Budget albums (also known as unofficially by some collectors as either drugstore records or junk records) were low-priced vinyl LPs of
popular and
classical music released during the 1950s to 1970s consisting either of previously released material (usually reissues drawn from the catalogs of major labels featuring older performances by well-known artists) or material recorded especially for the line (often
cover versions
In popular music, a cover version, cover song, remake, revival, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording by a musician other than the original performer or composer of the song. Originally, it referred to a version of a song relea ...
of hit songs by name artists sung or performed on these albums by usually unidentified and unknown musicians). Prices ranged from as low as 59 U.S. cents (minor label releases of the 1950s) to $2.98 (major label repackaging of older material in the 1970s). In the UK
Pickwick Records'
''Top of the Pops'' record series, which operated between 1968 and 1985, was the most successful budget album range.
Drugstore debut
Discount stores (as well as Department stores) have had records produced by them by various record producing companies since the 1910s. It was fashionable for a chain like McCrory's or Kress to have their own exclusive label. Most of these records contained songs also available on many other 'exclusive' labels. (For example from the 1920s into the 1930s, Paramount produced the 'Broadway' label for Montgomery Ward, Cameo produced the 'Romeo' label for Kress, Columbia produced the 'Diva' label for W.T. Grant, and Plaza produced the 'Oriole' label for McCrory's, among many others.)
Drugstore records were called such as they were often sold in metal racks similar to the racks used for
paperback
A paperback (softcover, softback) book is one with a thick paper or paperboard cover, and often held together with glue rather than stitches or staples. In contrast, hardcover (hardback) books are bound with cardboard covered with cloth, le ...
books in
drugstores
A pharmacy (also called "drugstore" in American English or "community pharmacy" or "chemist" in Commonwealth English, or rarely, apothecary) is a retail shop which provides pharmaceutical drugs, among other products. At the pharmacy, a pharmaci ...
or
dimestores in the 1960s for prices from half to a quarter of regular
LP albums. These records were markedly less expensive than major label recordings.
The initial "drugstore records" mostly comprised
popular music
Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Funk ...
played or sung by unknown orchestras or singers, or conversely, once famous singers or orchestras playing music or songs that were relatively unknown (popular singers' early and obscure recordings were often showcased as well).
By the LP era, in some cases (notably the least expensive of the records) the record album would have only one
cover version
In popular music, a cover version, cover song, remake, revival, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording by a musician other than the original performer or composer of the song. Originally, it referred to a version of a song relea ...
of a famous song or tune. Many of these albums had attractive
album cover
An album cover (also referred to as album art) is the front packaging art of a commercially released studio album or other audio recordings. The term can refer to either the printed paperboard covers typically used to package sets of and 78-r ...
artwork (often picturing starlets such as
Jayne Mansfield
Jayne Mansfield (born Vera Jayne Palmer; April 19, 1933 – June 29, 1967) was an American actress, singer, nightclub entertainer, and ''Playboy'' Playmate. A sex symbol of the 1950s and early 1960s while under contract at 20th Century Fox, Man ...
,
Kim Novak
Marilyn Pauline "Kim" Novak (born February 13, 1933) is an American retired film and television actress and painter.
Novak began her career in 1954 after signing with Columbia Pictures and quickly became one of Hollywood's top box office stars, ...
,
Irish McCalla
Nellie Elizabeth "Irish" McCalla (December 25, 1928 – February 1, 2002) was an American film and television actress and artist best known as the title star of the 1950s television series '' Sheena, Queen of the Jungle''. She co-starred with ac ...
, and the then-unknown
Mary Tyler Moore
Mary Tyler Moore (December 29, 1936 – January 25, 2017) was an American actress, producer, and social advocate. She is best known for her roles on ''The Dick Van Dyke Show'' (1961–1966) and ''The Mary Tyler Moore Show'' (1970–1977), which ...
). The album were often filled out with music in the
public domain
The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...
or obscure music never recorded by anyone else. Sometimes the "
orchestra
An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families.
There are typically four main sections of instruments:
* bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...
s" comprised very few musicians, were performed by background music companies, or were recorded outside the United States by orchestras credited under different names, such as ''
101 Strings''.
Despite major record companies lowering their prices or starting their own budget labels, the budget album companies, such as Coronet (who sold their LPs for 99 cents), remained easily available.
Drugstore records originated with
Pickwick International, founded by
Cy Leslie. Leslie's first business was a prerecorded
greeting card
A greeting card is a piece of card stock, usually with an illustration or photo, made of high quality paper featuring an expression of friendship or other sentiment. Although greeting cards are usually given on special occasions such as birthda ...
service that turned into children's record label Voco Records in 1946. In 1950, Leslie founded
Pickwick Records and by 1953 Pickwick entered the
LP market providing lower priced records.
[Hoffmann, Frank (editor) and Howard Ferstler (technical editor). ''Encyclopedia of Recorded Sound''. Routledge (2005)] Another early producer of drugstore records was
Enoch Light
Enoch Henry Light (August 18, 1907 – July 31, 1978) was an American classically trained violinist, danceband leader, and recording engineer. As the leader of various dance bands that recorded as early as March 1927 and continuing through at l ...
, who started
Waldorf Music Hall Records under the auspices of the
F.W. Woolworth dime store chain. Unlike most drugstore record producers, Light was well regarded both as a musician and for his technical recording knowledge; which he would make much use of later in establishing
Command Records
Origin and history
Command Records was a record label founded by Enoch Light in 1959 and, in October that year, was acquired by ABC-Paramount Records. Light produced a majority of the releases in the label's catalog.
The company focused on prod ...
.
Probably the best known and most prolific drugstore label was
Crown Records, an offshoot of
Modern Records
Modern Records (Modern Music Records before 1947) was an American record company and label formed in 1945 in Los Angeles by the Bihari brothers. Modern's artists included Etta James, Joe Houston, Little Richard, Ike & Tina Turner and John Lee ...
, owned by the Bihari brothers and operated from Los Angeles. From the mid-1950s to the early 80s, Crown turned out hundreds of cheaply produced LPs of country, Hawaiian, Latin, and other musical genres; often performed by pseudonymous studio groups; as well as blues material reissued from the Modern label.
Major labels enter the budget album market
In 1954, Pickwick entered into a licensing arrangement with
Capitol Records
Capitol Records, LLC (known legally as Capitol Records, Inc. until 2007) is an American record label distributed by Universal Music Group through its Capitol Music Group imprint. It was founded as the first West Coast-based record label of note ...
giving Pickwick the rights to press and distribute Capitol's secondary and noncurrent titles on their label. Pickwick's records were mostly sold in stores other than record shops such as
department stores
A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic appea ...
,
dimestores,
drugstores
A pharmacy (also called "drugstore" in American English or "community pharmacy" or "chemist" in Commonwealth English, or rarely, apothecary) is a retail shop which provides pharmaceutical drugs, among other products. At the pharmacy, a pharmaci ...
, and
supermarkets
A supermarket is a self-service shop offering a wide variety of food, beverages and household products, organized into sections. This kind of store is larger and has a wider selection than earlier grocery stores, but is smaller and more limite ...
.
Pickwick later had several subsidiaries such as Bravo, Design, International Award, Hurrah, Grand Prix, and
Hallmark Records in the U.K.
RCA Records
RCA Records is an American record label currently owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside RCA's former long-time rival Columbia Records; also ...
introduced
RCA Camden Records
The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...
in 1955, a budget label for re-releasing older recordings by currently popular artists on the label or vintage material from previous decades. Occasionally, original music was produced for release on RCA Camden such as children's music and instrumentals. RCA Camden also released single albums of country music recorded especially for the budget label by many of its newer country acts of the 1960s such as
Connie Smith
Connie Smith (born Constance June Meador; August 14, 1941) is an American country music singer and songwriter. Her contralto vocals have been described by music writers as significant and influential to the women of country music. A similarity ...
,
Liz Anderson, and
Dottie West
Dorothy Marie Marsh West (October 11, 1932 – September 4, 1991) was an American country music singer and songwriter. Along with her friends and fellow recording artists Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn, she is considered one of the genre's most in ...
to perhaps encourage sales of the artists' full-priced product. RCA Camden was particularly successful in repackaging older
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), or simply Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one ...
recordings on the Camden label, as well as previously released and also unreleased material he recorded for his motion pictures, making these albums among the select few budget albums to actually make the national best-selling charts. At one point, the Camden albums were doing so well that two of Presley's major hit singles of the early 1970s - "Burning Love" and "Separate Ways" (and their respective flipsides) made their album debuts not on mainstream RCA releases, but on RCA Camden. Not long before Presley's death, RCA licensed its Camden line to Pickwick, though it eventually revived the label.
The major labels' budget album releases were seldom sold at "drug stores", mainly at
record shops
A record shop or record store is a retail outlet that sells Sound recording and reproduction, recorded music. In the late 19th century and the early 20th century, record shops only sold gramophone records, but over the 20th century, record sho ...
and
department stores
A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic appea ...
just like the full-price product although RCA Camden did on occasion market their albums in speciality "drug store" racks. The major label budget albums usually had eight to ten songs on them (usually nine) as opposed to full-price releases which contained ten to twelve songs.
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music, Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Sony. It was founded on Janua ...
re-introduced the
Harmony Records line around the same time for budget releases of older product repackaged. Harmony, however, seldom issued material that had not been previously released (Columbia has used the Harmony name from 1926 through 1932 and again in the late 1940s).
The budget albums' peak was in the late 1960s and early 1970s when nearly every recording artist of note had one or more such collections on the market. Often these were recordings done for a previous record label before the star's current popularity.
Major labels of the day with their own budget lines include:
*
Atlantic Records
Atlantic Recording Corporation (simply known as Atlantic Records) is an American record label founded in October 1947 by Ahmet Ertegun and Herb Abramson. Over its first 20 years of operation, Atlantic earned a reputation as one of the most ...
had a short-lived budget label,
Clarion Records
*
Cameo-Parkway
Cameo-Parkway Records was the parent company of Cameo Records and Parkway Records, which were major American Philadelphia-based record labels from 1956 (for Cameo) and 1958 (for Parkway) to 1967. Among the types of music released were doo-wop, d ...
created
Wyncote Records
Cameo-Parkway Records was the parent company of Cameo Records and Parkway Records, which were major American Philadelphia-based record labels from 1956 (for Cameo) and 1958 (for Parkway) to 1967. Among the types of music released were doo-wop, ...
*
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music, Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese Conglomerate (company), conglomerate Sony. It was founded on Janua ...
' budget label was
Harmony Records
*
Decca Records
Decca Records is a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934 by Lewis, Jack Kapp, American Decca's first president, and Milton Rackmil, who later became American Decca's president. ...
' budget label was
Vocalion Records
Vocalion Records is an American record company and label.
History
The label was founded in 1916 by the Aeolian Company, a maker of pianos and organs, as Aeolian-Vocalion; the company also sold phonographs under the Vocalion name. "Aeolian" was ...
*
EMI (in the UK) created
Music for Pleasure (MFP)
*
Dot Records
Dot Records was an American record label founded by Randy Wood (record producer), Randy Wood and Gene Nobles that was active between 1950 and 1978. The original headquarters of Dot Records were in Gallatin, Tennessee. In 1956, the company moved ...
' budget label was
Hamilton Records
*
Liberty Records
Liberty Records was a record label founded in the United States by chairman Simon Waronker in 1955 with Al Bennett as president and Theodore Keep as chief engineer. It was reactivated in 2001 in the United Kingdom and had two previous revivals ...
' budget label was
Sunset Records
*
Mercury Records
Mercury Records is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group. It had significant success as an independent operation in the 1940s and 1950s. Smash Records and Fontana Records were sub labels of Mercury. In the United States, it is ...
operated
Wing Records
Wing Records was a record label subsidiary of Mercury Records founded in 1955, that found its greatest success during the late 1950s.
In 1986, the label was revived by Mercury's parent company, PolyGram
PolyGram N.V. was a multinational ent ...
*
MGM Records
MGM Records was a record label founded by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio in 1946 for the purpose of releasing soundtrack recordings (later LP albums) of their musical films. It transitioned into a pop music label that continued into the ...
released
Metro Records and
Lion Records
*
Modern Records
Modern Records (Modern Music Records before 1947) was an American record company and label formed in 1945 in Los Angeles by the Bihari brothers. Modern's artists included Etta James, Joe Houston, Little Richard, Ike & Tina Turner and John Lee ...
created Crown Records
*
Pye Records
Pye Records was a British record label. Its best known artists were Lonnie Donegan (1956–1969), Petula Clark (1957–1971), the Searchers (1963–1967), the Kinks (1964–1971), Sandie Shaw (1964–1971), Status Quo (1968–1971) and Brothe ...
(in the UK) launched the budget 'Golden Guinea' Collection, with records priced at one
guinea (equivalent to one
pound
Pound or Pounds may refer to:
Units
* Pound (currency), a unit of currency
* Pound sterling, the official currency of the United Kingdom
* Pound (mass), a unit of mass
* Pound (force), a unit of force
* Rail pound, in rail profile
Symbols
* Po ...
and one
shilling).
*
RCA Victor Records
RCA Records is an American record label currently owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America. It is one of Sony Music's four flagship labels, alongside RCA's former long-time rival Columbia Records; also Aris ...
released
RCA Camden Records
The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...
*
Starday Records
Starday Records was an American record label producing traditional country music during the 1950s and 1960s.
History
The label began in 1952 in Beaumont, Texas, when local businessmen Jack Starnes ( Lefty Frizzell's manager) and Houston record d ...
(arguably a budget label itself) created Nashville Records
*
United Artists Records
United Artists Records was an American record label founded by Max E. Youngstein of United Artists in 1957 to issue movie soundtracks. The label expanded into other genres, such as easy listening, jazz, pop, and R&B.
History Genres
In 1959, ...
produced
Unart Records
Other budget record labels were
Somerset Records
David Leonard Miller (July 4, 1925May 24, 1985) was an American record producer and the founder of many budget album record companies. Miller is more familiar to some record buyers and collectors as the notorious Leo Muller who produced many Ex ...
that became
Alshire Records
David Leonard Miller (July 4, 1925May 24, 1985) was an American record producer and the founder of many budget album record companies. Miller is more familiar to some record buyers and collectors as the notorious Leo Muller who produced many ...
in 1963,
Stereo Fidelity, Audio Spectrum, Peter Rabbit (children's records), Azteca, Score Records (a subsidiary of
Aladdin Records
Aladdin Records was a record company and label founded in Los Angeles in 1945 by brothers Eddie and Leo Mesner. It was originally called Philo Records before changing its name in 1946.
Aladdin was known for jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock mus ...
), Custom,
Diplomat Records (a product of the
Synthetic Plastics Company who made
Peter Pan Records), and Ambassador Records.
In
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
, the
Woolworths Group jointly owned
Embassy Records with
Oriole Records, later part of
CBS.
The
Music for Pleasure (MFP) label was founded in 1965 as a joint venture between
EMI, which provided the source material, and the publisher
Paul Hamlyn
Paul Hamlyn, Baron Hamlyn, (12 February 1926 – 31 August 2001) was a German-born British publisher and philanthropist, who established the Paul Hamlyn Foundation in 1987.
Early life
He was born Paul Bertrand Wolfgang Hamburger in Berlin, Ge ...
, which handled distribution in so-called non-traditional outlets, such as
W.H. Smith, the booksellers. The MFP catalogue consisted of both original material and reissues of existing EMI recordings.
In Venezuela (and arguably other Latin American countries)it was quite common to find these recordings in the Cassette format, which allowed for even cheaper and lower quantity of copies for each album issued. Usually rebranding from other budget label albums, were marketed under the Cim-Bra, Vallison, Co-Co, Allegro, Rotna, CM-Circulo Musical labels, and even other popular labels mostly marketing local artists issued budget albums as well, such as Suramericana del Disco, Yare, Promus, among others.
Notable artists
Notable artists to have begun their careers recording for budget albums include
Lou Reed
Lewis Allan Reed (March 2, 1942October 27, 2013) was an American musician, songwriter, and poet. He was the guitarist, singer, and principal songwriter for the rock band the Velvet Underground and had a solo career that spanned five decades. ...
,
Jerry Cole,
Al Kooper
Al Kooper (born Alan Peter Kuperschmidt; February 5, 1944) is a retired American songwriter, record producer and musician, known for organizing Blood, Sweat & Tears, although he did not stay with the group long enough to share its popularity. ...
and
Tina Charles. Perhaps the most notable artists to emerge from a career as a "cover artist" for budget albums include
Dolly Parton
Dolly Rebecca Parton (born January 19, 1946) is an American singer-songwriter, actress, philanthropist, and businesswoman, known primarily for her work in country music. After achieving success as a songwriter for others, Parton made her album d ...
who, early in her career as a teenaged vocalist, recorded several covers of
Kitty Wells hits for budget album release, and
Elton John
Sir Elton Hercules John (born Reginald Kenneth Dwight; 25 March 1947) is a British singer, pianist and composer. Commonly nicknamed the "Rocket Man" after his 1972 hit single of the same name, John has led a commercially successful career a ...
, who recorded in the late 1960s and early 1970s for the
''Top of the Pops'' album series.
''See also
List of record labels
File:Alvinoreyguitarboogie.jpg
File:AmMusicBunk78.jpg
File:Bingola1011b.jpg
Lists of record labels cover record labels, brands or trademarks associated with marketing of music recordings and music videos. The lists are organized alphabetically, b ...
References
{{Reflist
Music industry