Off The Record

Welcome to the first post of 2010 in the Off the Record Blog

I’m starting ths year with a very unusual story.  Throughout the late 1970’s and Early 1980’s we had the case of record retailers importing LP titles from the U.S. (this could be done provided that a similar release was not made available locally.)

A side effect of this was if they were releases by a U.S. major label, some slight modifications had to be done before they were released to retailers (such as Palings Music)

This would usually involve hiding all references to any trademarks or record labels.

All historical notes are taken from the book “The Guinness Book of Music” by Robert and Celia Dearling, with Brian Rust (Guinness Press, 2nd Edition, 1981)

Our first example is the case of the Disappearing Columbia trademark.  But first a little bit of history.

in 1931, HMV and the London branch of Columbia Gramophone Company merged to become EMI (this merger would cause headaches for CBS records when selected titles were imported to Australia.  This would also affect imports of RCA’s U.S. releases here (RCA owned the “Nipper” trademark for North America))

Of course this would mean that the U.S. office of Columbia had to be sold off due to the U.S. anti-trust laws of the time.

In 1982, Palings imported an LP under the Columbia name of Jerry Murad’s Harmonicats LP “Peg o’ My Heart” (but it could not be released under the Columbia name here because EMI owned the name back then.)

Palings decided to use a low-tech solution was to take to the cover art with a texta marker.

Below is part of the cover art for “Peg o’ My Heart”

not only that, all references to “Columbia” were also marked out on the back cover.

the label also suffered from obfuscation.  Below is a label for an LP released on the Columbia label.

in this case, CBS Records Australia overlaid a sticker which was covered with the CBS records trademark.

NIPPER NIPPED

now, for our second trademark obfuscation

the History of Nipper goes back to 1899, when artist Francis Barraud modified his painting called “His Masters Voice” changing the phonograph from a cylinder player to a disc player. thus giving birth to the familiar trademark. (which would be owned by EMI for many years to come (except in North America, where it was owned by RCA))

Throughout the 1970’s and early 1980’s, RCA’s North Ameican releases appeared with Nipper at the 2 O’Clock position on the label thus:

But when the Spike Jones compilation LP “Spike Jones is Murdering the Classics” was imported, Nipper got nipped (pun intended) in the bud by affixing a sticker in the same colour as the Red Seal label with the result being this:

a similar label hide took place on the 1981 Chipmunks LP “Urban Chipmunk” (RCA Australia never released that LP locally, so it could be duly imported.)