POLYDOR
RECORDS
German in origin, Polydor was a branch of Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft; it made its debut in 1924, as a label for exported records. From 1946 it became a Popular Music label, leaving DGG to concentrate upon Classical Music. In Britain, it tasted success with European artists such as the orchestras of Bert Kaempfert and James Last; though its main claim to fame in some quarters is that it released the first records by the Beatles, in the guise of Tony Sheridan's 'Beat Brothers'. 1962 saw Siemens, the owners of DGG and Polydor, linking up with the Philips Electrical Company to form the Gramophon Philips Group; in 1972 GPG evolved into Polygram. The Polydor and Philips (now 'Phonogram') departments kept separate management organisations in Britain until 1981. Polydor's ratio of hits to releases wasn't especially impressive, but it found big sellers with some frequency: the Bee Gees were regular visitors to the Singles Charts throughout the latter half of the '60s and into the '70s; Slade and the New Seekers - an unlikely pairing - kept the hits coming through the middle of that decade, while Roxy Music, the Jam and Jean-Michel Jarre saw the company into the '80s. All sorts of music appeared on the familiar red label, from the Glam Pop of the Rubettes to the Disco of the Fatback Band, by way of the Rock of Rainbow, and Polydor is still a popular and successful operator on the UK music scene today. Polydor owned or handled a number of other labels in the '70s, including MGM, Mojo, RSO, Track, Pablo, Spring and Verve. The Polydor labels were distributed by Phonodisc, as were those of its partner, Phonogram. In Britain, numbering in the Vinyl era appears to have started off in an NH-66000 series, .1958. There were variations, and there were large gaps in the numbers, which were presumably down to the 'missing' ones being used for overseas releases. After NH-66999 .1962, the numbers changed to NH-52000s; there were also a NH-59000 series. Around 1965 a BM-56000 series was adopted, again with minor variations; this lasted into the first two months of the following decade. For much of the '70s Polydor group labels issued singles in various seven-figure numerical series, the first number of which was always a '2'. Singles on Polydor appeared in several different series, the most common of which were 2058-000 and 2001-000; other prefixes were 2041, 2056, 2066, 2121, 2141, 2229 and 2230. When the 2058 series reached 2058-999 it was replaced by a 2059-000 one. Towards the end of the decade the numericals were dropped and a POSP-0 series was adopted. The last year of the decade saw the introduction of a series of singles under the 'Steppin' Out' banner; they were aimed at the Disco market, and they had their own numbering (STEP-0), label and sleeve. The actual Polydor labels didn't change much over the years: the '50s and early '60s orange one was replaced by a red one.1964; this continued, in a slightly changed form until the advent of injection-moulding. The kind of dinking which results in three prongs appears to have been peculiar to the Polydor and Philips companies, as were the rather graceful triangular 'spiders' which were supplied with factory-dinked singles - it was common in the early '70s for singles in the Polydor and Philips family labels to be dinked before they left the factory. The first injection-moulded labels appeared .1972, and had the same trio of dinking perforations that the old paper label had had; at this stage singles could be found in either paper-labelled or injection moulded form. In 1973 injection moulded singles became the norm. They came either with solid centres or with large spindle holes and three-pronged 'spiders'. The injection-moulded labels enjoyed a long life, lasting into the early '80s with only minor changes to their design: the letter 'A' on the top right-hand side increased in size.1976. During the 1960s promotional records had white labels with a large red 'A' on them but neither Polydor nor its subsidiaries appear to have had special labels for promos during the '70s - a sticker on the paper-labelled singles did the job instead, while injection-moulded promos were generally identical with the issues. which has 'FOR PROMOTION ONLY' and 'NOT FOR RESALE' pressed into the vinyl, was an exception to that rule; were there any others? Occasionally other companies pressed singles for Polydor during this period, resulting in paper labels and four-pronged dinks; the narrow dink was pressed by EMI. The discography below is full of holes. Some of these holes can be accounted for by the fact that singles with those numbers were released overseas and not in Britain. catalogue numbers in a 56000 series; this was superseded by various 2000-000 series, of which 2058-000 (later 2059-000 and then POSP-0) was the main one. Presumably the first four numbers indicated different sources - for example, it seems possible that the 2058s were home-grown, as it were, and the 2001s and 2066s were licensed product. Thanks to Robert Lyons for the info.
