The Black Record Label That Introduced the Beatles to America – Smithsonian

Vivian Carter (center) and her husband, Jimmy Bracken (far right), launched Vee Jay Records in 1953. Photo by Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images

In February 1963, Dick Biondi, a popular nighttime disc jockey (DJ) at WLS-AM in Chicago, dropped the needle on Please Please Me, becoming the first person to play the Beatles on American radio. Black with rainbow trim, the label on the record misspelled the bands name as the Beattles. The record companys nameVee Jay, the initials of co-founders Vivian Carter and Jimmy Bracken, a married Black couple whod set up shop on Chicagos South Side in the 1950sappeared up top.

At the time, the Beatles were enjoying a surge of popularity in Britain but remained virtually unknown in the United States. Vee Jay took a chance on the Liverpool quartet, signing them after Capitol Records, the American subsidiary of the Beatles British label, EMI Records, declined to do so. (British artists fared poorly in the U.S.or so the company believed.) Though Capitol eventually stepped forward to claim the Beatles, just asBeatlemania was poised to sweep America in late 1963, Vee Jay deserves credit for introducing the band to the U.S.

The most successful Black-run record company before Motown in Detroit, Vee Jay invited the Beatles to share an English interpretation of the rhythm-and-blues (R&B) music then popular across the Atlantic. Rock critic Dave Marsh, in his 2007 book The Beatles Second Album, notes that the independent record company made exactly the kind of American pop R&B records that the group admired, unlike Capitol, which didnt understand the bands sound. Still, a key question posed by Marsh remains: [C]ould the Beatles have been as profitable, prolific and as world-changing had they remained on Bracken and Carters mom-and-pop label?

In 1953four years before 16-year-old John Lennon and 15-year-old Paul McCartneymet at achurch garden party in LiverpoolCarter, a charismatic radio personality who hosted a popular gospel show in her hometown of Gary, Indiana, married Bracken, a budding entrepreneur whod recently helped her open Vivians Record Shop in the citys downtown. The couples ambitions were modest: start a record company to stock the store with the music radio listeners were requesting. They borrowed $500 from a pawnbroker to record the labels first artist: the Spaniels, a local doo-wop group.

[Carter] had the X factor, says Billy Shelton, a Gary native who graduated from the same high school as Carter and whose teen vocal group later morphed into the Spaniels. (Shelton left before the band found fame, unsuccessfully auditioning for Vee Jay with another group, the Three Bees, before officially joining the Spaniels in the 1980s.) She had the King Midas touch. Anything she did turned [into] gold.

Vee Jays first release, the Spaniels Baby Its You, debuted in 1953 at number ten on Billboards R&B chart. Goodnite, Sweetheart, Goodnite, released in 1954, reached number fivemuch to Sheltons surprise. I didnt think they would make it. I didnt think their arrangements and music was all that great, he says. What I failed to take into account was Vivian Carter was behind it. And Vee Jay Records was behind it. And Ewart Abnerthen the general manager of Vee Jaywas behind it.

Carter and Bracken hired Abner, who would later serve as president of Motown, to run Vee Jay in 1954. Trained as an accountant, hed been unable to find work at any of Chicagos accounting firms due to racial discrimination. Instead, he started his career as a bookkeeper at a Chicago record-pressing plant in 1949. The plants owners recognized Abners talent and recruited him to help out with their label, Chance Records, which specialized in blues, doo-wop, jazz and gospel, and at their record distribution company. After Chance folded, Abner moved on to Vee Jay. He was later appointed president of the label.

Abner was a brilliant man. Brilliant, says Gwen McDaniels, who worked for Abner at Vee Jay in the 1960s. He was unreal. To see him in action was unbelievable. In the 1997 PBS documentary Record Row, Vee Jay artist Jerry Butler described the traits that helped Abner thrive in the business: Not only was he a genius in terms of marketing and merchandising. Ewart Abner was one of those guys who could stay up for three or four days at a time and just entertain people and hypnotize em and draw them into his spirit. The executive also studied how independent white labels like Chess and Atlantic Records found success with Black R&B acts. He had no doubt that Vee Jay could do the same.

A World War II veteran, Abner had joined other Black servicemen protesting segregation on and around the Tuskegee Air Force base. The experience forged his determination to resist the constraints of an American music industry that expected record companies to produce Black music exclusively for Black radio and Black consumers. I dont understand and I dont accept limitations, certainly not based on my color. What does that have to do with anything? Abner said in a 1995 interview for the Smithsonian Institutions Black Radio: Telling It Like It Was series. Thats somebody elses idea of restrictions and limitations, not mine.

As Abners son Tony, a record executive in Los Angeles, explains, [My father] felt that the music business allowed a Black person ... to build financial independence and a power base to reach for some of those higher goals.

At Vee Jay, Abner tapped the robust, national network of Black DJs, distributors and retailers that hed established at Chance. Crucially, he knew how to get Vee Jays records on the radio. In the labels early days, the music industry practice later known as payolapaying DJs to play your recordswas not only legal but common.

My dad was well known in the business and well liked because whenever you saw him, it was good news, says Tony. He came ready to entertain you and wine and dine you and make sure you had a memorable time while he was around. And youd walk away with some money in your pocket.

Money alone didnt win airplay. DJs had reputations to maintain, and the music they played had to be good. Carters younger brother Calvin, the fourth member of Vee Jays core team, took charge of this area, developing the labels artists and producing its records. He was good at picking out talent, says Shelton. He could hear something and say, Yeah, that will sell. Carter also innovated in the studio. I recall The Shoop Shoop Song by Betty Everett, said Butler in Record Row. People often wondered how in the world did he get that sound out of the bass drum. And it wasnt the bass drum, it was people stomping on telephone books.

Over Vee Jays 13-year run, Carter built a roster that left a lasting impact on every genre of American music. After opening its doors on Record Row, a 12-block stretch of South Michigan Avenue, the label signedamong othersblues musicians Jimmy Reed and John Lee Hooker; gospel group the Staple Singers; and Jerry Butler and the Impressions, who recorded what is often considered the first soul record.

As major labels like RCA Victor and Decca realizedthe universal appeal of Black music, some took the exploitative step of enlisting white artists to record copies of R&B songs. Because it was a white artist, they could get it played on white radio and thus get it exposed to the larger universe, which was the general market, Abner said in Black Radio. Sometimes, the windfall for these labels was orders of magnitude higher than what the original Black artists reaped. For example, while Butler was the first vocalist to record Moon River in 1961, it was Andy Williams version that became the standard. Everyone in my office was really upset about that, says McDaniels, describing the reaction of Vee Jays largely African American staff.

Timothy Dowd, a sociologist at Emory University who has written on the rise of R&B music in America, says that major labels adopted the cover strategy to undercut the rising success of independent labels. (These smaller companies lacked the in-house manufacturing plants, distribution networks and large promotional budgets of the multinational conglomerates but nevertheless produced songs that won favor among consumers.) It could almost be like retribution, Dowd says. Oh, youre having a hit with this? Lets put our own version out there. Still, some artistslike Ray Charles, who was represented by the independent Atlantic Recordsrendered this strategy pointless. There was no cover that could beat him, Dowd adds.

Vee Jay witnessed the turning tide firsthand. Gene Chandlers Duke of Earl, a more traditional doo-wop number, became the labels first number one record in February 1962. As Vee Jay found greater success, Abner decided to confront the major labels on their own turf. I can be general market just like they are general market, he said in 1995. Only, Ill do it differently. Instead of covering some white artists, Ill sign some white artists of my own. By November 1961, white artists comprised 30 percent of Vee Jays roster. If we want to stay in business, Abner told Ebony magazine, weve got to stop thinking of ourselves as just a Negro company.

The Four Seasons, an Italian American vocal group from New Jersey, earned Vee Jay the top slot on the Billboard chart twice in 1962. That same year, Vee Jay obtained from EMI the U.S. distribution rights for Frank Ifield, a British Australian performer whose I Remember You reached number five on the charts. Ifields success belied Capitol Records pronouncement that British acts wouldnt sell in the U.S. But Capitol continued to pass on the Beatles.

An oft-cited account of how Vee Jay obtained the Beatles distribution rights suggests the quartet was part of the Ifield dealan extra that EMI threw in. (Calvin Carter recalled it this way.) But Mark Lewisohn, an expert on the Beatles recording history, disputes this narrative. It had nothing to do with Frank Ifield, he says, adding that the January 10, 1963, contract only mentions the Beatles. Abners version of events, shared in 1995, supports Lewisohns:

I had a very astute lawyer in New York named Paul Marshall. Called me on the phone and said, Ab, this group, theyre going to be bigger than bubble gum. Says, Theyre already happening in Liverpool and in England. Capitols got a right to them because Capitol is owned by EMI. Capitol doesnt want to exercise their right. We can get em. I said, Lets get em!

Just over a page long, the contract also granted Vee Jay right of first refusal on American distribution of Beatles records for the next five years. Had things gone Vee Jays way, said Beatles historian Bruce Spizer in 2017, Sergeant Pepper would have been released [by the label].

Please Please Me made a muted American debut. Dick Biondi and WLS in Chicago played the record enough for it to rank on the stations own chart of most played songs, but it failed to break through elsewhere. Vee Jays next Beatles release, From Me to You, received airplay from Biondi, now based in Los Angeles, but the single also failed to chart.

At the time, Louise Harrison Caldwell, sister of Beatles guitarist George Harrison, lived in southern Illinois. According to her memoir, upon witnessing the Beatles poor performance with Vee Jay, she advised the bands manager, Brian Epstein, that without the financial and influential backing of one of the major companies, our little band might as well be nowhere men! (A database compiled by Dowd shows that by the end of 1963, the Four Seasons had charted ten times on Vee Jay, bringing the labels total number of Billboard hits since its inception to 56.)

Vee Jays rapid growth in the early 1960s sparked dissent among the companys leaders. Rumors circulated about Abner using Vee Jay funds to pay off gambling debts; the music executive, in the 1995 interview, maintained that the dispute hinged on how big to get [and] whether to go into debt to get any bigger. ... We disagreed, so I left the company in 1963. Abner added, I expanded beyond our ability to handle, ... built up a staff and a force, which required that we have a certain kind of product and needed capital.

Abner departed Vee Jay just as it was realizing its greatest financial success. The company issued the first Beatles album in the U.S., Introducing The Beatles, on January 10, 1964ten days before Capitol Records, which had by then filed a lawsuit asserting distribution rights for the band, released a separate album of mostly new songs titled Meet the Beatles! Both albums raced to the top of the charts, with Capitols claiming the top spot for 11 weeks, leaving Vee Jay at number two for nine weeks. Full-fledged Beatlemania had finally hit America.

Introducing... The Beatles was effectively the American release of the bands first album, Please Please Me, minus the title track and Ask Me Why, songs that had flopped as the two sides of the Beatles first U.S. single. That left the album with 12 tracks, half of which were covers of songs by Black artists. (The albums closer, Twist and Shout, had been a hit for the Isley Brothers the year before.) Vee Jay also released Twist and Shout as a single on its subsidiary label, scoring a number two hit with the song in 1964. For the B-side of the single, the label selected Theres a Place, which Lennon acknowledged in a 1980 interview was my attempt at a sort of Motown, Black thing.

In April 1963, EMI sent the master recordings for the album to Vee Jay, which had 30 days to exercise its right of first refusal.But the company didnt immediately move forward with the release, in part because the Beatles werent a priority but also because of cash flow problems. EMIs U.S. representative, Transglobal, unilaterally terminated Vee Jays licensing contract in August 1963, after plans to print 6,000 copies of Introducing The Beatles stalled and the company failed to pay royalties to either Ifield or the Beatles. In a telegram to the label, Transglobal demanded that Vee Jay immediately cease manufacture and distribution of any and all records containing performances of Frank Ifield or The Beattles [sic]. As far as EMI and Capitol were concerned, this note reverted American distribution rights to Capitol and provided the legal basis for Capitol to sue the independent label in January 1964, when Vee Jay rushed out over 80,000 copies of its album to capitalize on Beatlemania.

Vee Jay immediately countersued, arguing that its distribution agreement was still in force. But a procedural blunder by the labels lawyer led a court to temporarily ban Vee Jay from issuing Beatles records, as Spizer wrote for Goldmine magazine in 2010. Over the next several months, the Beatles historian added, the injunction would be lifted and reinstated over and over again, thus undermining the companys ability to get its Beatles records into the stores.

In April, the parties reached a court settlement that allowed Vee Jay to continue issuing records from the 16 master recordings already in its possession through October 1964; after this date, full American distribution rights reverted to Capitol.

Vee Jay realized unprecedented profits in 1964, putting out records by the most popular band in the world. Though the label didnt allow the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) to audit its books during the 1960s, Spizer later obtained the sales data from Vee Jays comptroller, leading to the 2014 certification of Introducing... the Beatlesand three other Beatles singles issued in 1964 as platinum (over a million units sold).

At the peak of Vee Jays success, in August 1964, the labels new president, Randy Wood, met the Beatles backstage at the Hollywood Bowl and presented them with the companys own version of the RIAA gold records (over 500,000 units sold). Marsh writes, One wonders whether the Beatles were struck by a Black man being the president of their previous record label.

From these heights, Vee Jay made a rapid descent into ruin. In 1965, the Brackens called Abner back in a desperate bid to save the company. Vee Jay had by then moved to Los Angeles, where it watched its gains evaporate from mismanagement. But it was too late. The label filed for bankruptcy in 1966. Abner joined Motown as an advisor to founder Berry Gordy and later as the companys president. Carter returned to Gary to DJ, while her brother continued producing. Bracken launched an unsuccessful label, and he and Carter got divorced.

How big could Vee Jay have become if it had been better positioned financially to capitalize on the Beatles popularity? And how exactly did Vee Jay contribute to the Beatles success?

The popular story of how Beatlemania arose in America revolves around a white teenager in Washington, D.C.who asked local DJ Carroll James to play the bands I Want to Hold Your Hand on the radio in December 1963. He did, and listeners went wild. Vee Jays role in the Beatles ascent to superstardom is lesser known. But the fact remains that the Beatles first album in America was released by a Black-run label and consisted of six covers of songs by Black artists. Black radio and Black disc jockeys are more responsible for todays music industry than any single factor, said Abnerin 1995. Without [them], there wouldnt have been, in our view, rock and roll.

Vee Jay laid the groundwork for the Beatles, and it was Abner who literally handed Biondi the Beatles disc in February 1963. As the DJ told NPR in 2013, [Abner] came up, and he was bringing his latest releases. And he handed me one, and he said, Dick, listen to this. This is a group from England. You might like it. I listened and I played it that night, and it was on.

Recommended Videos

Original post:

The Black Record Label That Introduced the Beatles to America - Smithsonian