Search results
- 1959: MCA pays $11.5 million for the 420-acre Universal Studios complex in the Cahuenga Pass overlooking the San Fernando Valley. Advertisement 1962: MCA purchases Universal Pictures and its parent company, Decca Records.
www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-11-27-fi-5451-story.html
People also ask
When did Decca become a company?
Who owns Universal International Pictures?
Who owns the Decca label?
Why was Decca renamed?
Because American Decca bought Universal Pictures in 1952, many of these soundtrack albums were of films released by what was then called Universal-International Pictures. In June and July 1957, Decca Records released the soundtracks from Hecht-Hill-Lancaster Productions' film Sweet Smell of Success. It was a landmark event in the soundtrack ...
Nov 27, 1990 · 1962: MCA purchases Universal Pictures and its parent company, Decca Records. 1964: MCA begins charging tourists for tram rides through the studios and back lots, marking the start of the...
As American Decca owned Universal Pictures, MCA was forced to exit the talent agency business in order to complete the merger. MCA assumed full ownership of Universal and made it into a top film studio, producing several hits.
Decca at the time owned Coral Records and Brunswick Records, and an 89% stake in Universal Pictures Company, Inc. On July 13, 1962, the United States Department of Justice filed suit against MCA, charging that its acquisition of Decca's controlling interest in Universal violated antitrust laws. [15]
- Launching Decca Records
- American Decca
- The War Effort
- Pioneering Recording Technology
- At The Forefront of Popular Music
- The Label That Rejected The Beatles…
- … Eventually Signed The Rolling Stones
- Enriching Music
- Keeping Up with The Times
- Dominating Classical Music
The Decca Record Company began trading on February 28, 1929. In those early days, the business of making high-fidelity recordings was in its infancy. At Decca’s studios at the Chenil Galleries on London’s King’s Road, performances were captured by a single microphone, concealed from the musicians by a screen showing rural scenes. But just as the fl...
Lewis leapt upon instability within the record business to secure the UK rights to the American Brunswick label – a deal that brought to Decca such big-name US acts as Al Jolson, Cab Calloway, The Mills Brothers, The Boswell Sisters and Bing Crosby. To its US catalogue, Decca added an impressively diverse homegrown roster including George Formby, T...
With war pending, Lewis opted to sell his shares in American Decca, focusing purely on the UK label. In 1939, the newly independent American Decca accounted for over one third of all records sold in the US and was soon pressing some 135,000 discs per day. With artists including The Andrews Sisters, Bing Crosby and Billie Holliday, the American labe...
In return, the war effort’s need to record and cut unusually high frequencies onto records, in order to help train crews to identify enemy U-boats, pushed the boundaries of what could be reproduced on record. This led to advances in high-fidelity record production that would have otherwise taken years to develop. Recording engineer Arthur Haddy rec...
By the mid-50s, a different kind of revolution was happening in the popular-music market, and, again, Decca was at the forefront. It boasted a catalogue of labels that specialized in pop music, including London, RCA, Brunswick, and Coral. Its Brunswick label scored a smash hit in 1954 with “Rock Around The Clock” by Bill Haley & His Comets. The adv...
On New Year’s Day 1962, a former skiffle group from Liverpool famously auditioned for Decca. That Decca turned down The Beatles after that audition has gone down in pop folklore, but they weren’t alone. Pretty much every record company in the UK – including EMI, where they would ultimately find fame – did likewise. At the time, Decca had a choice b...
Alongside EMI, Decca was the biggest record company in the UK. But with the signing of The Beatles, and, in their wake, other Merseybeat acts such as Cilla Black and Gerry And The Pacemakers, EMI looked like it would dominate the pop market. If a Mersey act wasn’t topping the charts, then EMI’s other top seller, Cliff Richard And The Shadows, was s...
Of course, the record-buying public wasn’t yet completely dominated by youngsters, and Decca could still notch up considerable success with the likes of The Bachelors, Jim Reeves or Val Doonican, while The Sound Of Musicsoundtrack album topped the UK album charts for an unprecedented 70 weeks in total between 1965 and ’68. It would become the secon...
To keep up with the changing times, Decca Records launched its progressive Deram label in 1966 to showcase pop recordings made using “Deramic Sound” (Decca Panoramic Sound), which afforded engineers to create a more dynamic stereo field, placing individual instruments in their own space within the stereo picture. Acts broken by the label include Da...
But while Decca largely ceased to exist as a pop label by the end of the 80s (after enjoying hits with Bananarama, Bronski Beat, The Communards and Fine Young Cannibals), as a classical label it continued to flourish – and break new ground. It was in the unlikely form of the BBC’s theme tune to its coverage of the 1990 FIFA World Cup in Italy that ...
Following several years of financial losses, Universal-International was acquired by Decca late in 1951. The record company took control of Universal, and ousted Goetz and Spitz as the company headed toward conglomeration.
In 1962, Music Corporation of America (MCA) purchased Decca Records and with it, Universal-International Pictures, leaving Milton Rackmil and Edward Muhl in charge, while Dr. Jules Stein (Board Chairman) and Lew Wasserman (President) guiding MCA.
