Marianne Faithfull

Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades. The British label was renowned for its development of recording methods,... while the American company developed the concept of cast albums in the musical genre. Both wings are now part of the Universal Music Group which is owned by Vivendi, a media conglomerate headquartered in France. The American Decca label was the foundation label which evolved into UMG. The name "Decca" dates back to a portable gramophone called the "Decca Dulcephone" patented in 1914 by musical instrument makers Barnett Samuel and Sons. That company was eventually renamed The Decca Gramophone Co. Ltd. and then sold to former stockbroker Edward Lewis in 1929. Within years, Decca Records Ltd. was the second largest record label in the world, calling itself "The Supreme Record Company". The name "Decca" was coined by Wilfred S. Samuel by merging the word "Mecca" with the initial D of their logo "Dulcet" or their trademark "Dulcephone.
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Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company—successor to the Volta Graphophone Company.... Columbia is the oldest brand name in pre-recorded sound, being the first record company to produce pre-recorded records as opposed to blank cylinders. Columbia Records went on to release records by an array of notable singers, instrumentalists, and bands. From 1961 to 1990, its recordings were released outside the U.S. and Canada on the CBS Records label before adopting the Columbia name in most of the world. Until 1989, Columbia Records had no connection to Columbia Pictures, which used various other names for record labels they owned, including Colpix and later Arista; rather, it was connected to the original owner, CBS, which stood for Columbia Broadcasting System.
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RCA Records is one of the flagship labels of Sony Music Entertainment. The RCA initials stand for Radio Corporation of America , which was the parent corporation from 1929 to 1985 and a partner from 1985 to 1986. RCA's Canadian unit is Sony's oldest label in Canada, as it was only one of two... Canadian record companies to survive the Great Depression. RCA is the name of three different co-owned record labels. RCA Records is the Pop, Rock, Hip-Hop, R&B and Country music label. RCA Victor is the label for blues music, world music, jazz, musicals and other musical genres which do not fit the pop music mold. RCA Red Seal is the renowned classical music label with a reissue sub-label called RCA Gold Seal. Defunct labels include budget labels RCA Camden, RCA Victrola, RCA International, and RCA Italiana. Besides manufacturing records for themselves, RCA Victor also operated RCA Custom which was the leading record manufacturer for the independent labels.
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Pop music is a genre of popular music which originated in its modern form in the 1950s, deriving from rock and roll. The terms popular music and pop... music are often used interchangeably, even though the former is a description of music which is popular , whilst the latter is a specific genre containing qualities of mass appeal. As a genre, pop music is very eclectic, often borrowing elements from other styles including urban, dance, rock, Latin and country; nonetheless, there are core elements which define pop. Such include generally short-to-medium length songs, written in a basic format , as well as the common employment of repeated choruses, melodic tunes, and catchy hooks. So-called "pure pop" music, such as power pop, features all these elements, utilising electric guitars, drums and bass for instrumentation; in the case of such music, the main goal is usually that of being pleasurable to listen to, rather than having much artistic depth.
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Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has... its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of other genres such as blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical and other musical sources. Musically, rock has centered around the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with bass guitar and drums. Typically, rock is song-based music usually with a 4/4 time signature utilizing a verse-chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse and common musical characteristics are difficult to define. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political in emphasis. The dominance of rock by white, male musicians has been seen as one of the key factors shaping the themes explored in rock music. Rock places a higher degree of emphasis on musicianship, live performance, and an ideology of authenticity than pop music.
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Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the... United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. The blues form, ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll is characterized by specific chord progressions, of which the twelve-bar blues chord progression is the most common. The blue notes that, for expressive purposes are sung or played flattened or gradually bent in relation to the pitch of the major scale, are also an important part of the sound. The blues genre is based on the blues form but possesses other characteristics such as specific lyrics, bass lines and instruments. Blues can be subdivided into several subgenres ranging from country to urban blues that were more or less popular during different periods of the 20th century. Best known are the Delta, Piedmont, Jump and Chicago blues styles.
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Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in black communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a... mix of African and European music traditions. Its black African pedigree is evident in its use of blue notes, improvisation, polyrhythms, syncopation and the swung note. From its early development until the present day jazz has also incorporated music from American popular music. As the music has developed and spread around the world it has drawn on many different national, regional and local musical cultures giving rise, since its early 20th century American beginnings, to many distinctive styles: New Orleans jazz dating from the early 1910s, big band swing, Kansas City jazz and Gypsy jazz from the 1930s and 1940s, bebop from the mid-1940s and on down through West Coast jazz, cool jazz, avant-garde jazz, Afro-Cuban jazz, modal jazz, free jazz, Latin jazz in various forms, soul jazz, jazz fusion and jazz rock, smooth jazz, jazz-funk, punk jazz, acid jazz, ethno jazz, jazz rap, cyber jazz, Indo jazz, M-Base, nu jazz, urban jazz and other ways of playing the music. In a 1988 interview, trombonist J.J. Johnson said, "Jazz is restless.
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