Music Corporation of America
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The Music Corporation of America (or MCA) was an American corporation in the music and television businesses. The successor company is Universal Music Group. MCA published music, booked acts, ran a record label, and distributed television productions and home videos.
MCA was founded as a music booking agency based in Chicago, Illinois in 1924 by Jules Stein. MCA helped pioneer modern practices of touring bands and name acts. Prominent early MCA booked artists included King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton.
Lew Wasserman rose through the ranks to MCA for more than four decades, with Sonny Werblin as his right-hand man. Other executives within MCA were Presidents, Sidney Sheinberg and Lawrence R. Barnett, and Ned Tanen, head of Universal Pictures. Tanen was behind Universal hits such as "Animal House," and John Hughes's "Sixteen Candles" and "The Breakfast Club."
Wasserman expanded the company's presence into television (founding EMKA, Ltd., which owns the copyright to much of the pre-1948 Paramount Pictures theatrical sound feature film library and Revue Studios, the top supplier of television for all broadcast networks, spanning three decades). He also purchased the Universal Studios studio lot, but not the studio itself, in 1958.
MCA entered the record music business in 1962 with the purchase of the New York based US Decca branch, including Coral Records and Brunswick Records. As Decca owned Universal Pictures, MCA assumed full ownership of Universal and made it into the top film studio in town, producing hit after hit.
In order to acquire Universal, Wasserman was forced to dissolve MCA's talent agency in 1962 - which represented most of the industry's biggest names - by Robert F. Kennedy's Department of Justice, as it violated anti-trust laws. Ironically, Wasserman was a life-long supporter of and fundraiser for the Democratic Party. In 1966, MCA formed Uni Records in Universal City, California and in 1967, MCA bought New York based Kapp Records.
In 1968, the MCA record label was established outside North America to issue releases by MCA's labels. Decca, Kapp and Uni were merged into MCA Records in 1971; the three labels maintained their identities for a short time but were soon retired in favor of the MCA label. The first MCA Records release in the US was former Uni artist Elton John's Crocodile Rock in 1972. In 1973, the final Decca pop label release was issued.
In 1975, the company entered the book publishing business with the acquisition of G. P. Putnam's Sons. In 1979 it acquired ABC Dunhill Records along with its subsidiaries ABC Records, Paramount Records, Impulse Records, Dot Records and Dunhill Records.
Chess Records was acquired in 1985. Motown Records was bought in 1988 (and sold to PolyGram in 1993). GRP Records and Geffen Records were acquired in 1990. In the same year, the MCA Inc holding company was purchased by the Matsushita group.
In 1995, Seagram Company Ltd. acquired 80% of MCA and the following year the new owners dropped the MCA name; the company became Universal Studios, Inc. and its music division, MCA Music Entertainment Group, was renamed Universal Music Group. The following year, G. P. Putnam's Sons was sold to the Penguin Group.
In 1998 Seagram acquired PolyGram from Philips and merged it with its music holdings. When Seagram's drinks business was bought by France-based Pernod Ricard, its media holdings (including Universal) were sold to Vivendi SA which became Vivendi Universal.
In the spring of 2003, MCA Records was absorbed by Geffen Records. Its country music label, MCA Nashville Records is still in operation. MCA's classical music catalogue is managed by Deutsche Grammophon.
