Fact #61240
When:
Short story:
Master Records in the USA, whose main recording artist is Duke Ellington, is closed down.
Full article:
John Hammond (writer, Downbeat) : A new record venture actually requires an enormous amount of capital, as well as recording originality, an aggressive sales force, and a couple of really big artists appealing both to the retail and automatic nickel phonograph trade.
Mills (Irving Mills, producer and owner of Master Records) was forced to depend on the sales organization of the American-Brunswick-Columbia combination for sales, which was having a difficult enough time selling its own competing Brunswick and Vocalion lines in a field where there is unheard of competition already from the two RCA-Victor and the highly potent Decca products. Outside of the Raymond Scott unit, Mills introduced no new bands to the trade with sufficient originality to appeal to record buyers, and of his own artists only Duke Ellington has much of a record following and Duke's is so expensive a band that it is often difficult to clear expenses with him on discs.
It was the failure to find an outlet in Europe for the records that caused the abandonment of the project. But although it is Irving's prestige that is the main sufferer, it is Herbert J. Yates, the big boss of Consolidated Film and the American Record Company whose pocket book was most severely damaged, for his companies paid the artists on Variety and Master. I suspect that in the long run he did not fare too badly, however, for the factories in Bridgeport and Los Angeles did all the pressing of the records, and at a good fee.
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Mills (Irving Mills, producer and owner of Master Records) was forced to depend on the sales organization of the American-Brunswick-Columbia combination for sales, which was having a difficult enough time selling its own competing Brunswick and Vocalion lines in a field where there is unheard of competition already from the two RCA-Victor and the highly potent Decca products. Outside of the Raymond Scott unit, Mills introduced no new bands to the trade with sufficient originality to appeal to record buyers, and of his own artists only Duke Ellington has much of a record following and Duke's is so expensive a band that it is often difficult to clear expenses with him on discs.
It was the failure to find an outlet in Europe for the records that caused the abandonment of the project. But although it is Irving's prestige that is the main sufferer, it is Herbert J. Yates, the big boss of Consolidated Film and the American Record Company whose pocket book was most severely damaged, for his companies paid the artists on Variety and Master. I suspect that in the long run he did not fare too badly, however, for the factories in Bridgeport and Los Angeles did all the pressing of the records, and at a good fee.