[78-L] An American Decca query

[David Lennick]

The Brunswick facilities were still being used to record custom material, radio 
transcriptions and the like after ARC had acquired the catalog. When Decca was 
formed, they bought the facilities and continued using the same old crappy 
equipment and master numbers. I posted an interesting link a few weeks 
ago..let's see if I can find it again:

http://www.vjm.biz/new_page_11.htm

Fascinating stuff, and you'll find the Decca foundation about 2/3 down. Or 
right here, if you can't wait:

Herbert J. Yates was, in an oblique way, largely responsible for the creation 
of American Decca. Yates was the head of Consolidated Film Industries, a film 
processing lab which had acquired a substantial interest in ARC circa October 
1930. When in 1934 Yates promised Edward R. Lewis, the head of Decca Records 
Ltd. of London since its 1929 founding, that ARC and Decca could jointly buy 
the financially distressed Columbia Phonograph Company, Lewis crossed the 
Atlantic to ink the deal. (The deal was for American Columbia, which marketed 
Columbia in the U.S., its territories and Canada; a separate company, E.M.I., 
controlled Columbia everywhere else and was not part of the sale.) On his 
arrival in New York in July 1934, Lewis was shocked to learn that Yates had 
reneged on his promise. While he’d been at sea, ARC had bought Columbia for a 
price reported at $75,500, a pittance considering that the sale included the 
catalogs of two active labels, American Columbia and OKeh, plus a number of 
discontinued ones including Harmony, Diva, Velvetone, Clarion, American Odeon 
and American Parlophone, also the company’s trademark rights, patents and a 
non-union pressing plant at Bridgeport, Connecticut that was especially 
attractive to the union-loathing Yates. Decca had been left out of the deal, 
but Lewis soon found a way to even the score with Yates and ARC.

Because Decca Records Ltd. of London also managed British Brunswick under 
authority of Warner Bros. Pictures, Lewis was acquainted with Jack Kapp, Milton 
Rackmil and E.F. Stevens, three of U.S. Brunswick’s top managers, as well as 
Hermann Starr of Warners. Negotiations soon began with the goal of starting a 
U.S. Decca label in competition to ARC and its labels. Showing great 
prescience, Kapp had placed an escape clause in the contracts of many of 
Brunswick’s recording artists whereby the contracts could be ended if he ever 
left the company. Thus, when Kapp quit Brunswick for Decca Records Inc., as the 
new company was called, he was able to bring with him some of Brunswick’s 
best-selling artists, including Bing Crosby, Guy Lombardo, the Mills Brothers 
and the Casa Loma Orchestra.


While the key founders of Decca Records Inc. are generally cited as Lewis, 
Kapp, Rackmil and Stevens, the contributions of Warner Bros. Pictures were no 
less essential. As Lewis later recalled in his autobiography ("No C.I.C.," 
Universal Royalties Ltd., London, 1956, page 55): "Negotiations took place with 
Hermann Starr, head of the Brunswick Radio Corporation, Warner’s subsidiary and 
now in charge of their extensive music publishing interests. Within a few days 
we had entered into an agreement under which the plant and recording equipment 
were purchased, and leases were entered into for both the factory and the 
offices at 619 West 54th Street and the offices and recording studios at 799 
Seventh Avenue. The consideration for the purchase was 5,000 out of 25,000 
Common Shares of $1 each in the new company to be formed as Decca Records Inc., 
and $60,000 in a series of promissory notes. The plant at that time would not 
have fetched more than $20,000 or so in a sale, yet for our purposes it had a 
special value in that it made it possible for the business to start operations 
immediately; indeed without this factory plant and office space and equipment 
it is doubtful whether the company could have been started at all."

dl

Royal Pemberton wrote:
> I understand that the pre-ARC Brunswick New York matrix series ends at
> E 37525 in December 1931 whilst Decca's New York series begins at
> 38290 in August 1934.
> 
> Then there's Brunswick's Chicago series that got as high as C 8851 (9
> December 1932) that picks up at C 9295 (15 August 1934).
> 
> It's interesting that there appears to be a one-year difference
> between when New York changed from the E 3XXXX series (end December
> 1931) to the ARC series (January 1932) c. 11086, and Chicago's
> changing from C 8851 to an ARC series starting at C 501 (12 January
> 1933).
> 
> As Jack Kapp is the common link between these two numerical series,
> pre-ARC Brunswick to Decca, I wonder what was recorded, when and for
> whom, in the interim range of numbers?  Did he simply operate as an
> independent recording facility with studios in NYC and Chicago, until
> the Decca offer came along?
>