box that included 50 of the 1990s CD titles, a bonus CD containing an interview with Wilma Cozart Fine, and a deluxe booklet detailing the history of Mercury Living Presence. The CD set was issued worldwide and was sold by major retailers. A limited-edition six-LP box set was also issued. The CD set brings back into print dozens of titles that had not been available as manufactured CDs since the early 2000s.
In 2013, Decca Classics issued a second, 55-CD box set, along with a second six-LP box set. The CD box set included two bonus discs: a new reissue of the 1953 monophonic recording of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" by Dorati with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, and a first-time-on-CD reissue of the premiere recording of John Corigliano's Piano Concerto, played by Hilde Somer with the San Antonio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Victor Alessandro.On January 4, 2015, Mercury co-founder Irwin Steinberg died at the age of 94.