At the end of Part 2 I showed that the cover branding arrived at by Columbia, around the spring of 1957, looked like this:
This very attractive branding was usually placed at the top right corner of the album cover. By the time stereophonic LPs were introduced by Columbia in September 1958, the arrangement had been modified slightly, with the "LP" component moved up and to the right of the Eye:
...a modification which enabled the trademarks to be displayed flush with the "stereo" indicator at the top of the cover:
(For monaural releases with a stereo counterpart, the trademarks were displayed at the bottom of the cover.)
This basic setup remained unchanged until about the summer of 1960, at which point, the trademarks lost their top-of-the-cover status on stereo issues, and they were reduced markedly in size:
The next major change to the trademarks occurred in the summer of 1961 - the "Lp" portion, presumably by then considered redundant, was dropped, and the Eye transformed into its final form with three concentric rings:
This branding lasted only a few months. By the end of 1961, new albums were featuring this greatly simplified configuration in the upper left part of the cover:
This basic design remained in use, with minor changes in typography and placement, through the late 1970s on Masterworks releases (the entire classical division of Columbia was rebranded "CBS Masterworks" around 1980), and continues in use to this day for Sony's Columbia popular releases. (Incidentally, ML 5746, a recital of French piano music by André Previn, was one of the last releases to be issued with the old "6-eyes" label - in the summer of 1962.)
So why did Columbia, having found a seemingly satisfactory formula for displaying its trademarks on album covers from 1957-60, feel the need for another change? A possible answer is hinted at in an article in the August 29, 1960, issue of Billboard Magazine headlined "Columbia, Philips in New Long-Term Pact Talks." It seems that Columbia had become dissatisfied with having Philips issue its product in Europe, and wanted its own label presence there, as RCA and Capitol already had. Since the Columbia name could not be used there, as EMI owned it, the proposed new label was to be known as "CBS Records." (Philips, for its part, did not relish the idea of giving up popular American product on its label, which is why Philips purchased Mercury Records in 1962.) My guess is that Columbia wanted to update its Eye trademark to fit a new international image. Certainly by the time CBS Records was launched in Europe in 1962, the Eye logo had assumed its new look and was being used to identify the new label.
Thanks, Merci ! for these covers series !!!
ReplyDeleteDo you know the year of the earliest issues on CBS in the US? I remember a number of LPs conducted by Boulez, and Carlos Chavez conducting his own works. The branding was similar to the European product. Did they have a transition in mind for America? Eventually they abandoned this line, and the records they wanted to keep in the catalog became Columbia Masterworks, or in some cases Odyssey.
ReplyDeleteThe CBS set with Chavez conducting his six symphonies dates from 1967, according to worldcat.org. It has an eight digit catalog number without a prefix (with spaces, in the grouping xx xx xxxx), similar to those of Odyssey issues of the same time.
DeleteI remember reading somewhere, when I was poring through the Billboard issues, that Columbia Records in the US did in fact consider renaming itself "CBS Records" - for pops as well as classical - but unfortunately I failed to make a note of the date of the article! It was in '63 or '64, but nothing, obviously, came of it at that time.
The first US CBS issue appears to have been of Copland conducting "Music for a Great City" and "Statements" (32 11 0001 mono/32 11 0002 stereo). It was reviewed in the Aug. 27, 1966, issue of Billboard. In the same issue, a 2-page ad for Epic's new budget line Crossroads appears, and an article elsewhere in the magazine mentions that the Odyssey line is scheduled to debut in January 1967. Earlier in the month Columbia had a 2-page ad introducing their 8-track cartridge line, which also featured 8-digit catalog numbers, as did Crossroads and Odyssey. (The Copland CBS record was reissued four or five years later as Columbia M 30374.)
DeleteIn a weird coincidence, the "final" modification of the Columbia logo bore a slight resemblance to the ancient Egyptian symbol known as the 'Utchat', a.k.a. the 'Eye of Horus'. The 'legs' almost resembled a number '7' turned 90 degrees counterclockwise.
ReplyDeleteI have counted, in the "analogue" era, about seven variations of the logo. They were:
- Five "rings," on 1960-61 album sleeves
- The form on the summer 1961 album cover
- An interim version (with the label shown inside the box as 'COLUMBIA RECORDS') that appeared in late 1961/early 1962 albums
- The form as on ML 5746, and also the 'CBS' logohead
- A form that was on 1965-70 "two-eye" labels (and dated to about early 1962, used for as long, also, on Columbia Special Products labels through 1971)
- A form that was in many adverts from November 1962 onwards (and would also be on the post-1970 "ring around Columbia" label design that was red and orange on "pop" offerings, and warm grey and amber on Masterworks releases)
- A form with the three rings in the same thickness throughout, used on fine-print " 'COLUMBIA', [eye] MARCAS REG. PRINTED IN U.S.A.'; it was blown up after the mid-1960's for the top headings of reel-to-reel tape covers.
This does not count another version that only had two rings, and was in a 1961 advert for Columbia's custom-pressing division, Columbia Record Productions, that appeared in a June issue in Billboard.