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RCA Camden

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RCA Camden was a budget record label of RCA Victor , originally created in 1953 to reissue recordings from earlier 78rpm releases. The label was named "Camden", after Camden, New Jersey where the offices, factories and studios of RCA Victor and its predecessor, the Victor Talking Machine Company had been located since 1901.

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21-720: RCA Victor originally created the Camden label to reissue select older 78rpm Red Seal recordings of classical symphonic music on LP records. In the mid 1950s, RCA Camden began releasing some rhythm & blues and, later, pop, country and rock and roll recordings. For example, in 1956, Camden issued an album of the very first recordings made by Little Richard for RCA Victor in 1951 and 1952, expanded with four tracks by Buck Ram and his Rock n' Ram Orchestra. In 1958, Camden released some albums in RCA Victor's new Living Stereo format and subsequently issued popular stereo recordings by

42-587: The Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra , The Living Strings and Living Voices . Camden also produced a "Designed for Dancing" series, with titles by Xavier Cugat and Perez Prado , and others. Beginning in the late 1950s, the RCA Camden label was headed by long-time RCA Victor record producer Ethel Gabriel . Gabriel was soon earning producer credits, Which she continued to do for the rest of her career at RCA Victor. In 1959, Gabriel began

63-601: The Recording Industry Association of America . Similar to its predecessor Elvis Sings Flaming Star , Let's Be Friends collects mostly unreleased songs recorded for Presley film soundtracks . Given the recent work of the revitalized Presley, in the past, his manager Colonel Tom Parker might have objected to this kind of market saturation, but under the terms of Presley's agreement with RCA, budget albums brought extra cash outside of contract stipulations. Two non-movie outtakes appeared from

84-630: The Victor Talking Machine Company , in 1903. Led by the great Italian tenor Enrico Caruso , then just at the beginning of his worldwide fame, Victor Red Seal records changed the public's valuation of recorded music. Caruso's first records, made by the Gramophone Company in Milan, Italy in 1902, earned prestige as well as profits for the company and its affiliates. Five of Caruso's Milan records were issued by Victor on

105-659: The 1940s, recorded for RCA Victor and some of its recordings were reissued on Camden LPs under the name "Sutton Symphony Orchestra," not to be confused with a British orchestra with the same name. In 1960, RCA Victor launched the RCA Victrola budget label to reissue lower priced classical and operatic recordings drawn from the Red Seal catalog. With a few exceptions, RCA Camden ceased reissuing former Red Seal titles and began offering many more albums by RCA Victor's pop and country music artists. In Canada, in addition to handling

126-739: The Delaware River from RCA Victor's headquarters in Camden. Here is a partial listing of the real orchestras and their pseudonyms: The RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra was assembled for recording sessions mostly during the 1940s and '50s; It primarily consisted of members from the NBC Symphony Orchestra , the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra . The New York City Symphony Orchestra, created by Leopold Stokowski in

147-488: The RCA Camden label. RCA Victor Red Seal RCA Red Seal is a classical music label whose origin dates to 1902 and is currently owned by Sony Music Entertainment . The first "Gramophone Record Red Seal" discs were issued in 1901. Later in 1902 the practice was adopted by the home office in the United Kingdom , which preferred to refer to the records as "Red Labels", and by its United States affiliate,

168-609: The RCA Victor label. The inclusion of these hit singles resulted in both Camden albums - which otherwise featured previously released and generally undistinguished movie and studio tracks - making the US charts. In 1975, RCA leased the reissue rights of several different Camden albums, including Presley's, to Pickwick Records , which subsequently reissued several of them under its own branding. After Presley's unexpected death in August, 1977, demand for his recordings skyrocketed; RCA soon terminated

189-769: The Red Seal label in the United States in March, 1903 and soon other famous opera stars and classical instrumentalists were attracted to the studios of both Victor and the Gramophone Company, consolidating the positions of these firms as the market leaders in the field of serious music by famous artists. The first Red Seal discs recorded by Victor in the United States were of the Australian contralto Ada Crossley on April 30, 1903. In 1950, RCA Victor began issuing vinyl LPs (originally introduced by Columbia Records in 1948), because they were losing artists and sales due to

210-563: The U.S. releases on the label for the Canadian market, the RCA Camden imprint was also used to issue both current and compilation albums by RCA Victor Canada's country Artists. Country music sold extremely well in Canada and RCA Camden issued a number of albums unique to Canada that were never released in the United States. From 1968 to 1975, RCA Camden issued a series of compilation albums featuring recordings by Elvis Presley , who recorded for

231-554: The Way I Am , Mine , Just Because I'm a Woman (not to be confused with Parton's 1968 debut RCA Victor solo album of the same name), and I Wish I Felt This Way at Home were all issued between 1972 and 1976, and were largely made up of lesser known material Parton had recorded for RCA Victor during the late 1960s and early '70s. As with the Presley titles, RCA also leased the reissue rights to Parton's Camden albums to Pickwick, which reissued

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252-523: The albums on their own label during the late 1970s. The RCA Camden label continued well into the compact disc era, and was still active in the UK, Canada, Australia and several other countries until at least the early 2000s. Beginning in the late 1980s, RCA/BMG of Canada reissued several Camden albums on CD in the "RCA Camden Classics" series. Sony Music Entertainment , the current owner of the RCA Victor archives, continues to reissue recordings originally issued on

273-562: The company's resistance to adopting the new format. Let%27s Be Friends Let's Be Friends is a compilation album by American singer and musician Elvis Presley , released by RCA Records CAS 2408, in April 1970. It is the second Presley budget album to appear on the low-priced RCA Camden label. It peaked at number 105 on the Billboard 200 album chart. It was certified Gold on June 15, 1999 and Platinum on January 6, 2004 by

294-506: The entire thing.” Ethel Gabriel, a Rare Woman in the Record World, Dies at 99 RCA Victor originally reissued its older 78rpm Red Seal classical symphonic recordings on the Camden label using the actual names of the symphony orchestras involved; but soon, to avoid competing with recent full-priced recordings by the same orchestras, a series of pseudonyms were used, drawn primarily from the names of hotels in nearby Philadelphia, across

315-456: The film Charro! , but cut from the picture. "Almost" was one of only two tracks from The Trouble with Girls to see release in Presley's lifetime. Three tracks, "Let's Be Friends", "Change of Habit", and "Have a Happy", originated from Presley's then-current film Change of Habit , thus casting the album in the additional role as soundtrack LP for the film (two additional tracks from the movie, " Rubberneckin' " and "Let Us Pray", are omitted,

336-402: The former being released on a single in 1969 and the latter held until the 1971 budget collection You'll Never Walk Alone ). Like all Presley releases on the budget RCA Camden label, this album has a very short running time, too short for a full-priced album in the 1970s. In 1975, it was re-issued by Pickwick Records with the original RCA Camden catalog #CAS 2408 and with a black border around

357-565: The main RCA Victor label. These albums primarily consisted of repackagings of some of Presley's less popular 1960s-era movie soundtrack recordings; some albums, such as Elvis Sings Flaming Star also featured previously unreleased material, while another album, Let's Be Friends featured most of the soundtrack to Presley's final scripted film, Change of Habit (1969). Two later compilations, Burning Love and Hits from His Movies, Volume 2 and Separate Ways actually featured then-current chart hits for Presley, originally issued as singles on

378-460: The popular “Living Strings” series of easy-listening albums, consisting of orchestral renditions of pop and classical tunes (“Living Strings Play Music of the Sea,” “Living Strings Play Music for Romance” and many more), most of which were released on the Camden label. The line soon branched out into “Living Voices,” “Living Guitars” and other subsets and became a big profit-generator for RCA Victor — which

399-458: The reissue agreement with Pickwick primarily to regain the rights to the Pickwick leased Presley titles, and began reissuing and repackaging several of them. During the early- to mid-1970s, as the popularity of RCA country artist Dolly Parton , rapidly grew, RCA reissued much of her earlier material in a series of compilations on the Camden label to capitalize on her more recent success. Just

420-532: The winter of 1969 sessions at American Sound Studio in Memphis , " I'll Be There " and "If I'm a Fool (For Loving You)". "Mama" was sung in the film Girls! Girls! Girls! by The Amigos and Presley's version first appeared on this album, with an alternate, abridged version included on the compact disc Elvis Double Features: Kid Galahad/Girls! Girls! Girls! . "Let's Forget About the Stars" had been recorded for

441-464: Was not, Ms. Gabriel later said, what the boss expected when he put her in charge of Camden, a struggling label at the time. New York Times, "Ethel Gabriel, a Rare Woman in the Record World, Dies at 99" Neil Genzlinger, April 9, 2021. “I’m sure he thought it was a way to get rid of me,” she told The Express-Times of Easton, Pa., in 1992 (too diplomatic to name the boss). “Well, I made a multimillion-dollar line out of it, conceived, programmed and produced

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