Polydor was founded over 100 years ago in Germany, in 1913. Like most labels at this time, they were involved with the full recording process. They were also connected to the Polyphon label, which had existed for a little longer and is a type of disc player invented in Leipzig, Germany.
Understandably, the world wars caused some friction and separation between British and German record company partnership development, but in 1954 the company started up a subsidiary in London called ‘Polydor Records Ltd.’ Many releases (mostly classical at this time) within Germany were under the name ‘Deutsche Grammophon’ but the name Polydor was retained for exports, for ease of recognition/reading by non-German speakers.
One of Polydor’s earliest signings was of ‘Tony Sheridan and The Beat Brothers.’ Tony was one of the key early collaborators for The Beatles – ‘The Beat Brothers’ being The Beatles!
While it hasn’t been hugely popular as a label in the USA, in the UK Polydor has had a very successful run, housing names such as The Who and Slade, and more recently artists such as Ellie Goulding and Kaiser Chiefs.
Polydor suffered a slump in the early 1990s, when they were shifted by their parent company ‘PolyGram’ (The Grammophon-Philips Group) to be a branch underneath the ‘PolyGram Label Group.’ This umbrella included other smaller record labels such as Island Records and Verve Records. Of all of these, Island picked itself up the best in the mid 90s and therefore absorbed many of the others.
Click here to read our post about Island Records.
Click here to read our post about Island Records.
Island records was founded in Jamaica in 1959 and was sold to Polydor in 1989. Some of their earlier signings included Bob Marley and King Crimson.
At the same time as Island records absorbed many of the other small labels, Polydor joined forces with an old jazz label who went by the name of Atlas Records. They were briefly called Polydor/Atlas, but in 1995 they went back to being called Polydor Records. We might be biased, but we think they had a pretty cool name.
