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RCA Records (originally The Victor Talking Machine Company, then RCA Victor) is one of the flagship labels of Sony Music Entertainment. The RCA initials stand for Radio Corporation of America (later renamed RCA Corporation), which was the parent corporation from 1929^[1] to 1985 and a partner from 1985 to 1986.^[2]

RCA's Canadian unit (formerly Berliner Gramophone Canada) is Sony's oldest label in Canada, as it was only one of two Canadian record companies (Compo Company, now Universal Music Canada, is the other) to survive the Great Depression.

The RCA family of labels[link]

RCA is the name of three different co-owned record labels. RCA Records is the Pop, Rock, Hip-Hop, R&B and Country music label. RCA Victor is the label for blues music, world music, jazz, musicals and other musical genres which do not fit the pop music mold. RCA Red Seal (formerly known as RCA Victor Red Seal) is the renowned classical music label with a reissue sub-label called RCA Gold Seal.

Defunct labels include budget labels RCA Camden, RCA Victrola, RCA International, and RCA Italiana.

Besides manufacturing records for themselves, RCA Victor also operated RCA Custom which was the leading record manufacturer for the independent labels. RCA operated three strategically located record manufacturing plants in the U.S. and advertised overnight delivery to record distributors.^[3] RCA Custom also pressed record compilations for The Reader's Digest Association.

Currently, Legacy Recordings, Sony Music's catalog division, reissues classic albums for RCA.

History[link]

In 1929, Radio Corporation of America (RCA) purchased the Victor Talking Machine Company, then the world's largest manufacturer of phonographs (including the famous "Victrola") and phonograph records (in British English, "gramophone records"). The company then became RCA-Victor. With Victor, RCA acquired New World rights to the famous Nipper trademark. While in Shanghai China, RCA-Victor was the main competitor with Baak Doi.^[4]

In 1931, RCA Victor's British affiliate the Gramophone Company merged with the Columbia Graphophone Company to form EMI. This gave RCA head David Sarnoff a seat on the EMI board. Also in late 1931, RCA Victor developed and released the first 33⅓-rpm records to the public (known as "Program Transcriptions"). These had the standard groove size identical to the contemporary 78-rpm records, rather than the "microgroove" used in post-World War II 33⅓ "Long Play" records. The format was a commercial failure at the height of the Great Depression, partially because the records and playback equipment were expensive. The system was withdrawn from the market after about a year. (This was not the first attempt at a commercial long play record format, as Edison Records had marketed a microgroove vertically recorded disc with 20 minutes playing time per side the previous decade; the Edison long playing records were also a commercial failure.)

During the early part of the depression, RCA made a number of attempts to produce a successful cheap label to compete with the 'Dime Store Labels' (Perfect, Oriole, Banner, Melotone, etc.). In 1932, Bluebird Records was created as a sub-label of RCA Victor. It was originally an 8" record with a dark blue label, alongside an 8" Electradisk label (sold at Woolworth's). Neither were a success. In 1933, RCA reintroduced Bluebird and Electradisk as a standard 10" label (Bluebird's label was redesigned as it became known as the 'buff' label). Another cheap label, Sunrise, was produced (although nobody seems to know for whom it was produced, as Sunrise records are exceptionally rare). The same musical couplings were issued on all three labels, and Bluebird survived long after Electradisk and Sunrise were discontinued. RCA also produced records for Montgomery Ward during the 1930s.

RCA sold its interest in EMI in 1935, but EMI continued to distribute RCA recordings on the HMV label. RCA also manufactured and distributed HMV classical recordings on the HMV label in North America.^[5]

World War II era[link]

During World War II, ties between RCA and its Japanese affiliate JVC were severed. The Japanese record company is today called Victor Entertainment and is still a JVC subsidiary.

From 1942 to 1944, RCA Victor was seriously impacted by the American Federation of Musicians recording ban. Virtually all union musicians could not make recordings during that period. One of the few exceptions was the eventual release of recorded performances by the NBC Symphony Orchestra with Arturo Toscanini. However, RCA lost the Philadelphia Orchestra during this period; when Columbia Records settled quickly with the union, Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphians signed a new contract with Columbia and began making recordings in 1944.

In 1949, RCA-Victor developed and released the first 45 rpm record to the public, answering CBS/Columbia's 33⅓ rpm "LP". The 45-rpm record became the standard for pop singles with running times similar to 10-inch 78-rpm discs (less than four minutes per side).

RCA also introduced record players to exclusively play the 45 rpm format in a heavy promotion, as well as issuing issuing most of the 45's in colored vinyl (as opposed to the standard black vinyl for records) specific to the music genre: classical music was issued on red vinyl, country music on green vinyl, children's music on yellow vinyl, pop music on blue vinyl, etc. with a total of eight colors of discs over as many music formats.

RCA also released some "extended play" (EP) discs with running times up to 7 minutes per side, primarily for classical recordings. (One of the first of the extended 45-rpm recordings was a disc by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra featuring Tchaikovsky's Marche Slave and Ketèlbey's In a Persian Market.) Additionally, many boxed sets of four to six 45's in a box, essentially the same amount of music as an LP over a collection of smaller discs.

The 1950s[link]

In 1950, realizing that Columbia's LP format had become successful and fearful that RCA was losing market share, RCA Victor began issuing LPs themselves.^[6][7] Among the first RCA LPs released was a performance of Gaîté Parisienne by Jacques Offenbach, played by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra, which had actually been recorded in Boston's Symphony Hall on June 20, 1947; it was given the catalogue number LM-1001. Non-classical albums were issued with the prefix "LPM." When RCA later issued classical stereo albums (in 1958), they used the prefix "LSC." Non-classical stereo albums were issued with the prefix "LSP."

In the 1950s, RCA had three subsidiary or specialty labels: Groove, Vik and "X". Label "X" was founded in 1953 and renamed Vik in 1955. Groove was an R&B specialty label founded in 1954.^[8]

Through the 1940s and 1950s, RCA was in competition with Columbia Records. A number of recordings were made with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, usually conducted by Arturo Toscanini; sometimes RCA utilized recordings of broadcast concerts (Toscanini had been recording for the label since the days of acoustic recordings, and the label had been recording the NBC Symphony since its creation in 1937). When the NBC Symphony was reorganized in the fall of 1954 as the Symphony of the Air, it continued to record for RCA, as well as other labels, usually with Leopold Stokowski. RCA also released a number of recordings with the Victor Symphony Orchestra, later renamed the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra, which was usually drawn from either Philadelphia or New York musicians, as well as members of the Symphony of the Air. By the late 1950s RCA had fewer high prestige orchestras under contract than Columbia had: RCA recorded the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and the Boston Pops, whereas Columbia had the Cleveland Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

On October 6, 1953, RCA held experimental stereophonic sessions in New York's Manhattan Center with Leopold Stokowski conducting a group of New York musicians in performances of Enesco's Roumanian Rhapsody No. 1 and the waltz from Tchaikovsky's opera Eugene Onegin. There were additional stereo tests in December, again in the Manhattan Center, this time with Pierre Monteux conducting members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In February 1954, RCA made its first commercial stereophonic recordings, taping the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Charles Münch, in a performance of The Damnation of Faust by Hector Berlioz. This began a practice of simultaneously taping orchestras with both stereophonic and monaural equipment. Other early stereo recordings were made by Toscanini and Guido Cantelli respectively, with the NBC Symphony Orchestra; the Boston Pops Orchestra under Arthur Fiedler; and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Fritz Reiner. Initially, RCA used RT-21¼ inch tape recorders (which ran at 30 inches per second), wired to mono mixers, with Neumann U-47 cardioid and M-49/50 omnidirectional microphones. Then they switched to an Ampex 300-3½ inch machine, running at 15 inches per second (which was later increased to 30 inches per second). These recordings were initially issued in 1955 on special stereophonic reel-to-reel tapes and then, beginning in 1958, on vinyl LPs with the logo "Living Stereo." Sony Music and successor companies have continued to reissue these recordings on CD.^[9] Another 1953 project for RCA was converting the acoustically superior building Webster Hall into its East Coast recording studio. It operated this studio venue from 1953 to 1968.

In September 1954, RCA introduced 'Gruve-Gard' where the center and edge of a disc are thicker than the playing area, reducing scuff marks during handling and when used on a turntable with a record changer.^[10] Most of RCA Victor Records' competitors quickly adopted the raised label and edges.

The Toscanini stereo albums, however, were never issued by RCA (they were the last two concerts he conducted with the NBC Symphony Orchestra). They were not issued until 1987 and 2007 respectively, when they appeared on compact disc on the Music and Arts label, and betrayed no sign whatsoever of the Maestro's apparent memory loss in the last concert, probably because the rehearsals had also been taped in stereo and portions of them were included in the final edit.

In 1955, RCA purchased the recording contract of Elvis Presley from Sun Records for the then astronomical sum of $35,000. Elvis would become RCA's biggest selling recording artist. His first gold record was Heartbreak Hotel, recorded in January 1956.

In 1957, RCA ended its 55-year association with EMI and signed a distribution deal with Decca Records, which caused EMI to purchase Capitol Records. Capitol then became the main distributor for EMI recordings in North and South America, with RCA distributing its recordings through Decca in the United Kingdom on the RCA (later RCA Victor) label. This had the lightning bolt logo instead of the His Master's Voice Nipper logo (now owned by HMV Group plc in the UK as EMI transferred trademark ownership in 2003).^[11] RCA set up its own British distribution in 1971.

Also in 1957, RCA opened a state-of-the-art recording studio in Nashville, Tennessee, which recorded hit after hit for RCA and other labels for 20 years and is now open for tours as RCA Studio B. Elvis Presley made most of his recordings in this studio.

The 1960s[link]

In 1960, RCA announced the Compact 33 double and singles. In January 1961, these discs hit the market. The Compact 33 discs were released simultaneously with their 45 rpm counterparts. The long-term goal was to phase out the 45 rpm. This campaign eventually failed by early 1962.^[12]

In 1963, RCA introduced Dynagroove which added computer technology to the disc cutting process, ostensibly to improve sound reproduction. Whether it was actually an improvement or not is still debated among audiophiles.

In September 1965, RCA & Lear Jet Corp. teamed up to release the first Stereo 8-Track Tape Music Cartridges (Stereo 8) which were first used in the 1966 line of Ford Automobiles and were popular throughout the late 1960s and 1970s. (The initial release comprised 175 titles from RCA Victor and RCA Camden's catalog of artists.)

In late 1968, RCA modernized its image with a new futuristic-looking logo (the letters RCA in block modernized form), replacing the old lightning bolt logo, and the virtual retirement of both the Victor and Nipper trademarks. The background of the labels, which had always been black for its regular series (as opposed to its Red Seal line), switched to bright orange (becoming tan later in the early 1970s). Possibly in response to customers' complaints, RCA Records reinstated Nipper to most of its record labels beginning in 1976 in countries where RCA had the rights to the Nipper trademark. The famous "shaded" label used on RCA's "Living Stereo" albums was revived in the 1990s for a series of CDs devoted to the historic triple-track stereophonic recordings.

In late 1969 RCA introduced a very thin, lightweight vinyl LP known as DynaFlex (the name has nothing to do with the gyroscope). This type of pressing claimed to overcome warping and other problems in conventional thicker pressings, but it had a controversial reputation in the industry. At about the same time John Denver recorded his first RCA LP: Rhymes & Reasons.

Debut of Quadraphonic releases[link]

In April 1970 RCA announced the first quadraphonic 4-channel 8-track tape cartridges (Quad-8, later called just Q8). RCA then began releasing quadraphonic vinyl recordings in 1971, primarily of classical music, in the CD-4 format developed by Japan Victor Corporation (JVC), and made commercially practical by Quadracast Systems Inc. (QSI). RCA's trade name became Quadradisc. The CD-4 format required a special cartridge that had a ±1 db frequency response out to 50 kHz, a CD-4 demodulator which decoded the difference between the front and rear channels from a 30 kHz subcarrier, four separate amplifier channels, and four separate speakers for the left and right front and left and right rear. Both the CD-4 Quadradisc and Quad-8 tape cartridge systems were true discrete 4-4-4 quadraphonic systems. Columbia introduced a quadraphonic matrix system, SQ, which required a decoder, 4-channel amplifier and the four speakers. The SQ system was referred to as a 4-2-4 matrix system. The Warner Music labels also adopted the Quadradisc format, but they, RCA and Columbia abandoned quadraphonic recording within a few years; some of the RCA sessions were later remastered for Dolby encoding (same as Peter Scheiber's original matrix system) and released on CD. This included Charles Gerhardt's series of albums devoted to classic film scores by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alfred Newman, Dimitri Tiomkin, Max Steiner, Franz Waxman, and others, performed by the National Philharmonic Orchestra in London's Kingsway Hall.

Acquisition by Bertelsmann[link]

In 1983, Arista Records owner Bertelsmann sold 50% of Arista to RCA. In 1985, Bertelsmann and RCA formed a joint venture called RCA/Ariola International.^[2]

When General Electric acquired RCA in 1986, the company sold its 50% interest in RCA/Ariola International to its partner Bertelsmann and the company was renamed BMG Music for Bertelsmann Music Group.^[13] BMG brought back the lightning bolt logo that was last used in 1968 to make clear that RCA Records was no longer co-owned with the other RCA entities which GE sold or closed. The only RCA unit GE kept was the National Broadcasting Company. BMG also revived the "RCA Victor" label for musical genres outside of country, pop and rock music.

Many artists such as Eurythmics, indie-popsters The Bongos, and Rick Astley recorded with RCA in the 1980s. Charlie Rich had several recordings produced by RCA as well as Charley Pride. Co-writer Marvin Walters worked closely with both artists producing hit songs such as "Set Me Free" for Rich and "Pretty Girl" for Pride. Walters left RCA when it sold its interest to BMG.

1990s[link]

In the 1990s, RCA's corporate structure basically remained the same. Also, RCA had marked success in the contemporary jazz genres with artists such as Roy Hargrove, Marcus Roberts, Opafire and Hugh Masekela, as well as an explosion of urban talent, such as Tyrese, SWV, Chantay Savage, and others. Some of these artists, such as Mobb Deep, recorded for the RCA label via a distribution deal with Loud Records, which remained distributed by RCA until 1999. Many of these artists have since left RCA for a number of reasons, such as SWV's breakup and Tyrese's move to J Records. Also, artists of other genres, such as Christina Aguilera and The Dave Matthews Band were launched by the RCA label in the '90s. The Foo Fighters joined the label in 1999.

RCA saw continued success with artists such as Christina Aguilera, Dave Matthews Band, the Foo Fighters, and later The Strokes. New acts that signed to the label included Kings of Leon and various American Idol contestants such as Kelly Clarkson and David Cook. Early in the decade the label became part of the RCA Music Group which also included Arista Records and J Records. The company was headed by Clive Davis until April 2008.

Merger[link]

In 2004, BMG and Sony merged their music holdings into a joint venture called Sony BMG. Because Sony Music was the successor to the old CBS record division, this merger meant that RCA Records, once owned by parent RCA, was now under the same umbrella as the label once owned by RCA's rival, the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), Columbia Records.

In 2006, Sony BMG merged its Broadway music labels, including RCA Victor to the new Masterworks Broadway Records.

In 2008, Sony acquired Bertelsmann's interest in the record company which was officially renamed Sony Music Entertainment at the start of 2009. RCA became part of the newly formed RCA/Jive Label Group (also known as RCA Records Group) as a result.

2010s: Label Integration[link]

The early 2010s saw RCA as part of the RCA/Jive Label Group which was headed by Barry Weiss. More recently RCA has introduced Ke$ha as one of its new artists on its roster. She has enjoyed widespread commercial success. Since 2011, RCA no longer signed contestants from American Idol, but the company continues to achieve great success with Idol alumni such as Kelly Clarkson, Daughtry, David Cook, and Adam Lambert. The RCA/Jive Label Group had been signing contestants from the show since it started in 2002 when the music group was still BMG. In 2011, Idol contestants signed to Interscope-Geffen-A&M Records of the Universal Music Group.

RCA Records was restructured in 2011 and took in artists from Arista and J Records and multiple artists from Jive Records, as those labels closed down.^[14]

The RCA Music Group was separated from the Jive Label Group in July 2011. Multiple Jive artists became part of a restructured Epic Records as Jive moved under the RCA Music Group. The RCA Music Group later continued its operations and contained "marquee" Jive acts such as Britney Spears and Pink.^[15][16][17] In 2011, Peter Edge became the new CEO of the RCA Music Group.^[18] RCA Records will start releasing all releases by RCA Music Group artists.^[19][20] In October 2011, the RCA Music Group shut down J Records, Jive Records and Arista Records. All artists moved under RCA Records, making it a standalone label under Sony Music.^[14] As of March 2012, RCA Records was home to 77 artists.^[21]

Broadway and Hollywood[link]

RCA has produced several notable Broadway cast albums as well, among them the original Broadway recordings of Brigadoon, Paint Your Wagon, the Mary Martin Peter Pan, Damn Yankees, Hello, Dolly!, Oliver!, and Fiddler on the Roof. RCA has also recorded and released recordings of revival stagings of musicals. These include the musical productions staged at Lincoln Center such as the 1966 revivals of Show Boat and Annie Get Your Gun, the 1987 revival of Anything Goes and the 1998 Broadway revivals of Cabaret and The Sound of Music. Call Me Madam was recorded by RCA Victor with all of its original cast except for its star Ethel Merman, who, due to contractual obligations, could not be released from her American Decca Records contract. She was replaced on the RCA album by Dinah Shore. RCA was also responsible for the film soundtrack albums of Damn Yankees, South Pacific, Exodus, Bye Bye Birdie, and The Sound of Music. The album made from the 1965 hit Julie Andrews film was (and is) one of the best selling soundtracks of all time. The film soundtrack of Oliver!, made by Colgems Records, was distributed by RCA, which had released the Broadway cast album. RCA also released the original American cast album of Hair.

RCA Victor made several studio cast recording albums as well, including a Lerner and Loewe series with Jan Peerce, Jane Powell, and Robert Merrill, as well as a 1963 album of excerpts from George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, with its 1952 revival leads, Leontyne Price and William Warfield, but a different supporting cast. They also issued two studio cast versions of Show Boat, one with Robert Merrill, Patrice Munsel, and Rise Stevens and the other with Howard Keel, Anne Jeffreys, and Gogi Grant.

All of these recordings are now under Masterworks Broadway Records, which has remastered and reissued many of these albums.

Spoken word albums[link]

RCA Victor also issued several spoken word albums in the 1950s and 60s, notably the soundtracks of the films Richard III,^[22] A Man for All Seasons and The Taming of the Shrew,^[23] as well as complete versions of the National Theatre of Great Britain stage productions of Othello (starring Laurence Olivier) and Much Ado About Nothing (starring Maggie Smith, who also played Desdemona in the Olivier Othello). None of these albums have appeared on compact disc, but the films of Richard III, A Man For All Seasons, The Taming of the Shrew and the Olivier Othello have all been issued on DVD.

Criticisms and controversy[link]

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RCA Victor decided to demolish their Camden warehouse in the early 1960s. This warehouse held four floors' worth of catalog and vault masters (most of them were pre-tape wax and metal discs), test pressings, lacquer discs, matrix ledgers, and rehearsal recordings. A few days before the demolition took place, some collectors from the US and Europe were allowed to go through the warehouse and salvage whatever they could carry with them for their personal collections. Soon after, collectors and RCA Records officials watched from a nearby bridge as the warehouse was demolished, with many studio masters still intact in the building. The remnants were bulldozed into the Delaware River and a pier was built on top of them. In 1973, when the company decided to release all of Rachmaninoff's recordings on LPs (to celebrate the centennial of the composer's birth), RCA was forced to go to record collectors for materials, as documented by Time.

In the early 1920s, Victor was slow about getting deeply involved in recording and marketing black jazz and vocal blues. By the mid to late 1920s, Victor had signed Jelly Roll Morton, Bennie Moten, Duke Ellington and other black bands and were becoming very competitive with Columbia and Brunswick, even starting their own V-38000 "Hot Dance" series that was marketed to all Victor dealers. They also had a V-38500 "race" series, a 23000 'hot dance' continuation of the V-38000 series, as well as a 23200 'Race' series with blues, gospel and some hard jazz. However, throughout the 1930s, Victor's involvement in jazz and blues slowed down and by the time of the musicians' strike and the end of the war, Victor was neglecting the R&B (race) scene, which is one of the reasons so many independent companies sprang up so successfully.

In the 1970s the label let much of its catalog go out of print. This pattern affected its jazz catalog most greatly, followed by its classical music catalog.

In the compact disc era a small proportion of its jazz catalog has been reissued. (For example, Jelly Roll Morton albums were reissued; but they were removed from circulation in less than ten years.) Similarly, only a fraction of its vast classical catalog has remained available on compact disc.

Canadian rockers Triumph claimed to be ignored by the label. When the band wanted to resign from their deal with RCA, the label refused. Afterwards, MCA Records executive Irving Azoff co-opted their debts and bought the band out of their RCA contract and signed them for five albums.

Kelly Clarkson[link]

In 2007, reports said that many RCA workers, including mogul Clive Davis, were unhappy with Kelly Clarkson's album My December. Davis was even said to offer Clarkson $10 million to scrap five of her songs, but she refused. Months of controversy concluded with Clarkson's tour being rescheduled, My December becoming the lowest-selling album of her career, and Clarkson joining Starstruck Entertainment. In 2009, RCA decided to release "Already Gone" as the third single off her album, All I Ever Wanted. Clarkson objected to this because it sounded very similar to Beyoncé's song, "Halo". Both songs were co-written by Ryan Tedder. RCA persisted in the release of the single. The press noted the similarities between the two songs.

Avril Lavigne[link]

In November 2010, singer Avril Lavigne explained the reason for the long delay of her fourth album, Goodbye Lullaby, which she said was completed a year ago. She says she "experienced a bunch of bureaucratic BS" prior to the label recently deciding to release it.^[24] Disagreements between Lavigne and RCA resulted in the album's release date being pushed back several times until it finally came out in March 2011. In October 2011, Lavigne confirmed that she had left RCA Records for Epic Records.^[25][26]

Kenny Rogers[link]

After singer Kenny Rogers left the label, RCA was accused of trying to ruin his career. Rogers signed to RCA in 1983 for an advance sum of $20 million (the largest deal ever in country music at that time) when Bob Summers was head of the label. Shortly after Rogers' first album for the label, Summers was fired (for unrelated reasons) by RCA. Deciding it would make the label look bad for firing Summers if Rogers continued to be a major success (his duet with Dolly Parton, "Islands in the Stream", had been one of the biggest hits of 1983), Rogers received very little support from the label during the next several years he was with them.^{[citation needed]} Although Rogers and RCA parted ways many years ago, the results of the conflict can still be seen today. In 1989, RCA deleted all of Rogers' solo albums soon after he signed back to Reprise, where he used to record when he was a rock artist with his former group, The First Edition. Rogers, in turn, took the rights to those albums with him as RCA refused to keep them, with only Once Upon A Christmas (a 1984 album of seasonal duets with Parton) remaining in print. Recent CD reissues of that album have omitted the tracks on which Rogers sang solo.

Other RCA labels[link]

• RCA Records (UK): A division of Sony Music UK, since 2006, which acts as an import label of American and multinational Sony Music artists, and also signs UK artists.
• RCA Red Seal Records: The prestigious RCA Red Seal classical music label is now part of Sony Masterworks.
• RCA Records (France): A division of Sony Music France. Founded as RCA Cinematre in 1978. Renamed to its current name in 2006.
• RCA Records (Italy): A division of Sony Music Italy. Founded as RCA Italiana in 1949. It went bankrupt in 1987 and was bought by BMG. Reactivated in 2006.
• RCA Victor: The former name of RCA Records that currently distributes electronic, rock and soundtrack albums, such as The Sound of Music soundtrack, Jose Feliciano's Feliz Navidad, a handful of albums by Elvis Presley, and other classic albums. The current roster includes Imogen Heap and The Fashion.
• RCA Records (Australia): A division of Sony Music Australia. Founded in 1963 for Australian artists. Renamed to RCA Limited Australia and New Zealand in 1976 for Australian & New Zealandian artists. Renamed to its current name in 2006.

Previous labels[link]

• RCA Victor Label Group: The RCA Victor label group consisted of the RCA Victor, Windham Hill and Bluebird labels.
• RCA distributed labels: Colgems, Calendar/Kirshner, Metromedia, Chelsea, Grunt Records, Roadshow Records, Windstar, Midland International, Wooden Nickel, Millennium Planet and Tortoise International Records (Detroit)^[27]

Executives[link]

• Peter Edge: Chairman & CEO
• Tom Corson: President & COO

See also[link]

• List of RCA Records artists
• RCA Records Nashville
• RCA Studio B
• List of record labels

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official RCA Records website
• Official RCA Label Group UK website
• Historic photo gallery of RCA in Camden, N.J.
• Video Interview with Bob Jamieson, former CEO & Chairman of RCA
• RCA Victor Discography
• RCA A&R team contact list
• Internet Archive: Command Performance (1942) - How RCA records are made, narrated by Milton Cross.
• Berliner Gramophone Company, whose Canadian operation became RCA Victor of Canada
• Camden Building History
• History of RCA Victor record label designs
• The Rise and Fall of the Compact 33

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Not to be confused with Arthur Fielder, a Kent fast bowler of the 1900s.

Arthur Fiedler (December 17, 1894 – July 10, 1979)^[1] was a long-time conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, a symphony orchestra that specializes in popular and light classical music. With a combination of musicianship and showmanship, he made the Boston Pops one of the best-known orchestras in the country. Some people^[who?] criticized him for over-popularizing music, particularly when adapting popular songs or edited portions of the classical repertoire, but Fiedler kept performances informal and sometimes self-mocking to attract more customers.

Life and career[link]

Fiedler was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Emanuel and Johanna Fiedler.^[1] His father was a Polish-born violinist who played in the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and his mother was a pianist and musician. He grew up in Boston, and attended Boston Latin School until his father retired (in the early 1900s), and they moved to Vienna, Austria, in 1910. The family soon moved again, to Berlin, where from 1911 to 1915 young Fiedler studied violin at the Royal Academy of Music (Hochschule für Musik Berlin) under Willy Hess.^[1] Fiedler returned to Boston at the beginning of World War I. In 1915 he joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Karl Muck as a violinist. He also worked as a pianist, organist, and percussionist.

In 1924, Fiedler formed the Boston Sinfonietta,^[1] a chamber music orchestra composed of Boston Symphony members, and started a series of free outdoor concerts.

Fiedler was appointed the eighteenth conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra in 1930.^[1] While the position of conductor of the Boston Pops both prior to and after Fiedler tended to be a phase of a conductor's career, Fiedler made it his life's work, having the position for a half-century.

Fiedler conducting the Boston Pops on the program.

Fiedler dressed for the part of a fireman for a show skit. Skelton is dressed as Clem Kadiddlehopper.

Fiedler conducted his orchestra and played the role of a fireman in the same April 1969 Red Skelton Show visit.

With Fiedler's direction, the Boston Pops reportedly made more recordings than any other orchestra in the world, most of them for RCA Victor, with total sales of albums, singles, tapes, and cassettes exceeding $50 million. His recordings began in July 1935 at Boston's Symphony Hall with RCA, including a world premiere recording of Jacob Gade's Jalousie, which eventually sold more than a million copies, and the first complete recording of Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin (with Jesús Maria Sanromá as soloist). In 1946, he conducted the Boston Pops in one of the first American recordings devoted to excerpts from a film score, Dmitri Tiomkin's music for the David O. Selznick Technicolor epic Duel in the Sun; RCA Victor released an album of ten-inch 78-rpm discs complete with photographs from the film.

Fiedler's June 20, 1947, recording of Gaîté Parisienne by Jacques Offenbach was eventually released by RCA as their very first long-playing classical album (RCA Victor LM-1001), in 1950. He recorded the same music in 1954 in stereo and began making regular stereo recordings in 1956. A number of Fiedler's recordings were released as 45-rpm "extended play" discs, beginning in 1949, such as Tchaikovsky's Marche Slave and Ketèlbey's In a Persian Market (RCA Victor ERA-2). Besides recording light classics, Fiedler also recorded music from Broadway shows and Hollywood film scores, as well as arrangements of popular music, especially the Beatles. He and the Boston Pops occasionally recorded classical works that were favorites, but not considered as "light" as most of the pieces that he conducted. He made but a single recording with the Boston Symphony Orchestra: Dvorak's New World Symphony. There were also recordings of chamber music by his Sinfonietta. Fiedler and the Boston Pops recorded exclusively for RCA Victor until the late 1960s, when they switched to Deutsche Grammophon for classical releases with co-owned Polydor Records for his arrangements of pop music compositions and then London Records. His last album, devoted to disco, was titled Saturday Night Fiedler.^[2]

Fiedler was also associated with the San Francisco Pops Orchestra for 26 summers (beginning during 1949), and conducted many other orchestras throughout the world. He was a featured conductor on several of NBC's The Standard Hour programs in 1950 and 1951, conducting the San Francisco Symphony in the War Memorial Opera House; the performances were preserved on transcription discs and later released on audio cassette.

Fiedler had many different hobbies. He was fascinated by the work of firefighters and would travel in his own vehicle to large fires in and around Boston at any time of the day or night to watch the firefighters at work. He was even made an "Honorary Captain" in the Boston Fire Department. A number of other fire departments gave him honorary fire helmets and/or badges. The official biography of Fiedler reports that the conductor once helped in the rescue efforts at the tragic Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston in 1942. An avid sailor, he volunteered during the early days of World War II for the Temporary Reserve of the U.S. Coast Guard and was later a member of the Coast Guard Auxiliary.^[3]

Fiedler conducted at the nationally-televised opening ceremonies of Walt Disney World in 1971. He also appeared on numerous telecasts on Evening at Pops, carried on PBS stations nationwide.

In honor of Fiedler's influence on American music, on October 23, 1976 he was awarded the prestigious University of Pennsylvania Glee Club Award of Merit.^[4] Beginning in 1964, this award "established to bring a declaration of appreciation to an individual each year that has made a significant contribution to the world of music and helped to create a climate in which our talents may find valid expression."

On January 10, 1977, Fiedler was presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Gerald Ford.

Personal Life[link]

Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Fiedler and Wernher von Braun in his office during the Fiedlers' visit to the Marshall Space Flight Center on March 23, 1962.

In 1942, Fiedler married Ellen Bottomley, and they had three children: Johanna, Deborah, and Peter.

In 1994, Doubleday published a book written by his daughter, Johanna, entitled Arthur Fiedler: Papa, the Pops and Me.^[5]

Death[link]

Fiedler died on July 10, 1979 after having been in failing health for some time. During the previous winter, he suffered a stroke that temporarily left him unable to speak, but he quickly recovered and in May conducted a concert to celebrate his 50th anniversary as conductor of the Pops. A few days later, he had a mild heart attack after another performance. He collapsed while studying music scores in his Brookline, Massachusetts home and suffered cardiac arrest. After his death, Boston honored him with a stylized sculpture, an oversized bust of Fiedler, near the Charles River Esplanade, and named a footbridge over Storrow Drive after him. This area is home of the free concert series that continues through the present day. Classical music and movie composer John Williams succeeded Fiedler as the orchestra's nineteenth director. His widow, Ellen Bottomley Fiedler, died October 25, 1984, in Framingham, Massachusetts. She was 70.

Sources[link]

• The American Presidency Project - Remarks Upon Presenting the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Dickson, Harry Ellis (1981). Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-30524-1. 
• Fiedler, Johanna (1994). Arthur Fiedler: Papa, the Pops and Me. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-42391-8. 
• Moore, Robin (1980). Fiedler, the Colorful Mr. Pops: The Man and His Music. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-76008-8. 
• Wilson, Carol Green (1968). Arthur Fiedler: Music for the Millions. New York:Evans. 

External links[link]

Biography portal

• Arthur Fiedler at Find a Grave

David Bowie
Bowie during the Heathen Tour in 2002.
Background information
Birth name	David Robert Jones
Born	(1947-01-08) 8 January 1947 (age 65) Brixton, London, England
Genres	Rock, glam rock, art rock, pop
Occupations	Musician, singer-songwriter, record producer, actor
Instruments	Vocals, guitar, keyboards, harmonica, saxophone, viola, cello, koto, percussion
Years active	1964–2008
Labels	Deram, RCA, Virgin, EMI, ISO, Columbia, BMG, Pye
Associated acts	The Riot Squad, Arnold Corns, Tin Machine, The Hype, The Lower Third, The Konrads
Website	davidbowie.com

David Bowie ( /ˈboʊ.i/ BOH-ee;^[1] born David Robert Jones on 8 January 1947) is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s. He is known for his distinctive voice and the intellectual depth and eclecticism of his work.

Bowie first caught the eye and ear of the public in July 1969, when his song "Space Oddity" reached the top five of the UK Singles Chart. After a three-year period of experimentation he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era with the flamboyant, androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust, spearheaded by the hit single "Starman" and the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Bowie's impact at that time, as described by biographer David Buckley, "challenged the core belief of the rock music of its day" and "created perhaps the biggest cult in popular culture."^[2] The relatively short-lived Ziggy persona proved merely one facet of a career marked by continual reinvention, musical innovation and striking visual presentation.

In 1975, Bowie achieved his first major American crossover success with the number-one single "Fame" and the hit album Young Americans, which the singer characterised as "plastic soul". The sound constituted a radical shift in style that initially alienated many of his UK devotees. He then confounded the expectations of both his record label and his American audiences by recording the minimalist album Low (1977)—the first of three collaborations with Brian Eno over the next two years. The so-called "Berlin Trilogy" albums all reached the UK top five and garnered lasting critical praise.

After uneven commercial success in the late 1970s, Bowie had UK number ones with the 1980 single "Ashes to Ashes", its parent album Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps), and "Under Pressure", a 1981 collaboration with Queen. He then reached a new commercial peak in 1983 with Let's Dance, which yielded several hit singles. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Bowie continued to experiment with musical styles, including blue-eyed soul, industrial, adult contemporary, and jungle. His last recorded album was Reality (2003), which was supported by the 2003–04 Reality Tour.

Buckley says of Bowie: "His influence has been unique in popular culture—he has permeated and altered more lives than any comparable figure."^[2] In the BBC's 2002 poll of the 100 Greatest Britons, Bowie was placed at number 29. Throughout his career, he has sold an estimated 140 million albums. In the UK, he has been awarded nine Platinum album certifications, 11 Gold and eight Silver, and in the US, five Platinum and seven Gold certifications. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked him 39th on their list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time", and 23rd on their list of the best singers of all-time.