The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #137237   Message #3137837
Posted By: Ron Davies
18-Apr-11 - 08:44 PM
Thread Name: Decca Records - The Lonesome Train
Subject: RE: Decca Records - The Lonesome Train
Don't have any information on this. However, a bit on Decca.   Reading a fascinating biography of Bing Crosby (early years--til 1940) .   Among bons mots like "Prohibition was the government's gift to jazz", the book also deals with the founding of Decca.   Book says the name Decca was picked so, like Kodak, it would be pronounced the same all over the world.

Also says Decca almost went bankrupt in its first year--mainly due to the fact that it shipped lots of records to jukeboxes, but all were a bit too large to fit the jukebox--so all were returned.

And that despite having Bing, Louis Armstrong, and a host of other big names, the only thing that saved Decca the first year (1935) was the novelty "The Music Goes Round and Round", which was so ubiquitous, and recorded by so many people that it was described by a critic as " like Japanese beetles or chain letters".