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This month marks the aniversary of the Columbia Phonograph Company which was formed in Washington, D. C., on January 15, 1889, by stenographer, lawyer and New Jersey native Edward D. Easton (1856–1915) and a group of investors. It derived its name from the District of Columbia, where it was headquartered.
photographer unknown
It evolved 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. The first was RCA Records.
In 1913, Columbia moved into the Woolworth Building in New York City
and housed its first recording studio there. In 1917, Columbia used
this studio to make one of the earliest jazz records, by the Original Dixieland Jass Band. Their Livery Stable Blues was the first jazz record ever issued.
(from left)
drummer Tony Sbarbaro (aka Tony
Spargo),
trombonist Edwin "Daddy" Edwards,
cornetist Dominick James
"Nick" LaRocca,
clarinetist Larry Shields, and
As was the custom of some of the regional phonograph companies, Columbia
produced many commercial cylinder recordings of its own, and its
catalogue of musical records in 1891 was 10 pages.
Columbia's ties to Edison and the North American Phonograph Company were severed in 1894 with the breakup of North American Phonograph Company. Thereafter it sold only records and phonographs of its own
manufacture. In 1902, Columbia introduced the "XP" record, a molded
brown wax record, to use up old stock. Columbia introduced black wax
records in 1903. According to one source, they continued to mold brown
waxes until 1904 with the highest number being 32601, Heinie, which is
a duet by Arthur Collins and Byron G. Harlan.
Columbia began selling disc records (invented and patented by Victor Talking Machine Company's Emile Berliner)
and phonographs in addition to the cylinder system in 1901, preceded
only by their "Toy Graphophone" of 1899, which used small, vertically
cut records. For a decade, Columbia competed with both the Edison Phonograph Company cylinders and the Victor Talking Machine Company disc records as one of the top three names in American recorded sound.
In 1908 Columbia commenced successful mass production of what they called
their "Double-Faced" discs, the 10-inch variety initially selling for 65
cents apiece. The firm also introduced the internal-horn "Grafonola" to compete with the extremely popular "Victrola" sold by the rival Victor Talking Machine Company.
During this era, Columbia used the "Magic Notes" logo—a pair of
sixteenth notes (semiquavers) in a circle—both in the United States and
overseas (where this particular logo would never substantially change).
Columbia was split into two companies, one to make records and one to
make players. Columbia Phonograph was moved to Connecticut, and Ed
Easton went with it. Eventually it was renamed the Dictaphone Corporation.
using a dictaphone
In late 1922, Columbia went into receivership. The company was bought by its English subsidiary, the Columbia Graphophone Company
in 1925 and the label, record numbering system, and recording process
changed. On February 25, 1925, Columbia began recording with the
electric recording process licensed from Western Electric.
In 1951, Columbia US began issuing records in the 45 rpm format RCA Victor had introduced two years earlier. Columbia became the most successful non-rock record company in the 1950s after it lured producer and bandleader Mitch Miller
away from the Mercury label in 1950. Despite its many successes,
Columbia remained largely uninvolved in the teenage rock'n'roll market
until the mid-1960s, despite a handful of crossover hits, largely
because of Miller's famous (and frequently expressed) loathing of
rock'n'roll. (Miller was a classically trained oboist who had been a
friend of Columbia executive Goddard Lieberson since their days at the Eastman School of Music in the 1930s.) Miller quickly signed up Mercury's biggest artist at the time, Frankie Laine, and discovered several of the decade's biggest recording stars including Tony Bennett, Mahalia Jackson, Jimmy Boyd, Guy Mitchell (whose stage surname was taken from Miller's first name), Johnnie Ray, The Four Lads, Rosemary Clooney, Ray Conniff, Jerry Vale and Johnny Mathis. He also oversaw many of the early singles by the label's top female recording star of the decade, Doris Day.
Although Columbia began recording in stereo in 1956, stereo LPs did not
begin to be manufactured until 1958. One of Columbia's first stereo
releases was an abridged and re-structured performance of the Messiah by Handel performed by the New York Philharmonic and the Westminster Choir conducted by Leonard Bernstein (recorded on December 31, 1956, on 1⁄2-inch
tape, using an Ampex 300-3 machine). Bernstein combined the Nativity
and Resurrection sections, and ended the performance with the death of
Christ. Most of the early stereo recordings were of classical artists, including the New York Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Bruno Walter, Dimitri Mitropoulos, and the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy, who also recorded an abridged Messiah for Columbia.
In 1961, Columbia's music repertoire was given an enormous boost when Mitch Miller, its A&R manager and bandleader, became the host of the variety series Sing Along with Mitch on NBC.
The show was based on Miller's 'folksy' but appealing 'chorus' style
performance of popular standards. During its four-season run, the series
promoted Miller's "Singalong" albums, which sold over 20 million units,
and received a 34% audience share when it was cancelled in 1964.
In September 1961, CBS A&R manager John Hammond was producing the first Columbia album by folk singer Carolyn Hester, who invited a friend to accompany her on one of the recording sessions. It was here that Hammond first met Bob Dylan, whom he signed to the label, initially as a harmonica player. Dylan's self-titled debut album was released in March 1962 and sold only moderately. Some executives in Columbia dubbed Dylan "Hammond's folly" and suggest that Dylan be dropped from the label. But John Hammond and Johnny Cash defended Dylan, who over the next four years became one of Columbia's highest earning acts.
Columbia's engineering department developed a process for emulating
stereo from a mono source. They called this process "Electronically
Rechanneled for Stereo". n the June 16, 1962, Columbia announced it would issue "rechanneled" versions of greatest
hits compilations that had been recorded in mono, including albums by Doris Day, Frankie Laine, Percy Faith, Mitch Miller, Marty Robbins, Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, and Johnny Mathis.
When the British Invasion arrived in January 1964, Columbia had no rock musicians on its roster except for Dion, who was signed in 1963 as the label's first major rock star, and Paul Revere & the Raiders who were also signed in 1963. Terry Melcher,
son of Doris Day, produced the hard driving Don't Make My Baby Blue for Frankie Laine, who had gone six years without a hit record. The song
reached No. 51 on the pop chart and No. 17 on the easy listening chart.
When Mitch Miller retired in 1965,
Columbia was at a turning point. Miller's disdain for rock and roll and
pop rock had dominated Columbia's A&R policy. The label's only
significant "pop" acts at the time were Bob Dylan, The Byrds, Paul
Revere & The Raiders and Simon & Garfunkel. In its catalogue were other genres: classical, jazz and country, along with a select group of R&B artists, among them Aretha Franklin.
Most historians noted that Columbia had problems marketing Franklin as a
major talent in the R&B genre, which led to her leaving the label
for Atlantic Records in 1967.
In September 1970, under the guidance of Clive Davis,
Columbia Records entered the West Coast rock market, opening a
state-of-the art recording studio located at 827 Folsom St.
in San Francisco and later morphed into the Automatt and establishing an A&R head and office in San Francisco at Fisherman's Wharf, Columbia began recording in a four-channel process called quadraphonic,
using the "SQ" (Stereo Quadraphonic) standard that used an electronic
encoding process that could be decoded by special amplifiers and then
played through four speakers, with each speaker placed in the corner of a
room. RCA countered with another quadraphonic process that required a special
cartridge to play the "discrete" recordings for four-channel playback.
Both Columbia and RCA's quadraphonic records could be played on
conventional stereo equipment. Although the Columbia process required
less equipment and was quite effective, many were confused by the
competing systems and sales of both Columbia's matrix recordings and
RCA's discrete recordings were disappointing.
Quadraphonic recording was used by both classical artists, including Leonard Bernstein and Pierre Boulez, and popular artists such as Electric Light Orchestra, Billy Joel, Pink Floyd, Johnny Cash, Barbra Streisand, Ray Conniff, Carlos Santana, Herbie Hancock, The Clash and Blue Öyster Cult.
The acquisition of rights to the Columbia trademarks by EMI (including
the "Magic Notes" logo) presented the company with a dilemma of which
logo to use. For much of the 1990s, Columbia released its albums without
a logo, just the "COLUMBIA" word mark in the Bodoni Classic Bold typeface.
Columbia experimented with bringing back the "Notes and Mic" logo but
without the CBS mark on the microphone. That logo is currently used in
the "Columbia Jazz" series of jazz releases and reissues. A modified "Magic Notes" logo is found on the logo for Sony Classical.
In mid to late 1999, it was eventually decided that the "Walking Eye"
(previously the CBS Records logo outside North America) would be
Columbia's logo, with the retained Columbia word mark design, throughout
the world except in Japan where Nippon Columbia
has the rights to the Columbia trademark to this day and continues to
use the "Magic Notes" logo. In Japan, CBS/Sony Records was renamed Sony
Records in 1991 and stopped using the "Walking Eye" logo in 1998.
Columbia Records remains a premier subsidiary label of Sony Music Entertainment. The label is headed by chairman Rob Stringer, along with executive vice president and general manager Joel Klaiman, who joined the label in December 2012. In 2009, during the re-consolidation of Sony Music, Columbia was partnered with its Epic Records sister to form the Columbia/Epic Label Group under which it operated as an imprint. In July 2011, as part of further corporate restructuring, Epic was split from the Columbia/Epic Group as Epic took in multiple artists from Jive Records.
As of March 2013, Columbia Records was home to 90 artists such as Lauren Jauregui, Robbie Williams, Calvin Harris and Daft Punk.
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