Columbia Record Company and Label

Columbia Record Company and Label

The company's activities began before the recorded history of jazz; the label's first items of jazz interest were made by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1917, but were not issued until after the success of the group's discs on Victor. Later sessions, supervised by the drummer Harry A. Yerkes, produced important items by two black groups, Handy's Orchestra of Memphis (1917), and Wilbur Sweatman's Original Jazz Band (1918-20), as well as material by the Louisiana Five (1919) and many hot dance recordings. Several of these were led by Yerkes, who was also responsible for signing Ted Lewis to Columbia.

Following the example set by Okeh, Columbia began issuing race records in the early 1920s, putting out items by Bessie Smith, Clara Smith, and Johnny Dunn's Original Jazz Hounds; these were issued as part of the general numerical sequence. At the end of 1922 the company was placed in receivership, and the British branch, which was established before 1917 and managed by Louis Sterling, was sold to Sterling's Constructive Finance Co., Ltd. Financial problems notwithstanding, in November 1923 American Columbia launched its first race series, the 13000Ds; this ran to only eight issues, among them four by Bessie Smith and one by King Oliver's band. In December that year the series was restarted, out of deference to triskaidekaphobics, at 14000D; it is best remembered for its vaudeville blues recordings by Bessie Smith, Clara Smith, Ethel Waters, and others, a long series of discs by Clarence Williams, and important field recordings made in New Orleans of Oscar Celestin and Sam Morgan. Columbia continued to issue jazz in the general series; this included material by Paul Whiteman, and later by Jack Teagarden and Red Norvo, as well as a number of recordings made in Atlanta in the mid-1920s which form one of the few extensive documentations in existence of the work of white territory bands.

In March 1925 the Constructive Finance Co.'s subsidiary, the British-based Columbia Graphophone Co., bought the American parent company (which from February 1924 had been called the Columbia Phonograph Co.). In October the same year the whole group was reorganized, still under British ownership, as Columbia International, Ltd., which controlled both the British and American branches of Columbia, and the German group of companies formerly owned by Carl Lindström; throughout this period the company maintained a substantial catalogue of American jazz. Columbia International opened an Australian subsidiary in mid-1926, and in November that year it acquired Okeh; however, as the latter was maintained as a separate operation this barely affected the running of the Columbia label in the USA. In December 1928 Columbia International purchased Pathé Frères Pathéphone and Pathé Orient (though not Pathé USA), and in March 1931 it merged with the Gramophone Co., Ltd., to form Emi; the new company operated subsidiaries all over the world.

Because American Victor held shares in the Gramophone Co. it in effect became one of the owners of American Columbia, which had hitherto been one of its main competitors. Fears of anti-trust action in the USA against what would have amounted to a monopoly led EMI to transfer American Columbia and its subsidiaries to trustees, who sold it in May 1931 to Grigsby-Grunow, the manufacturers of Majestic Radios. The 14000D series was terminated at 14680D (by the Washboard Rhythm Kings) in April 1933. After Grigsby-Grunow went bankrupt in November 1933 the Columbia and Okeh labels were bought by ARC-BRC (see American Record Company and Brunswick).

ARC discontinued the Columbia label in the USA, but it was maintained elsewhere by EMI; it became, and remains, one of the latter's most important labels. Jazz recordings were issued on Columbia in many countries; among the more unusual items by American expatriates are those by Midge Williams for Japanese Columbia (1934) and the long series by Teddy Weatherford for Indian Columbia (1941-44). The British company operated a swing series for several years. After 1934 American repertory from all the labels owned by ARC-BRC was made available to EMI for issue in countries other than the USA. From the 1950s, however, EMI's Columbia labels have been used mainly for the issue of material recorded by indigenous musicians. For example, British Columbia's Lansdowne series, under the direction of Denis Preston, was important in recording much material of the trad era of the 1960s.

In February 1938 the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), a corporate derivative of Independent Broadcasters Inc. (which had itself been a subsidiary of the Columbia Phonograph Co.), bought ARC-BRC; the new American parent company revived the label Columbia in the USA the following year, and discontinued Brunswick in April 1940. Under the direction of Edward Wallerstein, who had previously been an executive with RCA, the label Columbia soon regained its importance in the USA. It was one of the first to be used for the reissue of early jazz; projects in this area were supervised first by George Avakian, later by John Hammond. Among the musicians who made new recordings for the label at this time were Benny Goodman (1939-46; see illustration), Count Basie (1942-6), Woody Herman (1945-7), and Duke Ellington (1945-51). In October 1945 the organization began to attend once more to what had formerly been the race market with a new series, the 30000s, which lasted into the 1950s.

In spring 1948 American Columbia issued the first LPs; EMI's slowness to do the same in other countries was a major factor in the Columbia Broadcasting System's decision to terminate its affiliation with the non-American Columbia labels in the mid-1950s. Thereafter recordings made by Columbia in the USA were sold in Europe and elsewhere through subsidiaries of the Dutch company Philips, and later through autonomous subsidiaries established within the Philips group. American Columbia became, and continues to be, one of the most important sources of jazz in the world; those who have recorded for the organization include Dave Brubeck (1953-68), Louis Armstrong (1955-6), Miles Davis (1955-86), Duke Ellington (1956-62), Charles Mingus (1959), Thelonious Monk (1962-8), the Mahavishnu Orchestra (1971-5, 1984), Weather Report (from 1971), Herbie Hancock (from 1972), Wynton Marsalis (from 1981), and Branford Marsalis (from 1983).

Beginning in 1964 the American company established subsidiaries in various European countries, both to issue material available in the USA on Columbia, and for reissue schemes; a particularly important example of the latter was the French series "Aimez-vous le jazz" of the 1970s, which was also issued in Italy as the series "Vi piace il jazz." All these discs bear the label CBS, as in most non-American territories the Columbia trademark remains the property of EMI (main exceptions are Japan, South America, and Spain).