Jessye Norman

Deutsche Grammophon is a German classical record label which was the foundation of the future corporation to be known as PolyGram. It is now part of Universal Music Group since its acquisition and absorption of PolyGram in 1999, and it is also UMG's oldest active label. It is also the oldest... surviving established record company. Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft was founded in 1898 by German-born United States citizen Emile Berliner as the German branch of his Berliner Gramophone Company. Based in the city of Hannover , the company had links with the U.S. Victor Talking Machine Company and the British Gramophone Company, but those links were severed at the onset of World War I. In 1941 Deutsche Grammophon was purchased by the Siemens & Halske electronics company. In 1949, Deutsche Grammophon sold the German rights of the His Master's Voice trademark to the Electrola Records unit of EMI. The dog and gramophone were replaced by the crown of tulips, designed by Siemens advertising consultant Hans Domizlaff. In 1962 Siemens formed a joint venture with Netherlands-based Philips to create the DGG/PPI Record Group, which became PolyGram Records in 1972.
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Philips Records is a record label that was founded by Dutch electronics company Philips. It was started by "Philips Phonographische Industrie" in 1950. Recordings were made with popular artists of various nationalities and also with classical artists from Germany, France and Holland. Philips also... distributed recordings made by the US Columbia Records on the European continent. After the separation of English Columbia and American Columbia by the end of 1954, Philips also started distributing original Columbia recordings on the Philips label in Great Britain. In the late 1950s Philips created a subsidiary label, Fontana Records, and helped American Columbia Records form CBS Records in 1961, after Columbia formed its own international operations, adopting the name of its then parent CBS. In 1962 Philips Records and Deutsche Grammophon were linked into the Gramophon-Philips Group joint venture , which later became PolyGram. In 1961, after Philips lost its North American distribution deal with Columbia Records, it entered an exchange agreement with Mercury Records. A year later, Philips' U.S. affiliate Consolidated Electronics Industries Corp.
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EMI Records, also called Evergreen Music Recordings is the flagship record label founded by the EMI company in 1972 and launched in January 1973 as the successor to its Columbia label. The EMI label was launched worldwide. The global success that EMI had enjoyed in the 1960s exposed the fact that... the company only had the rights to some of its trademarks in some parts of the world, most notably His Master's Voice and Columbia, with RCA Victor Records and the American Columbia Records owning the rights to these trademarks in North America. Complicating matters was the formation by American Columbia of its own operations in the UK by purchasing Oriole Records and changing its name to that of its then parent company CBS , and becoming highly successful, a serious rival to EMI, in the UK.
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