Word: decca
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Boss Petrillo handed out copies of the contract, containing the terms under which his 138,000 members will condescend to make their first records for the U.S. public since August 1942. Representatives of Decca (half of all U.S. records) meekly signed. The rest departed for further study But with the united front broken, they had little choice...
Thus Boss Petrillo won complete victory in the boycott he has enforced against new recordings-despite an anti-trust suit, pleas by OWI Director Elmer Davis and a Senate investigation-for 14 months. The "dough" was royalties ranging from ¼? to 5?, a tribute which Decca will pay into the union treasury for every record it sells. If all record companies sign, the union will receive about $500,000 a year, perhaps as much as $3,000,000 a year when the wartime shellac shortage ends...
...money will go into a fund to pay unemployed musicians union rates for giving free concerts. Like all union affairs, it will be administered exclusively by Mr. Petrillo-who also now has the right to examine Decca's books to make sure he is not being gypped. Thus Petrillo gains the greatest power over management ever reached by a U.S. union leader...
...labor leader, Boss Petrillo could afford to congratulate himself. Decca Records agreed to pay A.F. of M. a royalty from ¼ ?to 5? on every phonograph record sold...
What really started the corn sprouting on Broadway was a lugubrious tune by Louisiana's Jimmie Davis called It Makes No Difference Now. In the late '30s Decca's Recording Chief David Kapp heard this Texas hit and got it on wax. Within a few months record buyers were clamoring for Decca's later Bing Crosby version. Shrewd David Kapp barged wholesale into the hillbilly field, boomed local hits into national smashes by giving them successive recordings by bigger & bigger names. Thus, Crosby became the most popular singer of hillbilly as well as other popular music...