[78-L] 78-L Digest, Vol 7, Issue 54 - Columbia in the UK

[David Lennick]

Here's something interesting..yesterday I picked up the 1957 COLUMBIA MGM 
PARLOPHONE catalogue (cutoff date June 1956) and many, many US Columbia 
recordings are still listed as current. Lots of Frankie Laine, Andre 
Kostelanetz, Gene Krupa, Woody Herman etc. Presumably they're all from before 
the split, but how long did the US and UK Columbia labels hold onto each 
other's back catalogue if it wasn't wanted by the newer representative? I know 
American Columbia kept Dinu Lipatti's recordings well into the 70s.

dl

burlinson wrote:
> This is broadly correct; I would only add that the Fontana label was started 
> in 1958 when Philips
> realeaed that there was too much material coming from Columbia USA to 
> release on the Philips label
> and moved some artists such as Johnny Mathis and Miles Davis to the Fontana 
> label.
> 
> Much of the Columbia material that Philips had issued on its label was 
> renumbered from
> 1962 onwards (BPG/SBPG for 12' Lp's) and issued on the CBS label.
> 
> There was a rumor going round in the early 1990's in the UK  that Sony paid 
> EMI
> One Million dollars for the rights to use the Columbia label name & logo's 
> worldwide!!
> 
> Nigel.
> 
> 
>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 11
>> Date: Sun, 19 Apr 2009 10:20:24 -0700 (PDT)
>> From: Harold Aherne <leotolstoy_75 at yahoo.com>
>> Subject: Re: [78-L] US Columbia in the UK
>> To: 78-L Mail List <78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
>> Message-ID: <407492.40721.qm at web63604.mail.re1.yahoo.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
>>
>> I don't know exactly when Columbia Graphophone set up the UK branch (1900, 
>> I
>> think I remember seeing), but from that point until 1951-52, US and UK 
>> Columbia
>> were closely linked. Nonetheless, the corporate relationship did not 
>> remain the
>> same during those 50-odd years. Please correct me if I'm wrong about any 
>> of
>> these rather fine points.
>> ?
>> Until about 1922, UK Columbia was a subsidiary of US Columbia. The 
>> American
>> branch went through some?financial turmoil in 1922-1923 and sold the 
>> British firm,
>> which by 1925 bought the American branch (so *that* was now technically 
>> the subsidiary).
>> That arrangement continued until the EMI merger in 1931. American Columbia 
>> (and OKeh)
>> could not be included because of US anti-trust laws (e.g., EMI would own 
>> Columbia and
>> have a large stake in Victor because of the HMV connection), so US 
>> Columbia was sold
>> to the Grisby-Grunow company, makers of Majestic radios. They sold it to 
>> ARC in 1934,
>> which was in turn bought by CBS in late 1938. They revived the Columbia 
>> label several
>> months later; all through this time and up to the early 50s US Columbia 
>> releases generally
>> appeared on UK Columbia (AFAIK).
>> ?
>> After the CBS-EMI relationship ended, Columbia releases appeared on 
>> Phillips until 1961
>> and then, of course, on CBS (because EMI owned the rights to the Columbia 
>> name in most
>> of the eastern hemisphere). EMI retired its Columbia label in 1972 (at 
>> least in Britain, I don?t
>> know about the rest of Europe or India) and in the early 1990s 
>> relinquished its rights to the
>> Columbia name back to Sony (by now the owner of the American Columbia 
>> catalogue).
>>
>> ?
>> I think.
>> ?
>> -Harold
>>
>>
> 
>