Columbia (EMI)
| Columbia Graphophone Company | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Parent company |
|
| Founded | 1922 |
| Defunct | 1973 |
| Status | Catalogue and artist roster owned by Parlophone Records since 2012, trade mark and name sold to Sony Music Entertainment in 1990 |
| Genre | Various |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
The Columbia Graphophone Company was one of the earliest gramophone companies in the United Kingdom. As Columbia Records, it became a successful label in the 1950s and 1960s, but was eventually replaced by the newly created EMI Records, as part of an EMI label consolidation. This in turn was absorbed by the Parlophone Records unit of Warner Music Group.
In 1922, Columbia Phonograph, as the American Columbia Records was then known, sold its UK subsidiary Columbia Graphophone. However, in 1925 Columbia Graphophone bought its former parent for $2.5 million. In 1926 Odeon Records and Parlophone Records were acquired. On 21 April 1931, the Gramophone Company and the Columbia Graphophone Company merged and formed a new company, Electric and Musical Industries (EMI). American anti-trust laws forced EMI to sell its American Columbia operations.
EMI continued to operate the Columbia record label in the UK until the early 1970s, and everywhere else except for the US, Canada, Mexico, Spain and Japan, until it sold its remaining interest in the Columbia trademark to Sony Music Entertainment in 1990.
Under EMI, English Columbia's output was mainly licenced recordings from American Columbia until 1951 when American Columbia switched British distribution to Philips Records. English Columbia continued to distribute American Columbia sister labels Okeh and Epic until 1968 when American Columbia's then parent CBS moved distribution of all its labels to the new CBS Records created from the purchase of Oriole Records (UK) in late 1964. The loss of American Columbia product had forced English Columbia to groom its own talent such as Russ Conway, Acker Bilk, John Barry, Cliff Richard, the Shadows, Helen Shapiro, Frank Ifield, Rolf Harris, Freddie and the Dreamers, the Dave Clark Five, Shirley Bassey, Frankie Vaughan, Des O'Connor, Ken Dodd, the Animals, Herman's Hermits, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Seekers, the Yardbirds, Jeff Beck, and Pink Floyd. Led by avuncular A&R man Norrie Paramor, the label was arguably the most successful in Britain in the rock era prior to the beat boom.
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