Brunswick Records
Brunswick Records | |
---|---|
Founded | 1916 |
Founder | Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company |
Distributor(s) | AMPED Distribution |
Genre | Various |
Country of origin | United States |
Official website | brunswickrecords |
Brunswick Records is an American record label founded in 1916.
History
1916 - 1929
Records under the Brunswick label were first produced by the
In January 1920, a new line of Brunswick Records was introduced in the U.S. and Canada that employed the lateral cut system which was becoming the default cut for
The Brunswick line of home phonographs were commercially successful. Brunswick had a hit with their Ultona phonograph capable of playing
Audio fidelity of early-1920s, acoustically-recorded Brunswick discs is above average for the era. They were pressed into good quality
In the spring of 1925 Brunswick introduced its own version of electrical recording derived from the
Once Brunswick's engineers had tentative control of their new equipment, the company expanded its popular music recording activities, exploiting its roster of stars: the dance bands of Bob Haring, Isham Jones, Ben Bernie, Abe Lyman, Earl Burtnett, and banjoist Harry Reser and his various ensembles (especially the Six Jumping Jacks), and Al Jolson[2] (whose record labels proclaimed him "The World's Greatest Entertainer With Orchestra").
Then based in
Brunswick also had a very successful business supplying radio with sponsored transcriptions of popular music, comedy and personalities. Brunswick embarked on an ambitious domestic classical recording program, recording the New York String Quartet, the
Brunswick itself switched to a conventional condenser microphone recording process (licensed through
1930 - 1944
In April 1930, Brunswick-Balke-Collender sold Brunswick Records to Warner Bros., and the company's headquarters moved to New York.[4] Warner Bros. hoped to make their own soundtrack recordings for their sound-on-disc Vitaphone system. A number of interesting recordings were made by actors during this period, featuring songs from musical films. Actors who made recordings included Noah Beery, Charles King, and J. Harold Murray. During this Warner Brothers period Brunswick signed Bing Crosby,[3] who was to become their biggest recording star, as well as the Mills Brothers,[3] Adelaide Hall, the Boswell Sisters, Cab Calloway, the Casa Loma Orchestra and Ozzie Nelson.
In November 1930, the new budget-line, Melotone, debuted, entering a field of lower-priced electrical records, including Columbia's Clarion, Velvet Tone, Harmony and the labels of the Plaza Music Company, such as Perfect, Banner, and Romeo. Melotone releases before the ARC takeover of December 1931 are not duplicated on these labels.When Vitaphone was abandoned in favor of sound-on-film systems—and record industry sales plummeted due to the Great Depression—Warner Bros. leased the Brunswick record operation to Consolidated Film Industries, the parent company of the American Record Corporation (ARC),[4] in December 1931. In 1932, the UK branch of Brunswick was acquired by British Decca.
Between early 1932 and 1939, Brunswick was ARC's flagship label, selling for 75 cents, while all of the other ARC labels were selling for 35 cents. Best selling artists during that time were Bing Crosby, the Boswell Sisters, the Mills Brothers, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Abe Lyman, Casa Loma Orchestra, Leo Reisman, Ben Bernie, Red Norvo, Teddy Wilson, and Anson Weeks. Many of these artists moved over to Decca in late 1934, causing Brunswick to reissue popular records by these artists on the ARC dime store labels as a means to compete with Decca's 35 cent price. In 1939, the American Record Corp. was bought by the
In 1943, Decca revived the Brunswick label, mostly for reissues of recordings from earlier decades, particularly Bing Crosby's early hits of 1931 and jazz items from the 1920s. Since then, Decca and its successors have had ownership of the historic Brunswick Records archive from this time period.[5][6]
1945 - 1956
After World War II, American Decca releases were issued in the United Kingdom on the Brunswick label until 1968 when the
1957-1979/R&B
Starting in the latter part of the 1950s and continuing well into the 1970s, the label recorded mainly R&B/soul acts, such as the label's leading artist in the late 1950s and early/mid 1960s,
Many of the recordings which established Brunswick as a major force in R&B and soul music in the mid-1960s and into the 1970s were supervised by producer Carl Davis in Chicago.[3] He joined the label after helping to revive Jackie Wilson's recording career with his production on Wilson's 1966 hit, "Whispers". Wilson and Davis collaborated the following year for one of the label's biggest selling singles, "Higher And Higher", which sold over two million copies (No. 1 R&B, No. 5 pop). The Chi-Lites recorded two No. 1 R&B hits in the 1970s for Brunswick, "Have You Seen Her" and "Oh Girl", both co-written and co-produced by lead singer, Eugene Record. "Oh Girl" also topped the Billboard Hot 100. Davis formed a sister label, Dakar Records, in 1969, with Tyrone Davis (no relation) becoming its main artist and a major-selling R&B act. Dakar was first distributed by Atlantic Records for two years, but moved under Brunswick distribution from January 1972, after the company became independent from Decca.
Brunswick and Dakar artists included the Chi-Lites,[12][13] Hamilton Bohannon, Tyrone Davis, Jackie Wilson, Barbara Acklin, Young-Holt Unlimited, Gene Chandler, the Artistics, Otis Leavill, the Lost Generation, Walter Jackson, Erma Franklin, Willie Henderson & the Soul, Maryann Farra & Satin soul, Strutt, Touch, Sunny Nash[14] and Little Richard. Main producers for the labels, along with Davis, were Eugene Record, Willie Henderson and later, Leo Graham, while staff arrangers during the Chicago years included Sonny Sanders, Tony Moulton Quinton Joseph and Willie Henderson.
The Chi-Lites' "Oh Girl" was the label's only release from post-1957 to reach the top of the Billboard Hot 100, but Brunswick and Dakar managed to top the R&B chart a total of 10 times during the same period, six by Jackie Wilson and two each by Tyrone Davis and the Chi-Lites.
Legal problems caused Brunswick to become dormant after 1982, in which Tarnopol licensed Brunswick recordings from 1957 onwards to the special products unit of
Ownership
The Tarnopol family only claims ownership of Brunswick recordings since Tarnopol joined Brunswick in 1957.
The official Brunswick Records web site has a detailed history of the Tarnopol-era Brunswick Records. The label was revived in 1995 by Nat's children.[18] and many of the Chicago soul recordings have been re-issued in recent years. Brunswick's catalog is distributed by AMPED Distribution (a division of Alliance Entertainment).
See also
- List of record labels
References
- ISBN 0-313-31866-2.
- ^ "Al Jolson Biography & History". AllMusic. Retrieved 8 March 2023.
- ^ ISBN 0-85112-939-0.
- ^ a b Barry Kernfeld The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, London & New York: Macmillan, 1988 [1994], p.164
- ^ The Billboard, 29 May 1943, p.95. 1943-05-29. Retrieved 2014-06-29.
- ^ The Billboard, 23 August 1947, p.38. 1947-08-23. Retrieved 2014-06-29.
- ^ The Billboard, 13 December 1952, p. 27, col.5. 1952-12-13. Retrieved 2014-06-29.
- ^ Billboard - Google Books. 1957-03-30. Retrieved 2014-04-04.
- ^ Billboard - Google Books. 1957-03-09. Retrieved 2014-04-04.
- ^ The Billboard, 26 September 1960, p.6, col.6. 1960-09-26. Retrieved 2014-06-29.
- ^ Brunswick Records Retrieved 8 march 2023
- ^ "The Chi-Lites R&B Single Chart". Billboard. Retrieved 7 March 2023.
- ^ "The Chi-Lites Pop Chart Singles". Billboard. Retrieved 7 March 2023.
- ^ "Sunni Nash". Discogs.com. Retrieved 17 August 2021.
- ^ "The soul of the 60s and 70s". Brunswick Records. Archived from the original on 2013-03-07. Retrieved 2014-04-04.
- ISBN 9780306810503.
- ^ "The soul of the 60s and 70s". Brunswick Records. Archived from the original on 2013-01-07. Retrieved 2014-04-04.
- ^ a b Lichtman, Irv. "Brunswick digs into its vaults to release vintage R&B on CD". Billboard, 8 June 1996, p.6
- ^ "Verve Music Group". List-company.com. Archived from the original on 2014-04-07. Retrieved 2014-04-04.
- ^ "Universal Music Group Donates Over 200,000 Master Recordings to the Library of Congress", News from the Library of Congress, January 10, 2011