Drugstore Records
Encyclopedia
Budget albums were low-priced vinyl record LPS released during the 1950s to 1970s consisting either of previously released material (usually the releases from major labels featuring older performances of well-known performers) or material recorded especially for the line (often cover versions of popular songs made famous by name artists sung or performed on these albums by usually unidentified and unknown entertainers). Prices ranged from as low as 59 cents [U.S.] (minor label releases of the 1950s) to $2.98 (major label repackaging of older material in the 1970s).
books in drugstores
or dimestores in the 1960s for prices from half to a quarter of regular LP album
s. These records were markedly less expensive than major label recordings.
The initial "drugstore records" mostly comprised popular music
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). In some cases (notably the least expensive of the records) the record album would have only one cover version
of a famous song or tune. Many of these albums had attractive album cover
artwork (often picturing beautiful starlets such as Jayne Mansfield
, Kim Novak
, and the then-unknown Mary Tyler Moore
). The album were often filled out with music in the public domain
or obscure music never recorded by anyone else. Sometimes the "orchestra
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 LP's for 99 cents, remained popular.
Drugstore records originated with Pickwick International, founded by Cy Leslie
. Leslie's first business was a prerecorded greeting card
service that turned into children's records label Voco Records in 1946. In 1950 Leslie founded Pickwick Records
and by 1953 Pickwick entered the LP
market providing lower priced records.
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, dimestores, drugstores
, and supermarkets. Pickwick later had several subsidiaries such as Bravo, Design, International Award, Hurrah, Grand Prix, and Hallmark Records
in the U.K.
RCA Records
introduced RCA Camden Records 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 a single album of country music recorded especially for the budget label by many of its newer country acts of the 1960s such as Connie Smith
, Liz Anderson
, and Dottie West
to perhaps encourage sales of the artists' full-priced product. RCA Camden was particularly successful in repackaging older Elvis Presley
recordings on the Camden label, as well as material he recorded for his motion pictures, making these albums among the select few budget albums to actually make the national best-selling charts.
The major labels' budget album releases were seldom sold at "drug stores", mainly at record shops and department stores 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
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.
The budget albums great heyday 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.
Other major labels of the day with their own budget lines include:
Other budget record labels were Somerset Records that became Alshire Records in 1963, Stereo Fidelity, Audi Spectrum, Peter Rabbit (children's records) and Azteca, Music for Pleasure
a subsidiary of EMI
, Score Records a subsidiary of Aladdin Records
, Custom, and Diplomat Records a product of the Synthetic Plastics Company
who made Peter Pan Records
and Ambassador Records.
In England the Woolworths Group
jointly owned Embassy Records
with Oriole Records
.
, Sun Ra
and Al Kooper
performed on drugstore records under various names such as "Dan & Dale". Perhaps the most notable artist to emerge from a career as a "cover artist" for drugstore albums is Dolly Parton
, who early in her career as a teenaged vocalist, recorded several covers of Kitty Wells
hits for budget album release.
See List of record labels
Drugstore debut
Drugstore records were called such as they were often sold in metal racks similar to the racks used for paperbackPaperback
Paperback, softback or softcover describe and refer to a book by the nature of its binding. The covers of such books are usually made of paper or paperboard, and are usually held together with glue rather than stitches or staples...
books in drugstores
Pharmacy
Pharmacy is the health profession that links the health sciences with the chemical sciences and it is charged with ensuring the safe and effective use of pharmaceutical drugs...
or dimestores in the 1960s for prices from half to a quarter of regular LP album
LP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
s. These records were markedly less expensive than major label recordings.
The initial "drugstore records" mostly comprised popular music
Popular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...
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). In some cases (notably the least expensive of the records) the record album would have only one cover version
Cover version
In popular music, a cover version or cover song, or simply cover, is a new performance or recording of a contemporary or previously recorded, commercially released song or popular song...
of a famous song or tune. Many of these albums had attractive album cover
Album cover
An album cover is the front of the packaging of a commercially released audio recording product, or album. The term can refer to either the printed cardboard covers typically used to package sets of 10" and 12" 78 rpm records, single and sets of 12" LPs, sets of 45 rpm records , or the front-facing...
artwork (often picturing beautiful starlets such as Jayne Mansfield
Jayne Mansfield
Jayne Mansfield was an American actress working both in Hollywood and on the Broadway theatre...
, Kim Novak
Kim Novak
Kim Novak is an American film and television actress. She began her career with her roles in Pushover and Phffft! but achieved greater prominence in the 1955 film Picnic...
, and the then-unknown Mary Tyler Moore
Mary Tyler Moore
Mary Tyler Moore is an American actress, primarily known for her roles in television sitcoms. Moore is best known for The Mary Tyler Moore Show , in which she starred as Mary Richards, a 30-something single woman who worked as a local news producer in Minneapolis, and for her earlier role as...
). The album were often filled out with music in the public domain
Public domain
Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...
or obscure music never recorded by anyone else. Sometimes the "orchestra
Orchestra
An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
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
101 Strings
101 Strings Orchestra was a brand for a highly successful easy listening symphonic music organization, with a discography exceeding a hundred albums and a creative lifetime of roughly thirty years. Their LPs were individualized by the slogan "The Sound of Magnificence", a puffy cloud logo and...
.
Despite major record companies lowering their prices or starting their own budget labels, the budget album companies, such as Coronet who sold their LP's for 99 cents, remained popular.
Drugstore records originated with Pickwick International, founded by Cy Leslie
Cy Leslie
Seymour Marvin "Cy" Leslie was the founder of Pickwick Records, and the first president and founder of MGM/UA Home Entertainment Group. Pickwick Records aimed to make music more affordable, and carried such artists as Elvis Presley at various times...
. Leslie's first business was a prerecorded greeting card
Greeting card
A greeting card is an illustrated, folded card featuring an expression of friendship or other sentiment. Although greeting cards are usually given on special occasions such as birthdays, Christmas or other holidays, they are also sent to convey thanks or express other feeling. Greeting cards,...
service that turned into children's records label Voco Records in 1946. In 1950 Leslie founded Pickwick Records
Pickwick Records
Pickwick Records was an American record label and distributor known for its budget album releases of sound-alike recordings, bargain bin reissues and repackagings under the brands Design, Bravo , Hurrah, Grand Prix, and children's records on the Cricket and Happy Time labels.The label is also...
and by 1953 Pickwick entered the LP
LP album
The LP, or long-playing microgroove record, is a format for phonograph records, an analog sound storage medium. Introduced by Columbia Records in 1948, it was soon adopted as a new standard by the entire record industry...
market providing lower priced records.
Major labels enter the budget album market
In 1954 Pickwick entered into a licensing arrangement with Capitol RecordsCapitol Records
Capitol Records is a major United States based record label, formerly located in Los Angeles, but operating in New York City as part of Capitol Music Group. Its former headquarters building, the Capitol Tower, is a major landmark near the corner of Hollywood and Vine...
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, dimestores, drugstores
Pharmacy
Pharmacy is the health profession that links the health sciences with the chemical sciences and it is charged with ensuring the safe and effective use of pharmaceutical drugs...
, and supermarkets. Pickwick later had several subsidiaries such as Bravo, Design, International Award, Hurrah, Grand Prix, and Hallmark Records
Hallmark Records
Hallmark Records is a British record label. It was founded in the 1960s and recently revived. The revived company has since become a major publisher of budget CDs in the UK, issuing both public domain and copyrighted material. The company has also re-issued some of its albums from the 1960s and...
in the U.K.
RCA Records
RCA Records
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...
introduced RCA Camden Records 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 a single album 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
Connie Smith is an American country music artist. She began her career in 1963 after winning a local talent contest near Columbus, Ohio, which attracted the attention of country songwriter Bill Anderson...
, Liz Anderson
Liz Anderson
Liz Anderson was anAmerican country music singer/songwriter who was one of a wave of a new generation of female vocalists in the genre during the 1960's to write and record her own songs on a regular basis. Writing in The New York Times Bill Friskics-Warren noted, "Like her contemporary Loretta...
, and Dottie West
Dottie West
Dottie West was an American country music singer and songwriter. Along with her friends and co-recording artists Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn, she is considered one of the genre's most influential and groundbreaking female artists...
to perhaps encourage sales of the artists' full-priced product. RCA Camden was particularly successful in repackaging older Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....
recordings on the Camden label, as well as material he recorded for his motion pictures, making these albums among the select few budget albums to actually make the national best-selling charts.
The major labels' budget album releases were seldom sold at "drug stores", mainly at record shops and department stores 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
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...
introduced the Harmony Records
Harmony Records
Harmony Records was a label owned by Columbia Records. It was originally used as a label for low-price 78 rpm records in the 1920s and 1930s; subsequently it was revived as a label for budget albums of reissued tracks during the 1950s with nine or ten songs per album...
line around the same time for budget releases of older product repackaged. Harmony, however, seldom issued material that had not been previously released.
The budget albums great heyday 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.
Other major labels of the day with their own budget lines include:
- Cameo-Parkway created Wyncote Records
- MGM RecordsMGM RecordsMGM Records was a record label started by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio in 1946, for the purpose of releasing soundtrack albums of their musical films. Later it became a pop label, lasting into the 1970s...
released Metro Records and Lion Records - Liberty RecordsLiberty RecordsLiberty Records was a United States-based record label. It was started 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.-1950s:...
' budget label was Sunset RecordsSunset RecordsSunset Records was a record label started in 1966 as the budget album subsidiary of Liberty Records to reissue the Liberty, Imperial, and Minit material.The label stopped operating around 1974.... - Columbia RecordsColumbia RecordsColumbia 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...
' budget label was Harmony RecordsHarmony RecordsHarmony Records was a label owned by Columbia Records. It was originally used as a label for low-price 78 rpm records in the 1920s and 1930s; subsequently it was revived as a label for budget albums of reissued tracks during the 1950s with nine or ten songs per album... - United Artists RecordsUnited Artists RecordsUnited Artists Records was a record label founded by Max E. Youngstein of United Artists in 1957 initially to distribute records of its movie soundtracks, though it soon branched out into recording music of a number of different genres.-History:...
produced Unart Records - Atlantic RecordsAtlantic RecordsAtlantic Records is an American record label best known for its many recordings of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and jazz...
had a short-lived budget label, Clarion Records - Modern RecordsModern RecordsModern Records was an American record label formed in 1945 in Los Angeles by the Bihari brothers. In the 1960s, Modern Records went bankrupt and ceased operations, but the catalogue went with the management into what became Kent Records. This back catalogue was eventually licensed to the UK label...
created Crown Records
Other budget record labels were Somerset Records that became Alshire Records in 1963, Stereo Fidelity, Audi Spectrum, Peter Rabbit (children's records) and Azteca, Music for Pleasure
Music for Pleasure (record label)
Music for Pleasure was a record label that issued budget-priced albums of popular and classical music, although the latter were marketed under the Classics for Pleasure name...
a subsidiary of EMI
EMI
The EMI Group, also known as EMI Music or simply EMI, is a multinational music company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. It is the fourth-largest business group and family of record labels in the recording industry and one of the "big four" record companies. EMI Group also has a major...
, Score Records a subsidiary of Aladdin Records
Aladdin Records (US)
Aladdin Records was a post-World War II United States record label, with headquarters in Hollywood, California. The label was founded in 1945 by brothers Eddie, Leo, and Ira Mesner and was originally called Philo Records, before changing to its better-known name in April 1946.Aladdin Records...
, Custom, and Diplomat Records a product of the Synthetic Plastics Company
Synthetic Plastics Company
Synthetics Plastics Company or SPC of Newark, New Jersey was a plastics manufacturing company that made various items made of plastic including children's records and budget music albums.-History:...
who made Peter Pan Records
Peter Pan Records
Peter Pan Records is a record label specializing in children's music. It was created in the late 1940s. The label was owned by the Synthetic Plastics Company of Newark, New Jersey until the 1970s....
and Ambassador Records.
In England the Woolworths Group
Woolworths Group
Woolworths Group plc was a listed British company that owned the high-street retail chain, Woolworths, as well as other brands such as the entertainment distributor Entertainment UK and book and resource distributor Bertram Books...
jointly owned Embassy Records
Embassy Records
Embassy Records was originally a UK budget record label that produced cover versions of current hit songs that were sold exclusively in Woolworths shops at a cheaper price than the original recordings. As such, Embassy can be seen as the UK equivalent of U.S. labels such as Hit and Bell Records...
with Oriole Records
Oriole Records (UK)
Oriole Records was the first British record label founded in 1925 by the London-based Levy Company, which owned a gramophone record subsidiary called Levaphone Records.-History:...
.
Early recordings done for budget albums
Some artists such as Jerry ColeJerry Cole
Jerry Cole born Jerald Kolbrack was an American guitarist who recorded under his own name, under various budget album pseudonyms and as an uncredited session musician.-Biography:...
, Sun Ra
Sun Ra
Sun Ra was a prolific jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, poet and philosopher known for his "cosmic philosophy," musical compositions and performances. He was born in Birmingham, Alabama...
and Al Kooper
Al Kooper
Al Kooper is an American songwriter, record producer and musician, known for organizing Blood, Sweat & Tears , providing studio support for Bob Dylan when he went electric in 1965, and also bringing together guitarists Mike Bloomfield and Stephen Stills to...
performed on drugstore records under various names such as "Dan & Dale". Perhaps the most notable artist to emerge from a career as a "cover artist" for drugstore albums is Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton
Dolly Rebecca Parton is an American singer-songwriter, author, multi-instrumentalist, actress and philanthropist, best known for her work in country music. Dolly Parton has appeared in movies like 9 to 5, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Steel Magnolias and Straight Talk...
, who early in her career as a teenaged vocalist, recorded several covers of Kitty Wells
Kitty Wells
Ellen Muriel Deason , known professionally as Kitty Wells, is an American country music singer. Her 1952 hit recording, "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels", made her the first female country singer to top the U.S. country charts, and turned her into the first female country star...
hits for budget album release.
See List of record labels