Did US Decca Have Terrible Distribution in the 1950s and 1960s?

[Teasing the Korean]

Spurred by @mjazzg's recent post about Quartette Tres Bien, I ask: Did US Decca have terrible distribution in the 1950s and 1960s?

Over many decades of record hunting, I find that Decca releases from this period, compared to those from other major labels, are very scarce.  For example, I almost never see Sammy Davis's Decca albums, at any price.  I have only two albums by Quartette Tres Bien, but if they had been on, say, Capitol, I'm sure I would have their entire catalog by now (and probably for cheap dough).  I rarely see Peggy Lee albums on Decca, and I never see any of the three Gene Rains albums.  (Rains was Decca's answer to Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman, and is IMO better than both.)

About 20 years ago, I miraculously found, for a dollar, a pristine copy of Dave Pike's Manhattan Latin.  I have never stumbled upon another at any price, before or since. 

I am curious to hear about others' experience with finding US Decca LPs from this period, and would love to know if there is any hard evidence that their distribution was lacking.  

[JSngry]

Their country stuff was always in the stores here. As was their was listening stuff.

But I don't think they kept stuff in print for very long, as a rule. My folks had a few 50s LPs that they bought here.

Basically it seems to be that they shifted focus to rock and then to country.

But at least they put out that uberwack John Benson Brooks record! 

[Teasing the Korean]

I do occasionally see Decca country stuff, but I never ran across Decca's pop or jazz stuff anywhere near to the degree as that of Decca's contemporaries.  Maybe I happened to be in the wrong places at the wrong time.

Edited July 18, 2023 by Teasing the Korean

[JSngry]

Bert Kamphert and Lenny Dee and Earl Grant. They put them out, sold them, and then moved on. 

I know they were selling records, but keeping the catalog in print, maybe not so much? 

[Teasing the Korean]

9 hours ago, JSngry said:

Bert Kamphert and Lenny Dee and Earl Grant. They put them out, sold them, and then moved on. 

I know they were selling records, but keeping the catalog in print, maybe not so much? 

I'm really talking about finding used copies.   Granted, the longer something stays in print, the more likely you are to find a second-hand copy later.  I generally don't run across used copies of Decca LPs with the frequency I find things that were on Capitol, RCA, Liberty, Columbia, and other labels, in the cities I've lived or visited.  Part of it may that Decca probably had fewer things that would appeal to me.  If I were looking for country music or Lenny Dee, I may feel differently.

[Big Beat Steve]

An interesting question - one that I've been wondering about (thinking of the jazz or jazz-ish catalog) recently too ...

BUT .... when you say "Decca", do you lump in "Coral" along with Decca or do you draw a clear line between the two?
I know over here Coral and Brunswick (ie. European Decca) releases from the 50s (that are of interest to me) do come up regularly, and who is on which label is rather interchangeable or seems to have been a random decision by the A&R people at the time. OTOH most of the original or very early US pressings on Decca or Coral came my way through the internet, at least as long as it wasn't country LPs.

But maybe I am biased with regard to my awareness of their catalog because MCA reissued a fair lot from their 50s Decca/Coral catalogs here in my formative collecting years in the the 70s.

BTW, yes - TTK, I do think that your limited exposure to older Decca LPs may well be so because they had fewer artists that you would search actively for.

[JSngry]

I also have a feeling that they were quick to make greatest hits/ best of albums? 

[Big Beat Steve]

Considering everything (from the 50s when not all musical styles were primarily geared towards LPs yet) I think so too.

Another indicator: I just checked my copy of an "Al Smith's House of Jazz " catalog (dating from sometime in 1953 and arranged by label in its contents of jazz and more or less jazz-related LPs), and it has the following (approximate) numbers of pages allocated to the labels mentioned here:
Decca - 2 p.
Coral - not quite 1 p.
US Brunswick - not quite 2 p.

but OTOH ...

Capitol - 6 p.
Columbia - 11 p.
RCA Victor - 5 p.
(Liberty wasn't in the running yet)

So could it be that this explains that to some degree?
 

 

Edited July 18, 2023 by Big Beat Steve

[Teasing the Korean]

24 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

An interesting question - one that I've been wondering about (thinking of the jazz or jazz-ish catalog) recently too ...

BUT .... when you say "Decca", do you lump in "Coral" along with Decca or do you draw a clear line between the two?

Yes, US Decca, Coral, and Brunswick, the latter of which had a faint presence in the US as part of Decca during the LP era.

I have a few things on Coral, such as Manny Albam's West Side Story and Steve Allen's Music for Influentials.  I also have a Euro reissue of Leith Stevens's Jazz Themes for Cops and Robbers, which was an expanded version of his 10" album Private Hell 36.  But not much more than that.

14 minutes ago, JSngry said:

I also have a feeling that they were quick to make greatest hits/ best of albums? 

Yes, especially the double Greatest Hits albums, which were then reissued by MCA in the 70s (on horrible pressings, incidentally).

[mjazzg]

28 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

Leith Stevens's Jazz Themes for Cops

Is this as good as the title suggests?

[Teasing the Korean]

8 hours ago, mjazzg said:

Is this as good as the title suggests?

If you like stuff like this, then yes.

Private Hell 36 was a noir scored by Stevens.  The "soundtrack" album - it was probably a re-record, as was typical - was on a mono Coral 10".

For the Jazz Themes for Cops and Robbers 12" LP, they added four more tracks, stuff like "Peter Gunn."

The four new tracks, IIRC, are stereo.  They made the mono Private Hell 36 stereo by running the mono signal down the center and overdubbing bongos and vibes, panned left and right.

If you have the Rhino Crime Jazz CDs, you may already know this track.

 

9 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

BTW, yes - TTK, I do think that your limited exposure to older Decca LPs may well be so because they had fewer artists that you would search actively for.

Decca's releases in the aggregate seem very conservative compared to what Capitol, Columbia, and RCA were releasing in the 1950s and 60s.  There were of course some gems along the way, like the two George Russell LPs.

The scarcity of these albums is exacerbated by the fact that most of this stuff probably perished in the Universal fire, if MCA hadn't already thrown out a lot of stuff in the 1970s. 

Edited July 18, 2023 by Teasing the Korean

[Big Beat Steve]

3 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

Decca's releases in the aggregate seem very conservative compared to what Capitol, Columbia, and RCA were releasing in the 1950s and 60s.  There were of course some gems along the way, like the two George Russell LPs.

The scarcity of these albums is exacerbated by the fact that most of this stuff probably perished in the Universal fire, if MCA hadn't already thrown out a lot of stuff in the 1970s. 

You mean, the masters were destroyed then, so this may have completely nixed any incentive on Universal's part for reissues?

I agree that even among the majors Decca was not at the forefront of jazz with its 50s catalog but there were interesting items. Though I tend to lump in Coral with Decca when thinking of the Decca catalog, two specific Decca items I'd single out are these:
https://www.discogs.com/de/master/569863-Various-Das-Is-Jazz

https://www.discogs.com/de/release/10002630-Kurt-Edelhagen-And-His-Orchestra-Jazz-From-Germany

My appreciation may also be so because it was hard work obtaining the "Jazz From Germany" LP. I had won an eBay auction in 2000 or 2001 for this item (VG++) but due to the clueless (non-)packaging by the hick from the US sticks seller (sorry to put it that way) it arrived halfway broken through. Quite a shock because at that time it would have been anybody's guess when you'd be able to get your hands on another copy.  A couple of years later I scored another copy from the US at a good price (which this time arrived safely) and to make up, this second copy turned out to be a first pressing with the black label (whereas the first one that had arrived cracked had the rainbow Decca label which AFAIK makes it a somewhat later - early 60s? - pressing, though the covers are 100% identical).

And like I said, MCA reissued a lot of "Decca jazz" in Europe in the 70s (most of it originally on Coral, of course), Fresh Sound did a few more in the 80s, so the ground was covered at that time to some extent as far as availablity of the music itself was concerned.

Edited July 18, 2023 by Big Beat Steve

[JSngry]

Also/maybe...they became more focused on singles as they began focusing more on Rock and country, both singles-based idioms for some time? 

[mjazzg]

5 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

If you like stuff like this, then yes.

Private Hell 36 was a noir scored by Stevens.  The "soundtrack" album - it was probably a re-record, as was typical - was on a mono Coral 12".

For the Jazz Themes for Cops and Robbers 12" LP, they added four more tracks, stuff like "Peter Gunn."

The four new tracks, IIRC, are stereo.  They made the mono Private Hell 36 stereo by running the mono signal down the center and overdubbing bongos and vibes, panned left and right.

If you have the Rhino Crime Jazz CDs, you may already know this track.

 

Thanks TTK, I do definitely rate that so look into the release further. The only copies for sale in Europe that I could see on a quick initial look were all a Fresh Sounds reissue 

[Big Beat Steve]

45 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Also/maybe...they became more focused on singles as they began focusing more on Rock and country, both singles-based idioms for some time? 

IMO definitely yes.

[Teasing the Korean]

2 hours ago, mjazzg said:

Thanks TTK, I do definitely rate that so look into the release further. The only copies for sale in Europe that I could see on a quick initial look were all a Fresh Sounds reissue 

Yeah, that's what I have.  It's your best bet, especially if you are in London.

Also, I had a typo.  The Private Hell album was a 10".  They added the 4 tracks to make it a 12".

Edited July 18, 2023 by Teasing the Korean

[GA Russell]

From my experience only, what they had of interest to my peers in the '60s was easily available.

Kapp had The Searchers, Jack Jones and Louis Armstrong.

Coral had Pete Fountain.

Brunswick had Jackie Wilson and later The Young-Holt Trio/Unlimited.

Decca had Rick Nelson and The Surfaris.

I don't recall any Decca act being hard to find.

[Teasing the Korean]

33 minutes ago, GA Russell said:

I don't recall any Decca act being hard to find.

Well, and a lot of them are hard to find now, at least in the cities I've lived and/or visited.  Compared to used copies of artists on Columbia, Capitol, and RCA.

[sgcim]

9 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

If you like stuff like this, then yes.

Private Hell 36 was a noir scored by Stevens.  The "soundtrack" album - it was probably a re-record, as was typical - was on a mono Coral 10".

For the Jazz Themes for Cops and Robbers 12" LP, they added four more tracks, stuff like "Peter Gunn."

The four new tracks, IIRC, are stereo.  They made the mono Private Hell 36 stereo by running the mono signal down the center and overdubbing bongos and vibes, panned left and right.

If you have the Rhino Crime Jazz CDs, you may already know this track.

 

Decca's releases in the aggregate seem very conservative compared to what Capitol, Columbia, and RCA were releasing in the 1950s and 60s.  There were of course some gems along the way, like the two George Russell LPs.

The scarcity of these albums is exacerbated by the fact that most of this stuff probably perished in the Universal fire, if MCA hadn't already thrown out a lot of stuff in the 1970s. 

I just read the personnel for "Daddy Long Legs" in the Meeker book. It's like a who's who of West Coast jazz of the 50s! That must have been Candoli and Bernhardt on the bone and trumpet solos, but Giuffre, Bob Cooper and Claude Williamson were there, too, plus Manne and all the usual suspects. I don't think you could ask for a more purely jazz score than that!

[JSngry]

What are you looking for? And where?

Like GA, I don't recall there being any distribution issues. The current records were always in the store in the 60s and early 70s.

But I will use The Who as an example. When Tommy came out, yeah, that was everywhere. But good luck finding the earlier (American) albums. 

Keeping most things in print for longer than their shelf life did not seem to be a priority for them. 

[Teasing the Korean]

48 minutes ago, JSngry said:

What are you looking for? And where?

Well, I haven't actively searched for LPs in about 6 years, since we moved.

But for about 25 years, I routinely scoured record stores, thrift stores, flea markets, and yard sales, primarily on the East Coast, but also in other cities, for second-hand vinyl.

Over those years, I would search for various genres - basically anything except rock, folk, or country.  This would include jazz, pseudo-jazz, jazz vocals, jazzy pop vocals, classical, film scores, Latin, Brazilian, soul, R&B, funk, crime jazz, spy, French pop, Moog, sitar, exotica, oddball instrumental.  Probably others I've forgotten.

I haven't been on a quest to assemble a complete Decca collection.  The point of this post is that, based on things I know they released that would interest me, I have for 25 years come across far less of it than I would similar sorts of releases by contemporaneous labels such as Capitol, Columbia, and RCA.  Really talking about Decca releases from the 1950s and 60s, as their 1970s albums pop up more in my experience.

I mentioned several specific Decca things from this era in my original post.  But there are others I didn't mention, like George Russell, for starters. These were just examples.

I realize this is all anecdotal, but it sure feels like there is a pattern with Decca from that period.

 

[JSngry]

There for quite a while(?) their LPs were that cheap injection plastic. Brittle, fragile, and easily noisy. So maybe there's that, a survival rate thing.

And considering all the hits they were having on the really commercial stuff, maybe they just didn't press that many for the other things. 

[Big Beat Steve]

On 7/19/2023 at 1:42 AM, Teasing the Korean said:

I haven't been on a quest to assemble a complete Decca collection.  The point of this post is that, based on things I know they released that would interest me, I have for 25 years come across far less of it than I would similar sorts of releases by contemporaneous labels such as Capitol, Columbia, and RCA.  Really talking about Decca releases from the 1950s and 60s, as their 1970s albums pop up more in my experience.

I mentioned several specific Decca things from this era in my original post.  But there are others I didn't mention, like George Russell, for starters. These were just examples.

I realize this is all anecdotal, but it sure feels like there is a pattern with Decca from that period.

Eartlier this week (while the forum was down for some reason) I browsed through a Feb. 1959 copy of the "Jazz'n'Pops" catalog (some kind of "Schwann", it seems) and checked out the Decca acts. I can do a more detailed list if you want me to but the gist is: Among those in print at that time that were on Decca (not counting Coral this time) and had a sizable number of LPs on that label, in what rated as "pop" with the editors of that reference book you were stuck unless you had a liking for Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Sammy Davis Jr., the Jack Pleis Orch. and a small handful of others. Other labels (particularly the ones you mentioend) indeed were far more frequent across the entire stylistic board.
Checking the jazz section I found that indeed a large part of what was on Decca and Coral in the 50s had been covered by reissues on German MCA in the 70s and Fresh Sound and Jasmine in the 80s. So few items/artists were really scarce (but you had to look actively for them).

BTW, as for Leith Stevens, another item I'd give a plug is his (expanded) soundtrack version of "The Wild One". A friend had an original Decca LP which I dubbed on cassette in the 80s (as he would not part with his copy, though he was far more into R'n'R) and I was very pleased when I found a copy of the Fresh Sound reissue years later.

[Teasing the Korean]

On 7/18/2023 at 8:55 PM, JSngry said:

There for quite a while(?) their LPs were that cheap injection plastic. Brittle, fragile, and easily noisy. So maybe there's that, a survival rate thing.

Yes, styrene.  I think they were using it through the mid-1960s, but not exclusively.  You will occasionally find an early 60s album pressed on vinyl.

On 7/18/2023 at 8:55 PM, JSngry said:

And considering all the hits they were having on the really commercial stuff, maybe they just didn't press that many for the other things. 

Yes, if it wasn't distribution, maybe they either did smaller pressings and/or didn't leave things in the catalog for very long.

4 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Eartlier this week (while the forum was down for some reason) I browsed through a Feb. 1959 copy of the "Jazz'n'Pops" catalog (some kind of "Schwann", it seems) and checked out the Decca acts. I can do a more detailed list if you want me to but the gist is: Among those in print at that time that were on Decca (not counting Coral this time) and had a sizable number of LPs on that label, in what rated as "pop" with the editors of that reference book you were stuck unless you had a liking for Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Sammy Davis Jr., the Jack Pleis Orch. and a small handful of others. Other labels (particularly the ones you mentioend) indeed were far more frequent across the entire stylistic board.

Checking the jazz section I found that indeed a large part of what was on Decca and Coral in the 50s had been covered by reissues on German MCA in the 70s and Fresh Sound and Jasmine in the 80s. So few items/artists were really scarce (but you had to look actively for them).

BTW, as for Leith Stevens, another item I'd give a plug is his (expanded) soundtrack version of "The Wild One". A friend had an original Decca LP which I dubbed on cassette in the 80s (as he would not part with his copy, though he was far more into R'n'R) and I was very pleased when I found a copy of the Fresh Sound reissue years later.

When you say "few items/artists were really scarce," do you mean because of the reissues on MCA, Jasmine and Fresh Sound?

Yes, I have that Wild One album, and it's a keeper!

[Big Beat Steve]

1 hour ago, Teasing the Korean said:

When you say "few items/artists were really scarce," do you mean because of the reissues on MCA, Jasmine and Fresh Sound?

Yes, exactly. When leafing through this catalog I was surprised to see how many of the Decca/Coral jazz items listed there had indeed been part of the reissue programs I mentioned. Some that were not (but that over time I've obtained as originals, though not because they were on Coral, of course ) included the Dick Marx/Johnny Frigo LPs, Eddie Costa's "Guys And Dolls Like Vibes", the "Jazz Best Coast" V.A. LP and Al Jazzbo Collins' "East Coast Jazz Scene" - and (as R&B/R'n'R/mainstream Swing borderline items) the Alan Freed Orchestra LPs.

Edited July 21, 2023 by Big Beat Steve