- Ray Charles
Ray Charles (born Charles Raymond Offenberg, September 13, 1918 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, vocal arranger and conductor who is best- known as organizer and leader of The Ray Charles Singers. The Ray Charles Singers were featured on Perry Como's records, radio shows and television shows for 35 years. - Brian Epstein
Brian Samuel Epstein was the manager of The Beatles. He also managed numerous other groups like Gerry & The Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, and solo artists like Cilla Black. The Beatles recorded a demo in Decca's studios—paid for by Epstein—which he later persuaded George Martin to listen to. Epstein was then offered a contract (after Martin had auditioned the group) by EMI's small Parlophone label, … - Andrew Litton
Andrew Litton (born May 16, 1959, New York City) is an American orchestral conductor. He is a graduate of The Fieldston School, and holds both undergraduate and Masters degrees in music from Juilliard. He was Principal Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra from 1988 to 1994. and is now its Conductor Laureate. He served for twelve seasons as Music Director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra from 1994 to 2006. - Andrew Loog Oldham
Andrew Loog Oldham (born January 29 1944) is an English rock and roll producer, impresario and author. He was best known as the manager of The Rolling Stones in the 1960s, taking a flamboyant style inspired by his role model and friend Phil Spector. A celebrated and self-proclaimed hustler who spent teenage summers swindling tourists in French resort towns, … - Billy Fury
Originally from Wavertree in South Liverpool, Billy Fury was born on April 17, 1940, at Smithdown Hospital, now Sefton General Hospital, Smithdown Road, Liverpool, Merseyside. He was an internationally successful pop singer from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, and remained an active songwriter until the 1980s. He died on January 28, 1983 at St Mary Abbott's Hospital, Paddington, West London. - John Shirley-Quirk
John Shirley-Quirk CBE (born August 28, 1931) is an English bass-baritone. He was born in Liverpool, England, and sang in his high school choir. He played the violin and was awarded a scholarship. While studying chemistry and physics at Liverpool University, he studied voice with Austen Carnegie. He made his operatic debut in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1961, … - Wanda Jackson
Wanda Jackson (born Wanda Jean Jackson October 20, 1937, in Maud, Oklahoma) is sometimes called the first female Rock and Roll singer. She began recording (on the Decca label) in 1954. Jackson signed with Capitol in 1956. In 1960 she saw pop chart success when Capitol rereleased her 1958 rendition of "Let's Have a Party." She switched over to Country Music in the 1960s, racking up a few hits there as well. - Isham Jones
Isham Jones (31 January, 1894 - 19 October, 1956) was a United States bandleader, violinist, saxophonist, bassist and songwriter. Jones was born in Coalton, Ohio, grew up in Saginaw, Michigan, where he started his first band. In 1915 he moved to Chicago, Illinois, which remained his base through 1924. After that he toured England before reestablishing himself in New York City. - Jessica Mitford
Jessica Lucy Freeman-Mitford, known to friends and family as Decca, self-described muckraker and political radical, was the "red sheep" of the noted Mitford sisters, daughters of David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, and Sydney Bowles, daughter of MP Thomas Bowles. - George London
George London (May 30, 1920-March 24, 1985) was a Montreal-born concert and operatic bass-baritone. After extensive concertising with tenor Mario Lanza and soprano Frances Yeend as part of the Bel Canto Trio in 1947-48, London was engaged by the Vienna State Opera, with whom he scored his first major success in 1949. He made his debut with the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1951. In 1958, London performed the leading role of Wotan, … - Wolfgang Windgassen
Wolfgang Windgassen was a tenor internationally known for his performances in Wagner operas. Born in Annemasse, France, he was the son (and pupil) of a well known Heldentenor, Fritz Windgassen (who was also the teacher of Gottlob Frick). Wolfgang made his début at Pforzheim as Pinkerton in "Madama Butterfly." After army service he became a member of the Stuttgart opera company, and succeeded his father as principal tenor. - Stanley Black
Stanley Black OBE (June 14, 1913 - November 27, 2002) was an English light music conductor, arranger and pianist. He wrote and arranged many film scores and recorded prolifically for the Decca label (including "London" and "Phase 4"). Beginning with jazz collaborations with American musicians such as Coleman Hawkins and Benny Carter during the 1930s, … - Peter Hurford
Peter Hurford OBE is a British organist, born St Cecilia's day (November 22) 1930 in Minehead, Somerset. He studied both music and law at Jesus College, Cambridge, graduating with dual degrees, subsequently obtaining an enviable reputation for both musical scholarship and his organ playing. He is best known for his interpretations of Bach, having recorded the complete Bach organ works for Decca. His expertise also encompasses recordings of the Romantic literature for organ, … - Tony Martin
Tony Martin (born December 25 1912) is an American actor and traditional pop singer. Martin was born Alvin Morris in Oakland, California to Jewish immigrants from Poland. He received a soprano saxophone as a gift from his grandmother at ten. In his grammar school glee club, he became an instrumentalist and a boy soprano singer. He formed his first band, named "The Red Peppers," when he was at Oakland Technical High School, … - Rex Allen
Rex Allen was an American actor, singer, and songwriter. Born Rex Elvie Allen to Horace Allen and Faye Clark on a ranch in Mud Springs Canyon, forty miles from Willcox, Arizona, Rex Allen would grow up to become a popular entertainer known as "The Arizona Cowboy." As a boy he played guitar and sang at local functions with his fiddle-playing father until high school graduation when he toured the southwest as a rodeo rider. - Christian Ferras
Christian Ferras (June 17, 1933, Le Touquet - September 14, 1982, Paris) was a French violinist. Ferras began studying the violin with his father, who was a pupil of Marcel Chailley. He entered the Conservatoire de Nice as a student of Charles Bistesi in 1941, and in 1943 obtained the First Prize. In 1944 he went to the Conservatoire de Paris. In 1946 he won the First Prize in the both disciplines (violin and chamber music), … - Giuseppe Taddei
Giuseppe Taddei (born June 26, 1916) was an Italian baritone known for his work in Italian opera, particularly the works of Giuseppe Verdi, as well as for his work in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's and Richard Wagner's operas. Taddei was born in Genoa and studied in Rome, where he sang regularly for several years after his debut there in 1936 as the Herald in "Lohengrin". After being conscripted into the army in 1942, he returned to his singing career in 1946, … - Andy White
Andy White (born 1930, Glasgow, Scotland) is a drummer, best known for playing drums on The Beatles first single, "Love Me Do" - White was in fact on the 7" single version released in the United States. He also played drums on the "Love Me Do" B-side, "P.S. I Love You." White was a studio drummer in the 1950s and 1960s in London, recording with artists such as Billy Fury, Marlene Dietrich, Herman's Hermits, Bert Weedon and Tom Jones. - Frank Chacksfield
Frank Chacksfield, born Francis Charles Chacksfield (May 9, 1914 - June 9, 1995) was a popular conductor in the "easy listening" style. He was born in Battle, East Sussex, England and is remembered by many music lovers and record collectors for his numerous albums and appearances on radio and television during the era following the second world war. From the 1950s onwards, Chacksfield was one of Britain's most famous orchestra leaders, and his fame spread around the world. - Sammy Kaye
Sammy Kaye (born Samuel Zarnocay, Jr. on March 13, 1910 in Lakewood, Ohio -- died on June 2, 1987 in Ridgewood, New Jersey) was a famous U.S. bandleader and songwriter. He graduated from Rocky River High School in Rocky River, Ohio in 1927. He attended Ohio University in Athens, Ohio where he was a member of Theta Chi Fraternity. Kaye could play the saxophone and the clarinet, but he never featured himself as a soloist on either one. - Karl Münchinger
Karl Münchinger was a German conductor of European classical music. He helped to revive the now-ubiquitous Canon in D by Johann Pachelbel, through recording it with his Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra in 1960. (Jean-François Paillard made a rival, and also very popular, recording of the same piece at around the same time.) Münchinger is also noted for restoring baroque traditions to the interpretation of Bach's "oeuvre", … - Michael Schade
Michael Schade is a Canadian operatic tenor, who was born in Geneva and raised in Germany and Canada. Mr. Schade and his children, daughter Sophie and twins Lisbet and Nikolaus, and in 2006 baby Eva live in Oakville, Ontario near Toronto. Schade is considered to be one of the leading Mozart tenors on the stage today. He regularly performs at the Canadian Opera Company,Vienna Staatsoper, Salzburg Festival, Metropolitan Opera, Washington Opera, Opéra National de Paris, … - Walter Weller
Walter Weller (born 30 November, 1939) is an Austrian conductor. Weller was born in Vienna, Austria where he first gained renown as a prodigy violinist. His father was a violinist in the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and at the age of 17, the young Weller became a member, and by the unusually early age of 22 he had become joint concertmaster with Willi Boskovsky. He remained in this post for 11 years. - Graeme Edge
Graeme Edge (born Graeme Charles Edge, 30 March 1941, in Rocester, Staffordshire, England) is best known as the drummer and a songwriter for the Moody Blues, but has also led his own outfit from time to time, the Graeme Edge Band. The Graeme Edge Band released two albums in the 1970s. The first was "Kick Off Your Muddy Boots" in 1975 on the Threshold record label, a subsidiary of the Decca Records, catalogue umber THS 15. - Michael Chapman
Michael Chapman (born on 24 January, 1941, in Leeds, Yorkshire, England) is a guitarist and songwriter - playing jazz, acoustic guitar in the folk clubs of the 1960s, and recording over 20 albums. He first appeared on the London and Cornwall folk music circuits in 1967, alongside John Martyn and Roy Harper. His first album was "Rainmaker" in 1969 on the Harvest Records label, and he played the folk and 'progressive' circuits during the festivals of the early 1970s, … - Alan Opie
Alan Opie (born 22 March 1945 in Redruth, Cornwall, UK) is a Cornish baritone, primarily known as an opera singer. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the London Opera Centre before joining the Sadler's Wells Opera (now the English National Opera, ENO). He became a Principal Baritone there while still a student. Opie has also sung with the other major UK opera companies Scottish Opera, Opera North, Glyndebourne Festival Opera and the Royal Opera House, … - Cliff Bruner
Cliff Bruner (April 25, 1915 - August 25, 2000) was a fiddler and bandleader of the western swing era of the 1930s. Bruner's music combined elements of traditional string band music, improvisation, blues, folk, and popular melodies of the times. Bruner was born in Texas, and spent most of his childhood near Houston. He learned to play fiddle, and traveled with medicine shows to begin his musical career. Milton Brown's Musical Brownies drafted Bruner in 1935. - Billy Cotton
William Edward Cotton (May 6, 1899 - March 25, 1969), better known as Billy Cotton, was a British band leader and entertainer, one of the few whose orchestra survived the dance band era. Today, he is mainly remembered as a 1950s and 1960s radio and television personality, although his musical talent emerged as early as the 1920s. In his younger years Billy Cotton was also an amateur footballer, … - Paul Cohen
Paul Cohen was an American country music producer. Cohen first entered the record business with Columbia in the late 1920s, but in 1934 joined Decca’s newly formed American operation, organized by two brothers, Jack and Dave Kapp—old Chicago friends of his. Cohen moved to Cincinnati to become Decca’s midwestern branch manager in 1935; in this role he was responsible for scouting and signing new talent in addition to marketing records. - Floyd Tillman
Floyd Tillman country musician who in the 1930s-40s helped create the western swing and honky tonk styles of music. Tillman was inducted into the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame in 1970 and the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1984. Born in Ryan, Oklahoma December 8th, 1914 and died in Bacliff, Texas August 22nd, 2003. Tillman grew up in the cotton-mill town of Post, Texas as a sharecropper's son. One of his early jobs was with Western Union as a telegraph operator. - Barry Ryan
Barry Ryan (born Barry Sapherson, 24 October 1948, in Leeds, Yorkshire) is an English pop singer. The son of pop singer Marion Ryan and Lloyd Sapherson, Barry and his twin brother Paul began to perform at the age of 15. In 1965 they signed a contract with Decca and brought out singles such as "Don't Bring Me Your Heartaches" (1965), "Have Pity on the Boy" (1966), and "Missy Missy" (1966). - Kokomo Arnold
Kokomo Arnold (15 February 1901-8 November 1968) was an American blues musician. Born James Arnold in Lovejoy's Station, Georgia, Arnold received his nickname in 1934 after releasing "Old Original Kokomo Blues" for the Decca label; it was a cover of the Scrapper Blackwell blues song about the Kokomo brand of coffee. A left-handed slide-guitarist, his intense slide style of playing and rapid-fire vocal style set him apart from his contemporaries. - Berthold Goldschmidt
Berthold Goldschmidt (b. Hamburg, January 18, 1903; d. London, October 17, 1996) was a German composer who spent most of his life in England. The suppression of his work by Nazi Germany, as well as the disdain with which many Modernist critics elsewhere dismissed his "anachronistic" lyricism, stranded the composer in the wilderness for many years before he was given a revival in his final decade. - Jack Kapp
Jack Kapp was a record company executive with Brunswick Records who became the head of the American branch of Decca Records. After his death, his brother Dave Kapp took over American Decca. Dave Kapp later founded Kapp Records based in New York. - Rebecca Evans
Rebecca Evans is a Welsh soprano from the village of Pontrhydyfen near Neath. She studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and has performed regularly at the Welsh National Opera; the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich. - Ronnie Self
Ronnie Self (July 5 1938 - August 28 1981) was a rockabilly singer and songwriter. His solo career was unsuccessful, despite being signed to contracts with Columbia and then Decca from the late 1950s through the early 1960s, he failed to chart a single song. However, Brenda Lee's cover of his song "I'm Sorry" became a major pop classic. - Mantovani
Annunzio Paolo Mantovani (November 15, 1905 - March 29, 1980) was a popular conductor and entertainer in the "light orchestra" style. Mantovani is probably more associated with the light orchestra genre than any other person. He was born in Venice, Italy and his father was the concertmaster of the La Scala orchestra under Arturo Toscanini. His family moved to England in 1912, where he studied at Trinity College of Music in London. - Victoria Spivey
Victoria Spivey (1906-1976) was an American blues singer. She was born October 15, 1906, the daughter of Grant and Addie (Smith) Spivey. Her father was a part-time musician and a flag-man for the railroad; her mother was a nurse. Her sister, Addie "Sweet Pease" Spivey was also a singer and musician who recorded for several major labels between 1929 and 1937. Victoria Spivey's first professional experience was in a family string band led by her father in Houston, Texas. - Bill Gaither
Bill Gaither (April 21, 1910 or 1905 or 1908 in Belmont, KY - 1956 1970), sometimes known as "Little Bill" Gaither or Leroy's Buddy, was a blues guitarist and singer. Gaither recorded hundred of songs for labels such as Decca, Arhoolie and OKeh. One of his most famous blues songs was "Champ Joe Louis", recorded on June 23, 1938, the day after Louis won his rematch against Max Schmeling. - Dick Katz
Dick Katz was born Otto Gustav Wilhelm Katz on July 19 1916 in Hanover Germany. (He was called 'Dick' early in his youth as he was slightly chubby and upon naturalization he took the name 'Richard'). He was the son of Eugen Katz, a Professor of Economy and Gertrud Katz (nee Damann). He came to England via Holland at the age of 24 where he worked as an electrical engineer, playing in clubs in the evening. He spent a great deal of time during the War working for Decca.
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