Word: lieberson
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...Lieberson's response has been a subtle reassertion of the record company's authority and artistic conscience, largely through the tone, personality and authority of his own presence. "I don't doubt that there were times when record companies exploited artists," he says, "but it had come to the point where the artists were exploiting the record companies." The first to get the word was Bob Dylan. One of the label's superstars for more than a decade, Dylan came up for contract renewal last month and found that he could no longer write...
...Lieberson's first moves after taking over was to give a push to an already conceived twelve-LP package devoted entirely to black composers from the 18th century to the present. Further, Columbia's February release will feature new American music by Leon Kirchner, George Crumb and Morton Subotnick. Lieberson has also given the green light to record everything ever written by Charles Ives...
...Lieberson has done far less, but far less has been needed. With such steady sellers as Loggins and Messina (rock), Charlie Rich (country) and Billy Paul (soul), Columbia had 24 LPs in 1973 that reached $1,000,000 in sales...
Born in England, raised in Seattle, Lieberson settled in New York to write music, hobnob with composers like Ives and Henry Cowell and write irreverent music criticism for the now defunct magazine Modern Music. After signing on with Columbia Masterworks in 1939 as second in command, he made one of his first projects the first recording of Pierrot Lunaire with the composer Arnold Schoenberg conducting. It was something that only an ex-composer would have fought for. The album bombed financially on 78 r.p.m., but finally made back the investment when transferred to LP a decade later...
...success of the original-cast album of South Pacific, produced by Lieberson in 1949, gave Columbia's new long-playing record the commercial push it badly needed. It also paved the way for a hugely profitable succession of similar ventures, such as My Fair Lady and Sound of Music...