ATCO
American; a
subsidiary of Atlantic. Atco
was originally intended to be called 'Atlas', as reported in
'Billboard' of the 23rd of July 1955. According to the article it was
to feature Pop and R&B, and an early release would be one by Joe 'Mr. Piano'
Henderson, licensed from Polygon Records of the UK. Three weeks later
'BB' of the 13th of August said that a last-minute name change had been necessary,
as there already was an Atlas label in existence; the new label, which
was to be launched that week, would instead be known as Atco. The Pop /
R&B slant was confirmed, but Atco would be handled by different distributors
to those which handled Atlantic. Atco enjoyed early success in the R'n'B
Charts, and the following year 'BB' of the 23rd of June 1956 told its
readers that Atlantic's Herb Abramson had taken over A&R duties and sales
direction for the label as part of an attempt to make it as big as its
parent.
The recruitment of Bobby Darin ('BB', 24th
June 1957) and his placement with Atco gave the label a hefty boost via a string
of hit singles; The Coasters provided further impetus by providing
several entries to the mainstream Hot 100. 'BB' of the 9th of June 1958
noted that that group's 'Yakety Yak' had sold four hundred thousand copies
over the course of several weeks and that Darin's 'Splish Splash' was
'taking off'. Towards the end of that year there came a change of management,
as Abramson sold his remaining interest in Atlantic and left to start his own
label, Triumph ('BB', 15th December). From that point Atco appears to have
been overseen by Atlantic's management team of Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegun, Jerry
Wexler and Miriam Bienstock. The change doesn't seem to have had any adverse effects on the label's fortunes, and
by the summer of 1959 it was really making an impact: 'BB' of the 8th of
July observed that it had five singles in the
current Hot 100 and that another had just slipped
out. Perhaps as a result, the decision was taken to develop Atco as an album label rather than
a mainly singles one ('BB', 10th August 1959).
Atco continued offering a mixture of R'n'B
and Pop into the '60s. The Pop tended to be of a MOR kind, often licensed
from abroad: Nina & Frederik appeared on the label, as did Bent Fabric &
His Piano, and - more successfully - Acker Bilk. 'BB' of the 29th of
December 1962 was able to say that Bilk's 'Stranger On The Shore', a big hit in
Britain on Columbia, was approaching the one million sales mark. The
second half of the decade found the Pop turning to Rock, with the likes of
Vanilla Fudge and Buffalo Springfield featuring on Atco. A long-term
licensing deal between Atlantic and UK Polydor ('BB', 26th March
1966) led to product heading in both directions; as a result records
by The Bee Gees, Cream and Derek & The Dominos began to surface on Atco in
the States, alongside less obvious items such as 'Leap Up And Down (Wave Your
Knickers In The Air)' by St. Cecilia. Other licensing deals saw records
such as The Troggs' 'Wild Thing' and 'Keep On Running' by The Spencer Davis
Group seeing the light of day on Atco. The pattern continued into the
1970s and beyond, with other names familiar to British buyers coming out
on the label alongside home-grown American product: they included Juicy
Lucy, Roxy Music, Genesis, Boney M, and Gary Numan. As a subsidiary of
Atlantic, Atco followed its parent Atlantic everywhere, becoming in
turn part of Warner-Seven Arts, Kinney, WEA and lastly Time Warner; for
details see the Atlantic page. It survived
until 1991, and was revived in 2006.
Atco was far less well-known in Britain than it
was in the States. Its products were initially licensed to Decca in
the UK, together with those of Atlantic, and they appeared on the London
label alongside those of its parent company, with a production credit (1) - on
the example shown the company's name is misspelled as 'Acto'. When Decca
gave Atlantic its own identity, in July 1964, Atco material was issued on the
Atlantic label rather than on its own. It made its first
appearance under its own name in Britain in April 1969, at which
point Atlantic was licensed to Polydor (q.v.), and disappeared in early
1971; during that time it issued around a couple of
dozen singles. Numbering was initially in the 226-000s, but from
early 1970 Atco and Atlantic singles shared a common 2091-000 series. Manufacture and distribution
were by Polydor, which resulted in three-pronged dinking perforations (2) or large
spindle holes with three-armed 'spiders' (3). A couple of the singles got into the Top Fifty - Otis Redding's 'Love Man'
b/w 'That's How Strong My Love Is' (226-001; 6/69) reached No.43, while Lulu's
'Oh Me, Oh My' (226-008; 11/69) stalled at No.47 - but there were no
big hits; several earlier singles which had been on
Atco in the States were hits here on Atlantic, ones by Bobby
Darin and Sonny & Cher being cases in point. 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida' by Iron
Butterfly (2091-024; 7/70) appears to have been cancelled but there are a few
copies in existence - if you see one,
grab it. The Atco label surfaced again in 1980 as part of the
WEA group, with a new design; catalogue numbers, this time in the K-10000s, were
again shared with Atlantic.
Copyright 2007 Robert Lyons.