Kay Barry
| Embassy Records | |
|---|---|
| Parent company | Woolworths Music |
| Founded | 1954 |
| Founder | David Morris Levy Jacques Levy |
| Defunct | 1980 |
| Status | Inactive |
| Distributor(s) | Oriole Records, CBS Records International |
| Genre | Various |
| Country of origin | UK |
| Location | London, England |
Embassy Records was a UK budget record label that produced cover versions of current hit songs that were sold exclusively in Woolworths shops at a lower price than the original recordings. Embassy can therefore be seen as the UK equivalent of U.S. labels such as Hit and (in its early days) Bell Records. The label was the result of a contractual arrangement between Oriole Records and Woolworths, with Embassy's product being sold exclusively through the latter's stores from 1954 to 1965. The label disappeared after the parent company, Oriole, was taken over by CBS Records. Later, from 1970 through to 1980, CBS Records revived the Embassy imprint to release budget versions of albums in the UK and Europe by artists that were signed to its parent company, Columbia Records.
The label's releases mostly consisted of double A-side singles that were cover versions of then-current or predicted UK Top 20 hits and it was not unusual for different artists or contrasting pop styles to appear on either side of a record. Between November 1954 and January 1965 Embassy released around 1,200 songs recorded by about 150 different artists and these releases were sold for half the price of a major label release of the era. Embassy's records were recorded at the Embassy Recording Studios in New Bond Street, Mayfair, and manufactured by Oriole Records, who also licensed the material to many foreign outlets.
The tight Embassy recording schedule required four different songs to be recorded in one three-hour session. Included in this standard three-hour session was the initial studio set-up time, before any actual songs were recorded, and a mandatory musicians' coffee break. This meant that on average there was a little over 30 minutes allowed for the recording of an individual song, which in turn meant that the artists who did the actual singing had to be first-rate professional singers who could enter a studio and record a song in very few takes. Therefore, these artists tended to be very experienced big band or session singers who would also regularly broadcast live on BBC radio. Sometimes these musicians used their professional name when recording for Embassy but very often they used pseudonyms. The recording sessions usually took place on a Thursday, so that the cover version discs could be rushed out into the stores by the following Monday to compete with the real thing. As well as releasing covers of current hit singles, Embassy Records also produced EPs of trad jazz, children's songs, light classical music, and songs from musicals.
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