MCA Records was an American-based record company owned by MCA Inc., which later gave way to the larger MCA Music Entertainment Group (now Universal Music Group), of which MCA Records was still part. MCA Records was absorbed by Geffen Records in 2003. MCA's country division, MCA Nashville Records, is a still active imprint of Universal Music Group Nashville.

MCA,Inc., a powerful talent agency and a television production company, entered the recorded music business in 1962 with the purchase of the New York-based US Decca Records (established in 1934), including Coral Records and Brunswick Records. MCA was forced to exit the talent agency business in order to complete the merger. As American Decca owned Universal Pictures, MCA assumed full ownership of Universal and made it into the top film studio in town, producing hit after hit. In 1966, MCA formed Uni Records and in 1967 purchased Kapp Records which was placed under Uni Records management.

The U.S. and U.K. Decca companies were forced to sever their ties because of World War II. MCA's U.S. based Decca Records had the rights to the Decca name in North and South America and parts of Asia including Japan. U.K. Decca owned the rights to the Decca name in the rest of the world. After the war, British Decca formed a new U.S. subsidiary, London Records.

Dwight Arrington Myers (May 24, 1967 – November 8, 2011), better known as Heavy D, was a Jamaican-born American rapper, record producer, singer, actor, and former leader of Heavy D & the Boyz, a hip hop group which included G-Whiz (Glen Parrish), "Trouble" T. Roy (Troy Dixon), and Eddie F (born Edward Ferrell). The group maintained a sizable audience in the United States through most of the 1990s. The five albums the group released were produced by Teddy Riley, Marley Marl, his cousin Pete Rock and Eddie F.

Myers was born on May 24, 1967 in Mandeville, Jamaica, the son of Eulahlee Lee, a nurse, and Clifford Vincent Myers, a machine technician. His family moved to Mount Vernon, New York, in the early 1970s, where he was raised.

Heavy D & the Boyz were the first group signed to Uptown Records, with Heavy D as the frontman and only rapper, and Eddie F was his business partner in the group and one of his producers. The other two members, T-Roy and G-Wiz were the dancers. Their debut, Living Large, was released in 1987. The album was a commercial success; Big Tyme was a breakthrough that included four hits.

Richard St John Harris (1 October 1930 – 25 October 2002) was an Irish actor, singer-songwriter, theatrical producer, film director and writer.

He appeared on stage and in many films, and is perhaps best known for his roles as King Arthur in Camelot (1967), as Oliver Cromwell in Cromwell (1970) and as Albus Dumbledore in the first two films in the Harry Potter series, his final works. He played a British aristocrat and prisoner in A Man Called Horse (1970), Emperor Marcus Aurelius in Gladiator (2000), Saint John in Apocalypse Revelation (2002), gunfighter English Bob in Clint Eastwood's Western film Unforgiven (1992), and Dom Frollo in the 1997 TV movie version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Harris had a top ten hit in the UK and the US with his 1968 recording of Jimmy Webb's song "MacArthur Park".

Harris, the fifth of nine children, was born in Limerick city, Ireland (then known as the Irish Free State) into a middle-class, staunchly Roman Catholic family. His parents were Ivan John Harris (b. 1896, son of Richard Harris, b. 1854, son of James Harris of St. Michael's, Limerick) and Mildred Josephine Harty Harris (b. 1898, daughter of James Harty, St. John's, Limerick, who owned a flour mill.) Harris' siblings include Patrick Ivan (born 1929), Noel William Michael (born 1932), Diarmid (Dermot, born 1939), and William George Harris (born 1942). He was schooled by the Jesuits at Crescent College. A talented rugby player, he was on several Munster Junior and Senior Cup teams for Crescent, and played for Garryowen. Harris' athletic career was cut short when he caught tuberculosis in his teens. He remained an ardent fan of the Munster Rugby and Young Munster teams then until his death, and attending many of its matches, and there are numerous stories of japes at rugby matches with the actors and fellow rugby fans Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton.

Musical Youth are a British reggae band. They are best remembered for their successful 1982 single "Pass the Dutchie", which became a number 1 hit across the world. The band recorded two studio albums, and released a number of successful singles throughout 1982 and 1983, including a collaboration with Donna Summer. Musical Youth earned a Grammy Award nomination before disbanding in 1985 after a series of personal problems. The band returned in 2001 as a duo.

The group originally formed in 1979 at Duddeston Manor School in Birmingham, and featured two sets of brothers, Kelvin and Michael Grant, plus Junior and Patrick Waite. The latter pair's father, Frederick Waite, was a former member of Jamaican group The Techniques, and sang lead with Junior at the start of Musical Youth's career. Although schoolboys, the group managed to secure gigs at certain Birmingham pubs and released a double single in 1981, including songs "Generals" and "Political", on a local record label 021 Records. An appearance on BBC Radio 1 John Peel's evening show brought further attention to the group, and they were signed to MCA Records. By that time, founding father Frederick Waite had backed down, to be replaced by Dennis Seaton as lead singer.

Belinda Jo Carlisle (born August 17, 1958) is an American singer who gained worldwide fame as the lead vocalist of the Go-Go's, one of the most successful all-female bands of all time and the first such group whose members wrote their own songs and played their own instruments. Topping the Billboard charts with the Go-Go's, she sold more than seven million albums in just three years and later went on to a successful solo career with hits "Mad About You", "Summer Rain", "I Get Weak", "Circle in the Sand", "Leave a Light On" and "Heaven Is a Place on Earth" among others, which were major successes in the United States and United Kingdom as well as internationally. Her autobiography, Lips Unsealed, published in June 2010, reached No. 27 on the The New York Times Best Seller list and received favorable reviews. On August 11, 2011, she received, as a member of the Go-Go's, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Belinda Carlisle was born in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles to Harold, a travelling salesman (he sold vacuum cleaners) and his wife Joanne, who raised the children at home. The first of seven siblings, with three brothers and three sisters, she was five years old when her father abandoned the family and upon her mother's second marriage, did not have a close relationship with her stepfather, Duke Kurczeski. Growing up in Ventura County's Thousand Oaks, a part of the Greater Los Angeles Area, she was a cheerleader at Newbury Park High School and, at the age of 19, left home.