RECORDS
RCA Victor was responsible for the development of the 45rpm vinyl record, in 1948. The roots of the company lie in the formation of the Consolidated Talking Machine Company, of Philadelphia, Pa., by Eldridge R. Johnson. To begin with, Johnson issued records on his 'Improved Gram-O-Phone Record' label. After a court battle with a rival, from which he emerged successful, he incorporated the company as 'Victor'; this was in 1901. He joined forces with Emile Berliner, and in 1902 their new Victor label acquired its now-famous 'His Master's Voice' trademark - the one with the dog looking down the horn of one of Berliner's gramophones. Victor gained a reputation for quality, both of the music which it recorded and the way in which it recorded it. The company was sold to bankers Seligman & Speyer in 1926; in 1929 it was sold again, this time to the Radio Corporation of America. In Britain in 1931, RCA's British branch, the Gramophone Company (HMV), merged with Parlophone and Columbia to form Electrical and Musical Industries. RCA sold its shares in the new company in 1935, but its products continued to appear on the HMV label over here until 1957, when it launched its own label through Decca. It stayed with Decca throughout the '50s and almost to the end of the 60s, changing its label name to RCA Victor towards the end of 1962. Late in the '60s RCA set up its own distribution network, and in June 1969 it struck out on its own as an independent company. In 1969 it opened its own pressing plant at Washington in 1970, on the 7th of May; the plant had twelve presses for 12" records and six for 7" ones, though the latter could be adapted to press 12" records. In 1970 RCA singles were to be pressed by CBS from December 1st, with the RCA plant manufacturing LPs only. The implication is that RCA pressed at least some of their own singles previous to that date, but the numbers must have been small - the dozen or so orange-labelled RCAs from before December 1970 the vinyl had a Decca-style or CBS-style matrix numbers. The change to 12" manufacture to 7" records released in 1971 on RCA Maxi Million and RCA associated labels such as Neon and Vanguard can be found as RCA pressings. The production of singles must have been increased at some point in 1972. Manufacturing half of its own singles, with CBS being responsible for the other half. In 1973 RCA was planning to launch its own Reggae label, but the plans seem to have come to nothing. In 1973-74 saw the company struggling to fulfill orders for its hit singles of The Sweet's 'Teenage Rampage', They were being imported, with dealers being asked to insert the plastic 'spiders' themselves prior to sale - RCA had tried inserting them before despatch but the process was taking too long. A month or so later 500,000 copies of David Bowie's 'Rebel Rebel' were being brought in from the USA, this time with 'spiders' already inserted. In July 1975 saw a certain amount of cost-cutting taking place: RCA's van sales operation ceased and the artist roster was pruned, with the company releasing acts which had received a promotional push but hadn't gained satisfactory sales. The possibility of closing the pressing plant was raised in 1976, and talks about redundancies took place in the summer of 1977, but the death of Elvis Presley in August of that year prompted a huge demand for his records and the plant won a reprieve. Sadly the reprieve proved temporary, and closure took place in 1981. 1977 saw the simultaneous re-release of Elvis Presley's sixteen No.1 UK hits, in picture sleeves - previous to the singer's death, there were problems with pressing capacity, and some of the singles had to be imported from Canada. That same year saw the launch of a 12" 'Disco Direction" singles series, aimed at the growing Disco / Dance market. Despite its various difficulties RCA flourished in the '70s, with the likes of Elvis Presley and David Bowie shifting records by the ton. It played its part in the Glam Rock saga, with Sweet repeatedly hitting the Top 10, and registered a number of one-off hits during the Disco boom. It also had some of the big names in the Country & Western and Easy Listening fields on its books, artists such as Dolly Parton, Waylon Jennings, John Denver and Perry Como. The company handled a number of other labels, including Vanguard, Soul Train, Solar, Windsong, Grunt, Prestige and New York International. It had a dedicated Classical label, RCA Red Seal; a short-lived Progressive label, Neon; and, from 1969-70, a label for Children's records, RCA Bluebird. Throughout the '70s RCA issued EPs of million-selling tracks from their back-catalogue under the 'Maxi Million' banner; these had a special label and sleeve, In 1979 some other reissues - two-track ones this time - were given a special 'Golden Oldies' sleeve, but their labels didn't have any corresponding legend; some of them were numbered in a dedicated GOLD-000 series. In 1980 there were serious discussions about a merger between RCA and Pye. Michael Levy was poised to sell his Magnet Records to the new joint company and to serve as its head, but despite basic merger terms being agreed the deal fell through. Early RCA singles had the usual tri-centred push-outs of Decca products of that period. At first there was no date on them, but the omission was rectified in May 1958, the year being put at 10 o'clock. Decca stopped doing tri-centres in 1960; in line with the other labels, RCAs singles began to have four perforations. The label name was changed to RCA Victor in December 1962, RCA-1321 being the first record to have the new label; some popular singles can be found with both RCA and RCA Victor labels, the latter being later pressings. This redesigned label stayed in use until the start of 1969, when it was replaced by an orange one with a white logo, which was used until nearly the end of the 1970s. In July 1979 a couple of singles (PB-5169 and PB-5170) were given black labels in the same design as the orange ones, but the orange label remained in pole position until October / November 1979, when it was gradually replaced by a silver-on-black design which no longer had the word 'Victor' on it. This new label had the logo at the top and its perimeter credits moved. There was also a new, black, sleeve to go with it. RCA's numerical system was something of a mish-mosh. After decades of a straightforward RCA-1000 series (which evolved into an RCA-2000 one towards the end of 1970) things started getting complicated at the start of 1974. The RCA-2000 series was replaced by two others: APB0-0000 and LPB0-5000 - the prefixes are explained in the note below. The APB0s consisted of singles that originated in America and were available in that same coupling of 'A' and 'B' sides over there; the LPB0-5000 series featured material originating in Great Britain. There was also an LPB0-7500 series: it consisted of records (by American artists) which were hadn't got American equivalents and were available only in the UK with that particular combination of 'A' and 'B' sides. Happily RCA's experiment with descriptive prefixes didn't last long. The old main RCA-2000 series was reintroduced in April 1974, after only four months, and the APB0s and LPB0s were gradually phased out. The last LPB0 came out in August of that year, the last APB0 in October. From around September 1974 a handful of American singles were issued with their American catalogue numbers, in the PB-10000s, but thankfully the practise was abandoned early in the following year.
That state of affairs continued until January 1977, when the RCA-2000 series were replaced by three main parallel PB ones: PB-0000, PB-5000 and PB-9000. Records numbered in the PB-0000s had exact American equivalents, and their catalogue numbers were basically the same as the American ones: thus PB-0768 was the equivalent to the American PB-10768. Records numbered in the PB-9000s had no American equivalents - if the titles on them appeared in the USA they came out in different couplings. The PB-5000s were peculiar to the UK; if they came out in the USA they did so on labels other than RCA. There were several minor variations on the PB theme: PB-5500s and 5600s seem to have originated in Germany, PB-6000s in Italy, and PB-8000s in France. 1978 saw the appearance of an XB prefix, which appears to have been used for material licensed to British RCA; there were also some FBs, which seem to have featured material licensed to American RCA. EPs and Maxi-singles had their own 'PE' prefix. In 1980 all these PBs disappeared and the RCA prefix made a comeback, with numbers starting at RCA-1. RCA issued hundreds of singles in the '70s; a rather holey discography can be found on its own page, here. RCA is still in operation today, as part of BMG. Thanks to Robert Lyons For The Info.
A FULL CONSOLIDATED DISCOGRAPHY OF RCA Records APBO-0000 SERIES 1973-1974 CAN BE FOUND HERE
