The Rise and Fall of 20th Century-Fox Records · 7:49pm Aug 29th, 2014
Entirely owned and run by 20th Century-Fox, 20th Century-Fox Records has three different stories.
Between 1933 and 1937, a custom label called Fox Movietone produced records that featured songs from films released by Fox, first using material recorded/issued on the Bluebird budget label of Victor, and halfway through switched to material recorded on the dime store labels of ARC. The Fox Movietone series of records ranged from F-100 to F-136 and are scarce nowadays because they were sold exclusively at Fox Theaters.
The regular record label started questionably as 20th Fox Records in 1958, then changed their name to 20th Century-Fox Records. In the early 1960s, the label was run under the presidency of comic Dickie Goodman. It ignored rock music and couldn’t get a single British group under on its roster during the Invasion.
Speaking of artists on the roster, those that happened to be there were hit-making machines in either the past or would be hit-making machines in the future, and consisted of Al Martino, Hugo Montenegro, Harry Simeone, Vince Martin, Rolf Harris, Frankie Sardo, Johnny Bond, Billie Jean Horton, Johnny Restivo, Kay Armen, Gogi Grant, Morty Jay, Larry Foster, Big Dee Irwin, Little Joe Cook, Gerry Granahan, Jim Lowe, the Impalas, Kitty Kallen, John Barry, Eddie Rabbitt, Diane Renay, Eddie Heywood, Dickie Goodman, Lena Horne, Eddie Rambeau, the Emotions, Betty Madigan, Frankie Ford, Don Cornell, Nelson Riddle, Johnny Desmond, Mary Wells, Jim Weatherly, Ron Goodwin, Sammy Turner, Nick Noble, the Cate Sisters, David & Jonathan, Johnny Dankworth, Hoyt Axton, Karl Hammel, Jr., and Andy Kim, with all of whom Fox failed to score much hits.
In fact, the only single hits that they DID score were as follows: “The Little Drummer Boy” (a Harry Simeone Chorale single that made No. 13 on the Christmas Singles charts, recharting periodically until 1970), “Navy Blue” (Diane Renay’s classic, which made No. 6 pop), “Kiss Me Sailor” (another Diane Renay hit) and “Use Your Head” (a quite small hit from ex-Motown star Mary Wells). One would probably think, "Whoa. Only 4 hit singles out of 700 released? This must have been one poorly performing company back then."
But they DID do better on album. Slightly though. They scored a No. 1 LP hit with The Little Drummer Boy, a record with a title recently changed from Sing We Now Of Christmas, which made the charts at various other times whenever Santa Claus came to town; they had 4 soundtrack albums on the charts (the one for the infamous Cleopatra (yes, THAT Cleopatra) made No. 2 in 1963, the one for Zorba The Greek made No. 26 in 1965, Dionne Warwick’s huge hit from The Valley Of The Dolls helped the soundtrack up to No. 11 on the LP charts in 1968 -and back then we never heard the words "Up To Eleven"- and the (essential?) Barbra Streisand LP Hello Dolly made No. 49 in 1969); since they were in the newsreel business, the only other non-soundtrack LP on the charts was 1964’s John Fitzgerald Kennedy: The Presidential Years, put together hastily after the Assassination of President Kennedy, which made No. 8 on the LP charts, and brought forth an interesting part of the record industry: The part where a record label, major or minor, puts out an LP (“Celebrating The Life Of A Person!”) upon a celeb’s death. 20th Century-Fox memorial LPs were spawned from the untimely deaths of Marilyn Monroe in 1962, JFK in 1963, and MLK in 1968. Bsnpubs.com writes, “Whether the buying public viewed these with gratitude (all of them sold reasonably well) or was a bit more cynical about the motives behind these releases, is unknown.” Way to go Fox. You put out 200 albums, yet could only release 6 successful ones. Wow.
Fox came to realize that they can’t even continue making and distributing their own product and stay in business at the same time, so those duties wound up in the hands of ABC. New titles from the company contained a small ABC logo underneath the label’s. The labels added the bottom ring text “Distributed by ABC Records, Inc.” Starting about 1967, Fox was mostly limiting its LP and 45 releases to those with relation to their film soundtracks. By 1970, Fox was in yet another financial crisis (leading to discontent and Darryl Zanuck’s ouster) and had to shut the label down. In 1972, they revived it, with a new name, label, boss, and even artist roster. In fact, everything about Fox Records was changed – for the better.
Fox decided to reactivate their label in 1972, and looked back at its history a bit (I could imagine the thought, “Boy did we perform poorly back then, what can we do to perform well in this business?”)
Russ Regan, a veteran “record man”, was lured to the label from his presidency at Uni (right when it, and Decca, and Kapp, were being absorbed into MCA) so that Mr. Regan could head the new label. By a few orders of magnitude, THAT increased their business credibility. There was better promotion too, as the second single that it released, “Love Jones” by Brighter Side of Darkness, made No. 16 Pop and No. 3 Soul, giving the new label their first major hit. However, it also proved to render Brighter Side of Darkness a one hit wonder, as their next single release “I Owe You Love” was a failure. The group disbanded in 1974. “Love Jones” was spoofed by Cheech and Chong in their landmark sports-related single released that year titled “Basketball Jones.”
20th Century’s first signed act was Maureen McGovern, a member of a local folk group called Sweet Rain. She gave the label its first No. 1 Pop hit with the Best Original Song Oscar winner “The Morning After” (from The Poseidon Adventure), which sold over 1M copies and was certified Gold in August 1973. In 1974, she was nominated a Grammy for Best New Artist for this performance. She next was scheduled to record and make a cameo appearance as singer of the minor hit theme from The Towering Inferno (the first co-production between two major Hollywood studios) “We May Never Love This Way Again”, which won an Oscar for Best Original Song. A few minor hits later, McGovern was loosened from 20th Century’s arms in 1976. In 1979, there came a morning after for her, as "Different Worlds," the disco-genre theme song from ABC-TV’s sitcom Angie, gave McGovern her only other Top 40 offering, although at that point she had seemingly been long gone from 20th Century and now worked for Warner-Curb; the theme song peaked at No. 18 on the Pop charts and topped the Adult Contemporary charts. McGovern is alive, well, and out of the spotlight, today.
The DeFrancos scored their biggest smash hit with this single (above). (Courtesy of discogs.com)
20th Century’s second signed act, with some help from teen magazine Tiger Beat, was the Canadian (no offence) DeFranco Family, made from guitarist Benny (born 11 July 1953); keyboardist Marisa (born 23 July 1954); guitarist Nino (born 19 October 1955); drummer Merlina (born 20 July 1957); and lead singer Tony (born 31 August 1959). The DeFrancos spent the period at 20th Century scoring their biggest hit with “Heartbeat-It’s A Lovebeat.” That song did really well, making No. 3 US Pop in 1973, and late in that year they scored a No. 32 US Pop hit with “Abracadabra.“ They brought a Canadian accent to the Drifters’ “Save The Last Dance For Me” to the tune of No. 18 US Pop in 1974. When their next single, “Write Me A Letter” hit No. 4 on the dreaded US Bubbling Under 100 charts, Walt Meskell, their early hit producer, was dismissed from the film studio/record label, and Mike Curb, previously of Osmonds production fame, was brought in. This proved to be a disastrous move and when Mr. Curb wanted to cast the DeFrancos as a cover band, he couldn’t hear the family shouting a resounding “NO!” and severing their relationship with the label and with Laufer Entertainment executive Chuck Laufer. No other label could possibly have a desire for the DeFrancos, so they continued their Las Vegas tour and performance, in an unsuccessful attempt to attain the heights achieved previously. In 1978, the DeFranco Family disbanded, but WEA reunited them for the August 1999 Rhino Records Retro Fest. Their last public performance together took place in April 2000 in LA at B.B. King’s Nightclub. Tony DeFranco now works as a realtor with the Westlake Village, CA Sotheby’s International Realty. Occasionally, Tony and Marisa continue to perform years after the DeFranco Family gave up its involvement in the record industry. The kids took up residency from within an hour’s drive from each other in California. They remained close.
20th Century’s third signed act was brought in by Mr. Regan himself. The name of this act was a still-unproven producer who wrote and can be heard as the uncredited voice of the man on the phone at the end of LA girl group Love Unlimited’s No. 14 Pop hit from 1972, “Walking In The Rain With The One I Love,” which was issued on Uni. Mr. Regan moved to 20th Century, with his following, and bringing along Love Unlimited (later to marry member Glodean James), putting together an orchestra to have Love Unlimited’s backing (although it ended up in the hands of the man himself); this orchestra scored a No. 1 Pop hit in 1974 with “Love’s Theme,” which set the disco pattern as an R&B and classical genre combo. The man was Barry White, who was pushed by Mr. Regan to record himself as a solo act. White didn’t plan that originally, yet started writing voices that fit his voice well, to the tune of the following pop chart results: he topped the charts with “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe“, he made #2 with “You’re The First, The Last, My Everything“, he made #3 with “I’m Gonna Love You Just A Little More Baby“, he made #4 with “It’s Ecstacy When You Lay Down Next To Me“, he made #7 with “Never, Never Gonna Give Ya Up“, and he made #8 with “What Am I Gonna Do with You?“. All of these singles also did tremendously well in R&B. He also found LP success, and Can’t Get Enough topped the LP charts in 1974. 4 singles went gold, the other three went platinum. Bsnpubs.com wrote, “Altogether, Barry White alone in six years was far more successful than the entire earlier incarnation of the label, including all the artists, in the 13 years they existed!”
Year by year play, please.
By the end of 1974, three more chart singles were had by Love Unlimited. That year, reggae artist Carl Douglas became the first artist from Jamaica to top the charts, as was the case when he had the single “Kung Fu Fighting.” Fox held US rights to the record, PYE (Fox’s UK distributor) held rights to the single outside of the US; the latter company changed its name to Precision Records & Tapes (aka PRT) later on. It was with this single that Douglas became a one-hit wonder; his next single was titled “Dance The Kung-Fu,” but nobody in the United States could really dance it up the charts as much as they did last time. However, Douglas had more Top 40 hits in the UK; in that country, the aforementioned single made No. 35, and “Run Back” made No. 25.
Nothing really was memorable at 20th Century outside of White’s singles in 1975, other than Leon Haywood’s hit “I Want’ A Do Somethin’ Freaky To You.”
Things really started kicking up a notch in 1976. The Alan Parsons Project released their first album, Tales Of Mystery And Imagination Edgar Allan Poe, on the 20th Century outside of the UK; in the UK, it was issued on Charisma. 1976 also was Bicentennial Year, and 20th Century celebrated by releasing the double LP Happy Birthday U.S.A.. Both the film and soundtrack (on 20th Century) All This And World War II were particularly noteworthy only for juxtaposing Beatles songs, performed by a number of musicians, with World War II newsreel footage and films released by the studio in the 1940s. It lasted two weeks in cinemas and was sent into storage quicker than one would think. The soundtrack did better than the film. It really began unraveling that year when Russ Regan left 20th Century to start the Casablanca-distributed Millennium label.
In 1977, there were more hits to come. Songwriter Kenny Nolan’s LP debut spawned the hits “I Like Dreamin’” and “Love’s Grown Deep.” The label also found another one-hit wonder that year in Peter McCann, who, late in '77, had “Do You Wanna Make Love?”.
1978 was a banner year for the label. It started off with a lease from GRT (Fox’s Canadian distributor) of a master by Dan Hill called “Sometimes When We Touch” and it became his biggest (and often more than most denounced) hit to date. The label's name reverted to 20th Century-Fox Records and the label subsequently signed ex-Motown artist Edwin Starr to a contract that year. Starr had a little-known hit on the label called “Contact.” The great Billy Joel had a hit in 1978 with “Just The Way You Are” and the success of that record, released on Columbia, led to it being covered that year by Ahmad Jamal and Barry White, both acts signed to 20th Century-Fox, and it would be covered by dozens more male recording acts. Also in 1978, Fox signed a distribution deal with Chi-Sound Records, run by the legendary Chicago soul producer Carl Davis, and supplied it with a label design not unlike the new distributor’s; Chi-Sound was previously distributed by UA. This deal secured a major disco hit that year with “Get Down,” by the Duke of Earl himself, Gene Chandler.
1979 was the year Barry White left Fox Records after years of service and memorable hits. His reason for leaving was because of how increasingly dissatisfied he was with the label’s management when Russ Regan left the label to form Millennium Records. White felt that he was being ignored in terms of promotion at the time, and proceeded to leave the label, forming Unlimited Gold Records, as a CBS division. It only lasted 4 years, with no big hits, and it was absorbed into CBS in 1983. It was also in 1979 that Fox signed a manufacturing-distributing deal with RCA (but could not use its numbering system) and found its second most consistent hitmaker, in New Yorker Stephanie Mills, known as The First Lady of R&B, who was by then a fledgling singer, only known for living a life of romance with the King of Pop himself, Michael Jackson (with whom she was a friend; she often covered Jackson’s songs). Her real true call was in both the label and in the disco scene, and, as disco was losing its popularity, she became the genre’s last star. She had a massively selling album on the label, What Cha’ Gonna Do With My Lovin’, the first of her records to go Gold, and the home of such hits as “Put Your Body In It”, “You Can Get Over”, the title track, and a slow ballad called “Feel the Fire.”
Not much was happening at all at Fox in 1980. The label was suffering from the anti-disco backlash. As bsnpubs.com writes, “In 1980, after about five or six years of the disco craze, "disco fatigue" started to set in with the record buying public. Anti-Disco rallies sprang up, and disco no longer was "hip." Sales of disco discs tumbled, and for labels seen as identified with disco, radio airplay suddenly became hard to come by.” Fox was identified with the Disco craze and was affected. It enjoyed a minor hit with the soundtrack of Dolly Parton’s film debut 9 To 5, noted for the line “sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot” (by seemingly whom the studio would later be bought). Mills was still a consistent hit-maker and released her LP Sweet Sensation, which scored two tracks: the title track was a hit, and so was her biggest hit to date, “Never Knew Love Like This Before,” which made No. 6 pop, No. 12 soul, and No. 5 AC (adult contemporary). An early star of the label, Leon Haywood, who in 1975 had that one hit mentioned earlier, made the charts again with “Don’t Push It, Don’t Force It” that year as well; the single made No. 2 soul and No. 49 pop, in a huge crossover chart gap.
Not much further happened at all with the label in 1981. Stephanie Mills’ self-titled album Stephanie contained the hit duet between herself and the legendary Teddy Pendergrass titled “Two Hearts.” It proved to be the last hit that the label ever had. It had another huge gap between charts, making No. 3 R&B while stiffing at No. 40 pop. Carl Carlton, who earlier had a hit with “Everlasting Love” (1974) was a newcomer to the label, and had a huge hit with the quite catchy Haywood-penned “She’s A Bad Mama Jama (She’s Built, She’s Stacked)” (No. 22 pop, No. 3 soul, No. 34 UK) that year. Carlton was nominated for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance for the song, which would later appear on compilation albums and soundtracks and would be often sampled in rap music. The label also, via Chi-Sound Records, got its last gasp when the Chi-Lites, whose funk-fueled “Hot On A Thing“ firmly placed the group (and Chi-Sound distributor) in the Top 20 of any chart for the last time. The Chi-Lites, like Carlton, were music veterans. Originating from Chicago, they released such unforgettable hits as “A Letter To Myself”, “Give More Power To The People”, ”Have You Seen Her”, and ”Oh Girl”, on the Brunswick label in the early 1970s, prior to their signage to Chi-Sound.
And those two hits were the last huge ones of 20th Century-Fox Records. In 1981, just when Carlton and (the original!) Chi-Lites got into the spotlight again, the studio itself was bought by oil billionaire Marvin Davis, who was assisted by financier Marc Rich, for a huge sum of money. Neither wanted to keep the label though. It was sold off to PolyGram, a US-label gobbling European conglomerate, in early 1982. Very shortly afterward the label was absorbed into Casablanca, a label PolyGram had recently purchased.
Time does take its toll however. In 2003, Barry White died, sadly, after an unsuccessful kidney failure hospitalization. Some original members of the Chi-Lites, to whom the label's last gasp of air was given, died recently as well. Teddy Pendergrass, duet partner on one of the label's last big hits, died in 2010. Edwin Starr, whose hit ”Contact” was on the label, died in 2003 in the continent of Europe. In 1992, Wells, who gave the 1958-1970 incarnation of the label one of its few Top 40 single hits, became a cancer victim.
THE END.
3787594 Got another record label story (this one was published in November of last year) https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/688199/playboy-records-story