[78-L] Pseudononymous Camden LPs

[Randy Watts]

Thanks for the replies.

I suppose some astute record buyers managed to figure out who the real orchestras were underneath those pseudonyms. 

Popular albums don't appear to have shown up in the Camdens for a couple of years, based on listings I've seen, but once they did, they must have outsold their classical brethren by a pretty wide margin, given how quickly pop began to dominate the label's output.

Randy


--- On Sun, 11/16/08, David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca> wrote:

> From: David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca>
> Subject: Re: [78-L] Pseudononymous Camden LPs
> To: "78-L Mail List" <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
> Date: Sunday, November 16, 2008, 11:13 PM
> 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 
> > 
> > 
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