[78-L] Pseudononymous Camden LPs

[David Lennick]

Didn't they give out a story about these artists accepting lower royalty rates? 
Plus there might have been a desire to keep the cheaper recordings from 
competing with full-priced albums by the same artists, although pseudonyms 
weren't used on their popular albums.

Here's something from Wikipedia, for what it's worth:

RCA Camden originally issued some classical recordings using the real names of 
the orchestras. Then, to avoid competing with modern recordings by the same 
orchestras, they adopted a series of pseudonyms. Thus, the St. Louis Symphony 
Orchestra became known either as the Savoy Symphony Orchestra or the Schuyler 
Symphony Orchestra, the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra (a New York "pickup" 
orchestra, drawn from players in the NBC Symphony Orchestra and the New York 
Philharmonic Orchestra) became the Golden Symphony Orchestra, the Boston 
Symphony Orchestra became the Centennial Symphony Orchestra, the London 
Philharmonic Orchestra became the Stratford Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago 
Symphony Orchestra became the Cromwell Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco 
Symphony Orchestra became the World Wide Symphony Orchestra, and the 
Philadelphia Orchestra became the Warwick Symphony Orchestra.[1] The New York 
City Symphony Orchestra, created by Leopold Stokowski in the 1940s, recorded 
for RCA Victor and some of its recordings were issued on Camden under the name 
"Sutton Symphony Orchestra," not to be confused with a British orchestra with 
the same name.

--All early Camden orchestral LPs that I've seen use pseudonyms..the real 
identities came on later re-pressings, although Leonard Bernstein was 
identified as conductor on CAL 196 (of three pseudonymous orchestras).

dl

Randy Watts wrote:
> Does anyone have any idea why Camden, RCA Victor's budget label, used pseudonyms on most of its early LPs? The performances are by name orchestras, reissued from RCA Victor's back catalog, but are generally identified as by Warwick Symphony Orchestra, Festival Concert Orchestra, Sussex Symphony Orchestra, or some such, and with no conductor credit at all.
> 
> Randy 
> 
>