Pickwick Records

Pickwick Records (originally formed as Pickwick Sales Corporation, later Pickwick International) was founded in 1950 by Cy Leslie, whose first business was a prerecorded greeting-card service that in 1946 turned into Voco Records, a label of children's records. In 1957, after successfully marketing its Cricket children's label of 78- and 45rpm records, Pickwick entered the LP market with low-priced records, beginning with its Design label.[2] The albums from the 1960s into the early 1970s bore the "Pickwick/33" imprint.

Singer-songwriter Lou Reed once worked as a staff songwriter for Pickwick Records, and gained experience in its small recording studio. Several of Pickwick's soundalike albums from 1964 to 1965 feature Reed as an uncredited session musician. Two of his songs, "Cycle Annie" (credited to The Beachnuts) and "You're Driving Me Insane" (as The Roughnecks), both appeared on the Soundsville! compilation in 1965. "The Ostrich" and "Sneaky Pete", two earlier songs by Reed, united him with John Cale, leading to their founding of the Velvet Underground.

Amos Heilicher and his brother Daniel Heilicher merged their Musicland retail chain with Pickwick International in the late 1960s. Capitol Records had an early interest in Pickwick, and many Capitol artists including Frank Sinatra, The Beach Boys and Nat King Cole, had recordings issued on Pickwick; however, Capitol sold its share in the company in 1970.

In the 1970s, the label changed direction, and began reissuing LPs that had been deleted from catalogues of the major record labels, especially the RCA Records budget reissue label RCA Camden. Most notable in the RCA Camden catalogue, Pickwick obtained the rights in the mid-1970s to reissue Camden albums featuring recordings by Elvis Presley. The company also put out an edited reissue of Presley's soundtrack album of Frankie and Johnny, and a two-LP set of mostly movie songs titled Double Dynamite. After Presley died in August 1977, sales of his recordings increased dramatically and RCA reclaimed the rights to Presley's Camden releases from Pickwick.

Pickwick also reissued numerous LPs from the Motown catalogue during the 1970s. On many of these albums, the cover art was changed, and/or the track listing was altered (with two or more songs deleted). In the early 1980s Motown began re-releasing its own catalogue albums, thus ending Pickwick's series.

The company also started the subsidiary label P.I.P and started distributing Gene Redd's De-Lite Records, to issue original material. De-Lite hit it big in 1974 and 1975 with million-selling singles & albums by funk band Kool & The Gang. P.I.P had a couple of big dance club hits with "7-6-5-4-3-2-1 (Blow Your Whistle)" and "Drive My Car" by Gary Toms Empire in 1975.

In 1977, Pickwick was sold to the American Can Company, which relocated its corporate headquarters from Long Island City, New York to Minneapolis, Minnesota, then subsequently sold its assets to PolyGram in the same year. PolyGram maintained the De-Lite Records label for releases by Kool & the Gang who experienced a second wave of success after the addition of new lead singer, J.T. Taylor, beginning with the group's 1979 album, Ladies Night. PolyGram later did away with the De-lite imprint, and subsequent Kool & The Gang records were issued by PolyGram's Mercury label, while De-Lite Records was acquired by Unidisc.

After the purchase by PolyGram, Pickwick started putting out new material again, but this time it was "Sound-Alike" albums which featured covers of a certain artist or group on one album, and Disco Christmas albums. Most of those albums were performed by session musicians and singers dubbed Mirror Image; Pickwick also issued a few records from groups such as The Young Lovers and Kings Road in earlier years. This lasted until 1983 when PolyGram folded Pickwick.

The Hallmark name has since been revived as a budget record label owned by the Pickwick Group.

Pickwick's catalogue (including the entire De-lite/Mercury catalogue of Kool & The Gang) is now owned by Universal Music which was formed by the merger of the MCA and PolyGram families of labels in 1998.

From the liner notes featured on virtually all 1965–69 Design releases:

POPULAR Favourites

Design has created a series of Family Favourites- covering everything from "When the Saints Go Marching In" to the Beethoven Fifth Symphony; from Broadway's current favourites and standards to Flamenco music from Spain and Italian popular music.

Music is so intensely personal, so much a matter of what you yourself feel- and let the rules go hang- that the only sensible basis on which you should build your library is personal choice. If you like it, then by all means it belongs in your record collection. Enjoy it and play it with pride.

There's been a vast upsurge in interest in all kinds of music in America in recent years. Musicals are among the most successful of Broadway offerings. Night clubs featuring a Dixieland band can always count on filling the house. More people buy tickets to opera and symphony concerts each year than attend professional sports events. Dance bands remain popular as ever.

Contributing to this upsurge has been the ready availability of quality low-cost recordings of familiar favourites by outstanding popular, Broadway, semi-classical and classical artists- recordings such as those you'll find on the Design label. These recordings make it possible for you to build a library of your own personal favourites at a fraction of the price you'd have expected to pay even a few years ago.

Design's modern studio and manufacturing plant, featuring the latest equipment coupled with the company's low, low prices have made it possible to offer record buyers the world's finest music recorded by outstanding artists without sacrificing quality. The record you hold in your hands, made to standards as critical as any set in the industry, consists of pure vinyl.

In the early 1980s, Pickwick manufactured so-called "audiophile" pressings on heavy vinyl (usually 180–240 grams). However, some audio aficionados found the sound quality in these pressings inferior to that of normal vinyl. These LPs were quickly deleted and some record collectors are now willing to pay extremely high prices for these records. In 2003, a copy of The Beach Boys Greatest Hits sold for just over $2,500 at auction, and in 2008 a sealed copy of James Bond—The Themes (which was a purely soundalike record) sold for $4,000.

Pickwick was well known for its "soundalike" records which often implied to be the original artists, but actually featured in-house bands or singers. When Pickwick issued The Everly's in 1984, all the songs were in fact covered by a singing duo called "Twice Divided".[3]

Pickwick was the record label to which the fictional band Crème Brulée, from British sitcom The League of Gentlemen, was nearly signed to during its 1970s heyday. This came from a running gag about the market-stall sales which Pickwick enjoyed in England.

Thes One, from the hip-hop group People Under The Stairs, mentions the label in the track "43 Labels I Like" (from its 2000 album Question in the Form of an Answer).

• List of record labels
• Drugstore records

• Pickwick Group UK official site
• The Pickwick Story from BSN Pubs