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| ==History== | | |DiscogsLabelId=39357 |
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| Mercury Record Corporation was founded in the American city of Chicago in 1945 by Irving Green, Berle Adams and Arthur Talmadge.[1] They were a major force in jazz and blues, classical music, rock and roll, and country music recordings. Early in the label's history, Mercury opened two pressing plants, one in Chicago and the other in St. Louis, Missouri. With the use of automatic presses and providing 24-hour turnaround, they went into direct competition with major recording labels such as Columbia, Decca, and RCA Victor.
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| By hiring two promoters, Tiny Hill and Jimmy Hilliard, they penetrated the pop market with names such as Frankie Laine, Vic Damone, Tony Fontane and Patti Page.
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| Rather than rely on radio airplay, Mercury initially relied to jukeboxes to promote their music.[2]
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| In 1946, Mercury hired midget Eddie Gaedel to portray the "Mercury man", complete with a winged hat similar to its logo, to promote Mercury recordings.[3][4] Some early Mercury recordings featured a caricature of him as its logo.[5][6]
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| In 1947 Jack Rael, a musician and publicist/manager, persuaded Mercury to let Patti Page (whom he managed) record a song that had been planned to be done by Vic Damone, "Confess". The budget was too small for them to hire a second singer to provide the "answer" parts to Page, so at Rael's suggestion she did both voices. Though "overdubbing" had been used occasionally on 78 discs in the 1930s, for Enrico Caruso and Elisabeth Schumann recordings among others, this became the first documented example of "overdubbing" using tape, and Patti Page, along with rival Capitol Records artists Les Paul & Mary Ford, became one of the artists best known for the use of this technique.
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| The company released an enormous number of recordings under the Mercury label as well as its subsidiaries (Blue Rock Records, Cumberland Records, EmArcy Records, Fontana Records, Limelight Records, Philips Records, Smash Records and Wing Records). In addition, they leased and purchased material by independent labels and redistributed them.
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| Under their own label, Mercury released a variety of recording styles from classical music to psychedelic rock. However, its subsidiaries focused on their own specialized categories of music.
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| In 1961, Philips, a Dutch electronics company and owner of Philips Records, which lost its distribution deal with Columbia Records outside North America, signed an exchange agreement with Mercury.[10] A year later, Philips' U.S. affiliate Consolidated Electronics Industries Corp. (a.k.a. Conelco), bought Mercury and its subsidiary labels. In 1963, Mercury switched British distribution from EMI to Philips.
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| In 1962, Mercury began marketing a line of phonographs made by Philips bearing the Mercury brand name.[11]
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| In July 1967, Mercury Records became the first U.S. record company to release cassette music tapes (Musicassettes).[12]
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| In 1969, Mercury changed its corporate name to Mercury Record Productions Inc. while its former parent Conelco became North American Philips Corp (N.A.P.C.) after Philips brought control of the company.
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| In the 1970s, the company began using the photo of Chicago's Marina City twin towers on the face of its records.
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| In 1972, Philips along with German Electronics giant Siemens merged their record operations with Deutsche Grammophon to become PolyGram. That year PolyGram brought Mercury from N.A.P.C. Mercury's corporate name was changed to Phonogram Inc. to match a related company in the UK that operated the Mercury label there.
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| In 1981, Mercury, along with other U.S. PolyGram-owned labels, which included Polydor, RSO, and Casablanca, consolidated under the new name PolyGram Records Inc. Around this time, Mercury moved its headquarters to New York City.
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| Under PolyGram, Mercury absorbed the artists and catalogue of Casablanca Records (also home to the 20th Century Records back catalogue), which consisted of heavy metalers Kiss and disco stars Donna Summer and Village People, and primarily became a rock/pop label with Kiss, Scorpions, Rush, John Cougar Mellencamp, Kurtis Blow, Tears for Fears, Bon Jovi, Cinderella, Treat, and Def Leppard.
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| Mercury, by having Bon Jovi, Cinderella, Def Leppard, Kiss, and Scorpions on their roster, was a premiere label for glam metal. Most of these bands were on Vertigo Records in Europe (that label specialized in progressive rock and hard rock including sub-genres like glam metal).
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| In late 1998, PolyGram was bought by Seagram, which then absorbed the company into its Universal Music Group unit. Under the reorganization, Mercury Records was folded into the newly formed The Island Def Jam Music Group (IDJMG). Mercury's pop roster was predominantly taken over by Island Records, while its hip hop artists found a new home at Def Jam Recordings, which in turn formed an imprint, Def Soul Records, that absorbed some of Mercury's R&B acts. Mercury's former country unit became Mercury Nashville Records. IDJMG revived the Mercury imprint in the US in 2007.
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| Mercury Records was relaunched in 2007 as a label under the Island Def Jam Music Group, appointing record executive David Massey as the President and CEO of the new venture.
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| This division of Mercury handles US distribution of most pre-1998 Polydor Records pop/rock releases currently under UMG control. There are some exceptions, however. Some artists based outside the US did not have their releases on Polydor in North America, signing to various other labels instead. Some of these bands, such as The Who, did sign to a label that also is now part of the UMG family (or later absorbed by such a label), hence those labels control US rights to these works (in the case of the Who, they had been on US Decca Records and MCA Records in the past, their pre-breakup catalogue is now on Geffen Records in North America).
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Discogs Information
Profile
Multinational label; also appears as "Mercury Records" or "Mercury Record".
Label Code: LC 0268 / LC 00268
A PolyGram company [1992]
A Universal Music company [2000]
The 7 digits numerical catalogue numbers were introduced in April 1970. Any item with such a catalogue number is after that date.
For the different label designs and the dating, see the given vinylbeat link below. For a list of albums/singles by catalogue number, see the given jazzdisco link below.
For all unofficial / bootleg / copy releases of this label please use Mercury (2).
Mercury is one of the oldest labels of the Universal Music Group. It was launched in 1945 by Irving Green, Berle Adams and Arthur Talmadge of the Mercury Record Corporation of Chicago, Illinois.
In 1961 the Dutch company Philips Phonografische Industrie (PPI), having lost its distribution deal with Columbia Records outside North America, signed an exchange agreement with Mercury, and PPI subsequently bought the Mercury Record Corporation and its labels to expand its US base. This meant that the Mercury label was now marketed worldwide via PPI's affiliated record companies (mostly Phonogram companies). In the US, Mercury was distributed by Phonodisc, Inc. from 1 June 1975.
In 1962 PPI formed a joint-venture with Deutsche Grammophon GmbH and ten years later they merged to form PolyGram. Mercury became one of Polygram's flagship labels.
In December 1998, after Seagram acquired Polygram, Mercury became part of the Universal Music Group with the takeover effective from January 1999.
Since its reactivation from 2007 to 2013, the label operated via The Island Def Jam Music Group in the US and by Mercury Records Ltd. in the UK. Recently, the label has also been revived by Universal Music France.
In the UK, the label has been known as the Mercury Music Group from approximately 2007 to 2011.
Since the closure of the Island Def Jam Music Group in April 2014, the label division had been shuttered and phased out once again, this time merging operations with Island Records. The label itself remained in use worldwide.
In the US in 2022, Republic Records acquired and relaunched the label with some artists from Republic and and it will continue as their imprint.
45 RPM Catalog Number, Date and Label Identification:
5000 through 8999 (1949–1952): Maroon label.
70000 through 71039 (1949–1957): Maroon or black label, though maroon ends around 71100. Also used in this series was a label picturing Mercury (Roman mythological messenger of the gods) in a square, which appeared on maroon, black, pink (R&B), and green (C&W) stock.
71040 through 72320 (1957–1964) Maroon or black label, with the Mercury ellipse (or oval), or square logo.
72321 and higher (1964 forward): Red label.
External Links