COLUMBIA
RECORDS

 Columbia started out as the British division of the Columbia Phonograph Company of America.  When that company hit financial difficulties, in 1923, it sold its British arm.  In 1931 the British Columbia company merged with the Gramophone Company to form Electrical and Musical Industries, which later morphed into EMI.  During the 78rpm era a lot of material licensed from RCA and US Columbia came out on the British 'Columbia' label.  When those licensing agreements ended, in the mid-1950s, Columbia was successfully developed as a home-grown Pop label, with artists such as Cliff Richard, the Shadows, Shirley Bassey, Gerry and the Pacemakers, the Dave Clark Five, and Herman's Hermits.   In 1972, however, EMI launched the EMI label; artists whose records would previously have appeared on Columbia were shifted to the new marque and Columbia languished.   No singles at all appeared on Columbia during 1976-77; it enjoyed a revival of sorts in 1978, and pressed on in a subdued and Easy-Listening sort of way, even managing to return to the charts in 1979, with Iris Williams's version of 'He Was Beautiful' (DB-9070).   Another lull followed: DB-9091 came out in 1980, but 9097 didn't appear till 1984.   1985-86 saw another, more wholehearted revival, with upwards of sixty singles being issued.  Most of these seem to have been Pop / MOR things, including a Christmas record by ventriloquist's dummy Orville the duck ('White Christmas'; DB-9121).   For some reason there was a rash of football singles in there: the squads of England, Scotland, Liverpool, Everton and Manchester United all recorded for the label during that period.  That, however, appears to have been Columbia's final flowering.   In the 1990s the label was sold to Sony, and was reunited with the US Columbia company. Most Columbia 7" singles used an SCM-5000 numbering system initially, the DB series being used by 78rpm discs; according to Paul Pelletier in his Complete British Directory of Popular 45rpm singles, the SCM numbers were abandoned in 1956, at which point 7" records started sharing the DB numbering with 78s.  By the end of the '70s the numbers had climbed into the DB-9000s.  Several different labels were used.  The Popular SCM / DB series started off with purple ones with gold printing; the gold was soon replaced by silver, and e '45' appeared on the right hand side, the name 'Columbia' shrank and straightened out, and the colour turned to black.  This design remained basically the same until mid 1975, when the label was put into hibernation; the wording 'Sold in the U.K.' (etc), which was a feature of EMI records in the mid- and late-sixties, disappeared from the label c.1970.  When Columbia was revived, in 1978, it had the same black label, but towards the end of that year, at some point between DB-9053 and DB-9064, the design was altered slightly and a pleasant brown-on-fawn colouring was adopted.   The black label was to return in the 1980s.  The '50s and '60s also saw a number of different numerical series for different types of music; each series had its own dedicated label colour.   Extended Play records of Popular Music were given their own sea-green label in the late '50s and early '60s;  EPs in the mid and late '60s had the same black label as the singles, but with the logo coloured blue.  Sleeves came in a variety of designs and colours; during the period covered by this site, black-labelled records came in either the blue, green or red ones.  The 'DB' singles prefix dates back to 1930, which is when DB-1 appeared.  Red-labelled singles numbered from DB-115 to DB-119 dating from 1970 were the last gasp of the 'Columbia Blue Beat' series, the first of which, DB-101, was issued in 1967. Thanks to Robert Lyons for the info.