Columbia Records is an American recording label, under the ownership of Sony Music Entertainment. It was founded in 1887, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company—successor to the Volta Graphophone Company. Columbia is the oldest surviving brand name in recorded sound, being the second major record company to produce recorded records. Columbia Records went on to release records by an array of notable singers, instrumentalists, and bands. From 1961 to 1990, its recordings were released outside the U.S. and Canada on the CBS Records label (for Columbia Broadcasting System, its parent from 1938 to 1988) before adopting the Columbia name in most of the world. It is one of Sony Music's three flagship record labels with the others being RCA Records and Epic Records.
Until 1989, Columbia Records had no connection to Columbia Pictures, which used various other names for record labels they owned, including Colpix, Colgems, Bell and later Arista; rather, as above, it was connected to CBS, which stood for Columbia Broadcasting System, a broadcasting media company which had purchased Columbia Records in the late 1930s, and which had been co-founded in 1927 by Columbia Records itself. Though Arista was sold to BMG, it would later become a sister label to Columbia Records through the mutual connection to Sony Music; both are connected to Columbia Pictures through Sony Corporation of America, worldwide parent of both the music and motion picture arms of Sony.
Columbia Records 1958–1986 is a Johnny Cash compilation album released on Columbia Records in 1987 to commemorate the 28 years Cash (who had recently left Columbia for Mercury Records) recorded with the label, featuring 20 tracks dating from 1958 to 1986. This album contains many of Cash's famous hits, including Ring Of Fire and Folsom Prison Blues, as well as some of his less-known recordings, such as Seasons of My Heart and Without Love. This album failed to chart, and none of the selections were released as singles.