The MCA Records Story and Album Discography
The origins of the recording company that became MCA Records began in 1934, when the Decca Record Co., Ltd. of England launched an American branch. Foreseeing World War II, Decca’s owner, Edward R. Lewis, who was afraid that British firms would be financially ruined by a war that arose from rising hostilities between England and Nazi Germany, spun the American arm off into an independent concern (Lewis formed London Records to handle American releases of his Decca after the war). American Decca had trademark rights to that name in America, Canada, South America, and selected parts of Asia, namely Japan. British Decca held the rights to that name everywhere else. In countries where U.S. Decca did not own the rights to the Decca name, the products on U.S. Decca would come out on Brunswick or Coral, depending on the artist.
In 1952, American Decca acquired the Compo Company, which had been distributing U.S. Decca’s products in Canada since 1935. In the same year, U.S. Decca, separately, acquired Universal-International Pictures from the Rank Organization (yes, the one with the gong). U.S. Decca’s oversight of the studio led to it, along with Columbia and United Artists, becoming one of the easiest surviving studios of the initial blow to the movie business that was dealt by the impact of television, with the likes of Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, Jeff Chandler, Audie Murphy, and John Gavin becoming the top stars of the Universal-International studio.
Helping Universal-International’s clout in the movie business during the U.S. Decca’s ownership of the studio was Lew Wasserman, head of a talent agency named the Music Corporation of America, who in 1950 revolutionized the movie business by giving star James Stewart a large share of the profits made by his hit movie Winchester ’50; upon that western’s huge box office success, this became a rule at the studio and eventually also the rule at all of its competitors. Wasserman was strongly influential on the products churned out by Universal-International in the 1950s, and brought his clients, Doris Day, Lana Turner, Cary Grant, and director Alfred Hitchcock, with him. It would later buy Universal’s entire studio lot.
In 1962, MCA, which had developed time and money into making a powerhouse out of Universal-International, ended up acquiring the studio’s corporate parent, American Decca Records. With the purchase, he also gained ownership of such labels as Coral (which was essentially a vehicle for Pete Fountain at that point and would become moribund in 1970 only to resurface as MCA’s budget label sometime later) and Brunswick (which was sold to the latter’s A&R director Nat Tarnopol in 1970 and whose master tapes are now owned by the Blackrock Group). As a condition of his acquisition of U.S. Decca, MCA ended up disposing of its original business, the talent agency that it had been originally founded in 1924. Under MCA ownership, Universal became (and remains) a Hollywood giant, and its story from there requires no explanation, certainly not here.
In 1966, MCA formed its own hippie pop-rock label, Uni, which had one of the best friends its acts have said you could ever make in a record executive, the late, great Russ Regan, who got hits out of it from the likes of the Strawberry Alarm Clock, the American rights for such acts as Olivia Newton-John, Desmond Dekker, Elton John, Hugh Masekela, and the Foundations, Brian Hyland, some of Barry White’s earliest works, and, most notably, Neil Diamond.
In 1967, MCA acquired Kapp Records, which had gained notoriety for having, on its roster, the likes of Roger Williams, the Pete King Chorale (who recorded one of the first covers of songs from The Sound of Music back in 1960, when it was merely a Broadway show), the American rights to the Searchers, the Broadway cast of Man of La Mancha, the crooner Jack Jones, and the legendary Satchmo himself, Louis Armstrong, whose rendition of Jerry Herman’s title song from the Broadway musical “Hello Dolly” is particularly famous for being the first song to knock the Beatles out of the #1 slot on the Billboard Hot 100 back in 1964. MCA subsequently put it under the management of Uni. Under MCA’s stewardship, Kapp had a relatively weak country output and a hugely successful pop output that, naturally, only got that way when it lured Sonny and Cher away from Atco in 1970, and then decided to make Cher a solo phenomenon.
Exactly the opposite situation was occurring at U.S. Decca. On the pop and rock ends, it had been on the doldrums ever since Brenda Lee stopped hitting the pop charts with regularity, with only its ownership of the American rights to the rock band the Who seeming to make anything resembling a dent, and the label also seeming to be loaded with easy listening acts at a time when that genre and style of music was going out of vogue among the general public (or, at least, the younger factions of it). U.S. Decca could count its major pop hits outside of the Who on four fingers: the Cuff Links’ “Tracy” in 1969, the Free Movement’s “I’ve Found Someone of My Own” in 1971, Rick Nelson’s “Garden Party” in 1972, and Dobie Gray’s “Drift Away” in 1972. The originating album for the Free Movement single, confusingly, was on rival label Columbia, while the Gray single would soon prove to be the last the label ever released. The label had a far stronger round of performance on the country end, with Conway Twitty, Kitty Wells, Loretta Lynn, Jack Greene, Jerry Clower, Jerry Wallace, Webb Pierce, Bill Anderson, Jan Howard, Warner Mack and the Osbourne Brothers among the countless acts that made Decca a strong competitor against RCA for top prizes in the Country Music Hitmaking Sweepstakes.
Things seemed to start to change in 1970, when Mike Maitland, whose attempt to merge Warner Bros. Records and Atlantic Records when he headed the former was unsuccessful, was installed as president of the MCA record combine. Maitland’s first act there was to rename MCA’s Canadian branch from the Compo Company to MCA Records (Canada). In April 1971, he successfully consolidated Decca, Kapp and Uni into MCA Records but all three labels retained their separate identities temporarily.
Temporarily, that is, because of a huge announcement that was made in the December 2, 1972 issue of Billboard magazine. MCA was folding Decca, MCA and Kapp into a new label called MCA Records. With it came the first MCA single, the North American release of Elton John’s huge smash “Crocodile Rock” . . .
. . . and the first MCA album, Neil Diamond’s Hot August Night, which was one of the biggest sellers of the 1970s and was a particularly strong seller in Australia.
Immediately after these two mega-hits, MCA launched a 300 series for the label’s primary single-album releases, a 2–4000 series, which was centered almost entirely on double-album reissues, and a 2–8000 series, which was centered on the occasional newer double-album that MCA bothered with, along with the MCA-1 series, which was the first of many numbering systems dealing with single-record reissues, of which the discographies of only the first few systems will be linked here for now, with discographies on additional ones to be added in the future.
In the 300 series, which ran until MCA hit the number 500 in 1975, MCA had a big #1 album with the soundtrack of the Oscar-winning Best Picture The Sting [MCA-390], which briefly spawned a revival of ragtime music in America. It also had an RIAA-certified Gold album in a record called Moontan [MCA-396], recorded by the Dutch band Golden Earring, whose “Radar Love” had caused a stir in 1973. Elton John also started his Rocket label in the series. Among its first albums was Neil Sedaka’s appropriately named Sedaka’s Back [MCA-463], which spawned the classic “Laughter in the Rain” in 1975, and Kiki Dee’s I Got the Music in Me [MCA-458] had the chart action in it in 1974. Elton John switched distribution of the Rocket label to RCA in 1978, but returned it to the MCA fold in 1979.
MCA’s first numbering sequence after the 300s was the 2100 series. It was launched in 1972 with Elton John’s Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player, and got into full swing by 1974. MCA distributed titles from Shelter (SR) and the Rocket Record Company (which used the inventive PIG prefix) at about this time. It lost the Shelter rights to ABC in 1975.
Cher was undoubtedly MCA’s biggest homegrown pop artist of the early 1970s, but her chart action was starting to wane sometime after her divorce from Sonny Bono and she was dropped from the label after a non-charting attempt, in May of 1975, to revive Fontella Bass’ “Rescue Me” coupled with “Dixie Girl”. MCA also did well on the pop charts with the southern rock group Lynyrd Skynyrd (whose hits included “Sweet Home Alabama”, “Free Bird” and “What’s Your Name?”), but the band’s winning streak ended after a tragic plane crash on October 20, 1977, which took the lives of lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines, and his sister, backup vocalist Cassie Gaines.
The other major artists on the pop end of MCA’s roster all came from outside the U.S., including British artists Elton John (leased from DJM) and the Who (leased from Track/Polydor) and Australian vocalist Olivia Newton-John (leased from Festival). MCA attempted to make a recording star out of Telly Savalas, who was on a show it produced via Universal Television named Kojak (“who loves ya, baby?”). However, his chart success as a recording artist proved limited to Europe.
MCA also continued to have such easy listening (or, as radio would put it, “beautiful music”) artists as Lenny Dee and Roger Williams on its roster; however, all of MCA’s easy listening acts were dropped in 1977, as the market for their music had declined to the point of the genre only being evoked in a satirical sense (for the most part) from that time onward.
MCA found a considerably greater amount of homegrown success via its very strong country roster, which included Loretta Lynn, Conway Twitty, Mel Tillis (who moved to Elektra in 1979), southern comedian Jerry Clower (a holdover from U.S. Decca who was on MCA from its inception until his death on August 24, 1998), Brenda Lee, Cal Smith, and Tanya Tucker, who came to MCA from Columbia in 1975, and that year had her only top-40 pop hit (#37) in her fifth country chart-topper, “Lizzie and the Rainman”. MCA succeeded U.S. Decca as the main rival of RCA in the country genre.
MCA originally started the 3000 series as a vehicle for reissues of old Olivia Newton-John, Elton John, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and the Who, but after some 29 albums were issued, it decided to instead make the series a successor to its 2100 one. The first new album in the series was Galaxy, an album from the band War (MCA-3030), quickly followed by an improptu tribute compilation (MCA-3031) of American Decca’s best known pop artist, Bing Crosby, who died on a Spanish golf trip in October 1977.
MCA was beginning to get fully in the disco groove by this time, with artists like Van McCoy, Stargard and M People on its roster. Other labels that had titles in the 3100 series included the Rocket Record Company (which had come back to MCA for only three albums — all of which resurrected the PIG prefix — after a period in which RCA distributed it), the Butterfly label (using the FLY prefix) and the Source label (SOR prefix), the latter of which scored its best known hit in 1979 in the form of “Bustin Loose” from Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers. MCA distributed a few other labels in the 3000 sequence under its own prefix, namely Midsong International (renamed from Midland International in 1977 after a dispute with Midland Radio, and, like Rocket, an RCA refugee). There was a very awkward period in which MCA skipped numbers 3113 through 3150 entirely.
In 1977, MCA started a label named Infinity, which had its own 9000 catalog sequence for albums and was, in and of itself, an attempt by MCA to prove it could score with acts from the East Coast. Infinity would score its only big hit in 1979 when Rupert Holmes’ “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” topped the charts in the U.S. and Canada; it also had a top-30 hit in Spyro Gyra’s “Morning Dance” (which made it to #24 on the Hot 100). MCA shut down the Infinity label after about a million or so copies of a recording of Pope John Paul II singing in his native Polish at the Festival of Sacrosong were returned to the label in massive quantities.
MCA acquired ABC Records in February 1979, and folded it by March; many of the artists who were on ABC continued to release albums on MCA. Jimmy Buffett and Tom Petty in particular continued their mega-stardom on their new home, while Barbara Mandrell and Don Williams scored several more successes on the country chart on MCA, and the Oak Ridge Boys, who, as with Mandrell and Williams, were on ABC’s country roster before MCA bought out that label, would find an unexpected pop audience in the early 1980s with the records “Elvira” and “Bobbie Sue”. However, the vast majority of ABC’s R&B acts found next-to-no success on MCA and several of them (including the Dramatics, Rhythm Heritage, and the Dells) were dropped within less than one or two years.
This brings us to the 5100 series, which was never originally intended to be the main series. The first number in that series, in fact, was certainly an odd one: the soundtrack of Sylvester Stallone’s Paradise Alley. The album, an original soundtrack recording of his 1978 directorial debut, included a tune titled “Too Close to Paradise”, in which Stallone attempts to sing; if you’ve heard a few seconds of that cut in the Record Collection segment of the July 29, 1987 edition of Late Night with David Letterman, you’ve heard a basic demonstration of the singing skills of the future John Rambo.
One day, MCA decided that this 5100 sequence should serve as the basis for a new numbering system. Suddenly, albums from Tom Petty, Elton John, Jimmy Buffett and Tanya Tucker (a country vocalist who was now attempting a new pop image) showed up, and by 1980, MCA decided to run it as a standard pop numbering sequence.
At first, Backstreet was the only other label with titles under its own prefix (BSR) in the numbering sequence, but in 1985, it scored a coup when it acquired the distribution rights of a label from Los Angeles owned by Miles Copeland named the International Record Syndicate (IRS for short), which was coming off a six-year deal with A&M at the time; Enigma took over distribution of IRS in 1990. Other labels in the 5100 series were Zebra (ZEB), Crusaders (CRP), and Chess (CHS; moved to the 9100 series in mid-1986). As far as labels that still used the MCA prefix, MCA was one of five labels (along with Warner Bros., Capitol, RCA and CBS) that were distributing the Curb label at the time; MCA also assigned its eponymous prefix to titles on Stiff, Camel, Philly World and Constellation, among various other small and mid-size labels of the day for which it handled distribution.
Prior to 1983, MCA’s releases were handled by a small consortium of locally-based companies in nations outside of North America (including CBS in the UK, Dischi Ricordi in Italy, JVC in Japan, Ariola in Germany, Mexico and the Netherlands, Arabella Eurodisc in France, and Astor — which folded into PolyGram in 1981 — in Australia and New Zealand). In 1983, MCA decided to sign a deal with WEA, which would have the latter company distribute MCA product in countries outside of the U.S. and Canada from then until 1991.
During the 1980s, Irving Azoff, an expert talent manager and film producer who ran and founded Full Moon Records, became the president of MCA, which subsequently regained its strength in fields other than country music. The pot of gold from the end of MCA’s emblematic rainbow came in the form of such artists as Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Men Without Hats (on Backstreet), Klymaxx, Neil Sedaka, Dan Hartman, Kim Wilde, New Edition, Alice Cooper, Patti LaBelle, Tracey Ullman, Stephanie Mills, the Fixx, Night Ranger. Bobby Womack, Jody Watley, and Boston, in addition to established artists such as the Crusaders, Jimmy Buffett, Tom Petty and Olivia Newton-John. Its deal with Curb gave them such artists Exile (a band that had by that time given up rock in favor of country), Lyle Lovett, Moe Bandy, the Bellamy Brothers, Gene Watson, and the soundtrack of the cult hit motorcycle film Rad. And, after it bought the rights to distribute recordings from IRS, MCA helped shoot the Athens, Ga.-based band REM to rock superstardom.
Azoff was also a vocal opponent of Tipper Gore’s Parents Music Resource Center, which was founded in 1984 amidst complaints from parents about the increased amount of violent, drug-related or sexual themes being explored on records bought by their offspring. Azoff was noted as saying, in October 1985, that “never will you find a sticker on one of our records.” Despite this, however, he cancelled the release of an album called Thing-Fish by fellow PMRC opponent Frank Zappa after a woman in the quality control department found the lyrics objectionable; it ended up being released as Barking Fish SKCO/4XCO-74201.
On the country front in the mid-1980s, Mel Tillis came back to MCA after Elektra folded its country music division, and the label scored hits with established artists like Barbara Mandrell, Don Williams, Jerry Lee Lewis, Loretta Lynn, Ray Stevens, John Conlee and Brenda Lee in addition to discovering new talents such as George Strait, Lee Greenwood (whose patriotic hit “God Bless the U.S.A.” was on MCA), and Reba McEntire, who proudly called MCA home to many of her 24 #1 country hits.
MCA acquired the U.S. distribution rights of Motown Records in 1984, then proceeded to buy that label in a joint venture with Boston Ventures in 1988 (though it was sold to PolyGram in 1993). MCA-distributed Motown titles retained the standard Motown numbering sequence. In 1984, MCA had began a distribution deal with the hip-hop label Sugar Hill Records, which at the time owned the remains of the world-famous Chess label, for which MCA would launch a 9000 series. MCA acquired the Chess recordings outright in 1985. In 1987, it signed a distribution deal with the jazz label GRP, which it acquired in 1990; that label had used a 9000 series of its own.
Not all was bright as far as MCA during the mid-1980s, however. On April 23, 1985, Los Angeles Times writer William K. Knoedelseder, Jr. published an article about how mobster Sal Pisello made a series of corrupt arrangements to have MCA liquidate unsold cut-out copies of MCA recordings that had fallen out of print; these articles were written into a book in 1993. Many other copies of unsuccessful MCA releases ended up taking copious amounts of space at the label’s warehouses, leading the likes of Azoff and Zappa to give the label its less-than-flattering nickname of the “Music Cemetary of America”.
But enough about that; let’s get back to talking about MCA’s music history. Concurrent with the 5100 series, was the 6100 numbering block which MCA launched in 1980, initially as a vehicle for its “Superstar” price campaign, in which album prices for certain artists were increased by one dollar, making them sell at US$9.98 instead of the industry standard US$8.98. MCA intended to place Tom Petty’s Hard Promises in this numbering system (BSR-6104 would have been the number if it was) but Petty famously protested the price gouging and successfully demanded that MCA price the album back down to the US$8.98 industry standard, which resulted in the album being renumbered BSR 5161. From then onward, MCA decided to instead use the 6100 numbering sequence for movie soundtracks and musical cast albums. However, one non-soundtrack was issued in the numbering sequence at that time: David Grisman’s Acousticity on the Zebra Acoustic label (ZEAD 6153).
MCA began carrying records from Sting’s short-lifed Pangaea label and from the IRS label in the late 1980s; two albums from the former were in the 6100 series, and the latter used the series to issue the soundtracks of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part 2, Athens GA — Inside Out, 21 Jump Street and She’s Having a Baby.
In 1987, when MCA’s main catalog numbering sequence hit 5999, MCA confusingly adopted the 6100s and 42000s as its main numbering sequences, which explains why some albums by such IRS artists as the Fine Young Cannibals, REM, and the Truth appeared in both numbering sequences, along with a few selected pop albums on MCA proper. The last album issued in the 6100 series was the soundtrack of the film Air America.
The 42000 series was positioned as its main pop series; also appearing within it were titles on Uptown, IRS, Zebra (ZEB), Pangaea (PAN) and Universal (UVL).
It might be easy to assume that the last of these labels was owned by Universal Pictures, given that the film studio was owned by MCA at the time and the fact that MCA distributed the label of that name, but this Universal Records was in reality an independently-owned country label founded in 1988 by veteran producer Jimmy Bowen as a vehicle for artists he was working with back then. Bowen’s Universal label made news in July 1989 when it announced it would be the first country label to issue its titles on CD and cassette only, as a means of acknowledging the changing consumer preferences of the time. Two months later, in September 1989, his label reported financial troubles and the delays of several albums (among them a record by John Anderson). In December 1989, Bowen shut down his Universal label, which he would fold into Capitol Records Nashville when he began running that label in 1990. This did not stop MCA from launching a Universal Records of its own in 1995; that later one was connected to the film studio and had its own 53000 numbering sequence from the start.
The highest catalog number in the 42000 numbering sequence was a Big Joe Turner compilation titled I‘ve Been to Kansas City (MCAC/D 42351). The lowest was a CD reissue of Volumes 1 & 2 of the John Coltrane Quartet’s Africa Brass albums (MCAD-42001). MCA began distributing the Varese Sarabande label in North America at about this time; that label was assigned its own numbering sequence (in the 5000s).
Despite the confusion between numbering systems — the 6100 series was still being primarily used for soundtracks while the 42200 series was used for regular music releases, but both types of records tended to appear in each series — MCA had great success in the late 1980s.
In 1987, former Go-Gos star Belinda Carlisle scored her biggest hit ever at MCA-42080 with “Heaven is a Place on Earth”, and also scored hits in “I Get Weak” and “Leave a Light On”; unusually for an American artist, her solo records were not issued worldwide on MCA, as international distribution of them was by Virgin. MCA also dug deep into the Minneapolis sound when the Jets had a hold record in Magic on MCA-42085; it featured a big hit in “Crush on You”. Stephanie Mills came onto her own that year with “If I Were Your Woman”, and a young artist named Pebbles released her self-titled debut at MCA-42094, which spawned major hits in “Girlfriend” and “Mercedes Boy”, and One Way (formerly featuring Al Hudson) made one of its farewells on the R&B chart with “You Better Quit”.
This was followed, in 1988, by big R&B and pop hits for New Edition and for a (by that point) former member of the group named Bobby Brown. Don’t Be Cruel, released that June, was a #1 pop-R&B album hit on MCA-42185, and featured such hits as “My Prerogative”, the title cut, and “Every Little Step”. His old group, not to be outdone, released Heart Break on MCA-42207, and it went double platinum with the biggest pop hit out of its five singles being “If it Isn’t Love’; it also had three top-10 R&B hits. In Europe, Kim Wilde succeeded with Close on MCA-42230, particularly with the hit “You Came”, a hit in many countries apart from the U.S., where it came close to breaking the top 40 but didn’t. In America, MCA welcomed Elton John back home after seven years at Geffen with an album, Reg Strikes Back [MCA-6240], that immediately went Gold. And there came a comedy record from a star that had become big by that point: Whoppi Goldberg’s Fontaine — Why Am I Straight? [MCA-42243], which didn’t really do all that well in spite of her massive stardom. The company reported a net worth of $60 million that year, up from $5 million five years prior, controlled 10% of the music market, and was second only to CBS Records in its power within the American music business.
1989 spawned major hits from Tom Petty, whose Full Moon Fever [MCA-6253] spawned the major mega-hit “Free Fallin’”, which remains among his best-known songs, Jody Watley’s hit album Larger Than Life [MCA-6276], Sheena Easton’s The Lover in Me [MCA-42249], another relatively modest hit album from Elton John in Sleeping With the Past [MCA-6321], the song “I Remember Holding You”, which became the only big pop hit for Boys Club [MCA-42242], a pop duo touted as “Minnesota’s version of Wham!”, Belinda Carlisle, who made it to #37 with her album Runaway Horses [MCA-6339] despite the fact that it was not as strong a seller in America as Heaven on Earth was two years prior, and Bobby Brown, who scored on the charts with the album Dance . . . Ya Know It! [MCA-6342] and the single “On My Own”, from the soundtrack of Ghostbusters II [MCA-6306], a movie sequel which, outside of that song, failed to be at all as successful as the first film and grinded the would-be franchise to a screeching halt that lasted until 2016, when a predominantly-female remake of the first film was made featuring cameos from the original cast.
Wrapping up both the 6100 and 42000 sequences, a New Jack Swing group named Bell Biv DeVoe released their first album, Poison, on MCAD-6387, on March 20, 1990, and immediately made a strong impression with it; the record went to #5 on the Hot 200 and spawned five top-10 R&B hits, two of which (“Poison”, “Do Me”) were also top-5 pop hits. Stephanie Mills also squeezed one final top-10 R&B hit during the year in the form of “Comfort of a Man” (#8). The R&B charts for MCA also had a two-hit wonder called Body, a sister trio from Detroit, whose album Easy to Love on MCAD-6373 spawned the top-20 R&B hits “Footsteps in the Dark” and “Touch Me Up”.
On the pop side for MCA, a Hawaiian singer named Glenn Medeiros scored his first (and, as it would turn out, last) hit in the U.S., Australia and the UK since he released his 1987 smash “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love for You” on the Amherst label. This came when he collaborated with Bobby Brown on a single called “She Ain’t Worth It”. That duet made it to the top of the pop charts in the U.S., and also made it to #8 in Australia and #12 in the UK, but although Bobby Brown created quite a lot of wonders with Whitney Houston’s career, he apparently failed to bring Glenn Medeiros’ out of the doldrums. Medeiros’ next duet single, “All I’m Missing is You” (with Ray Parker Jr.), stalled at #32 in the U.S. (and died at #101 in Australia), and the other duet single of his that followed (“Me — U = Blue”, with the Stylistics) petered out at #75 in America. As well, Medeiros’ self-titled album [MCAD-6399] crashed and burned at #82 on the Hot 200 (it was a #69 hit in Australia). In 2015, several years after he quit working for MCA, Medieros became the president of St. Louis School, a Catholic academy in Honolulu, where he has sought to make it, and other Catholic schools in Hawaii, more inclusive than they were when he took his current position.
MCA, meanwhile, had equally strong success in the country field around this time, scoring the great Waylon Jennings away from RCA and bringing Conway Twitty back after a five-year tenure at Elektra and then Warner Bros., and having two seemingly homegrown stars in particular — George Strait and Reba McEntire — vie heavily for #1 positions in the album and singles department for MCA (the two were the label’s biggest and most consistently successful country acts since Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty). Other country names on MCA from the period included Nanci Griffith, Steve Earle, Glen Campbell, Steve Wariner, John Schneider, Loretta Lynn (who, after a landmark 25-year association with U.S. Decca — and then MCA — ended her time at the label with Who Was That Stranger on MCA-42174 in 1988), and Ray Stevens, whose career had begun to wane by that time.
Oh, yes, and throughout the late 1980s, in an era of artists who became huge pop sensations among teens, MCA had such a sensation in the form of someone who herself was a teen at the start of her recording career: Tiffany. At the age of 16, in 1987, she debuted with a self-titled album [MCA-5793] that topped the Hot 200 and spawned one #1 hit with “I Think We’re Alone Now”, a rendition of the Tommy James tune, and another #1 hit in a song called “Could’ve Been”. This was followed the next year with an album called Hold an Old Friend’s Hand [MCA-6267], which, while not the mega-hit her previous album was, still had a top-10 single to its credit in “All This Time”. She later became embroiled in a major dispute between herself and manager George Tobin over control of her career and family finances (she was able to escape him eventually in favor of New Kids on the Block’s management team of Dick Scott and Kim Glover). And in 1990, MCA’s film division, Universal, gave her the part of Jane Jetson in Jetsons: The Movie — in place of Janet Waldo, who had already recorded all of her lines as Jane for the film — against the wishes of voice director Andrea Romano, who sought to have her name removed from the credits because of the decision. Although MCA and Universal hoped the presence of Tiffany’s name would give the film box-office appeal, it failed to do so, netting the film a fairly low $20 million take-in while failing to do significant wonders for Tiffany’s career, which waned shortly thereafter. Reflecting on the failure of this film, even with such a notable recording star in the cast, longtime Hanna-Barbera animation director Iwao Takamoto remarked, in a 2005 book, that “the punch line, of course, is that fifteen years after the fact. Janet Waldo [was] still working while for most people, saying the name Tiffany automatically brings to mind a lamp.”
In 1989, a new holding company for its music releases was created by MCA in the form of the MCA Music Entertainment Group. with former United Artists Records president Al Teller serving as the group’s first chairman. In September 1989, Irving Azoff left the label to form his own record company, Giant, under distribution from Warner Bros. Teller succeeded Azoff as president until August 1990, when Richard Palmese was promoted to that role; prior to that, he had served as MCA’s Executive Vice President of Marketing and Promotion.
This, of course, brings us to MCA’s final numbering sequence, the 10000 series, which MCA originally began in 1973 as a vehicle for multi-album sets, seeming, however, to pause on that between 10007 and 10009 before picking up steam with a reissue of a Man of La Mancha cast recording at MCA2–10010. The biggest hit in that series in its original purpose was Elton John’s global smash Goodbye Yellow Brick Road at MCA2–10003. After a Lynyrd Skynyrd album at 10014, things for that numbering system grinded themselves to a skidding halt.
That is, until 1990, when MCA was faced with the unusual dilemma of having two main numbering systems for albums and figuring out which one would come after MCAD-42351 and MCAD-6467 after the products presented in each numbering sequence began to be nearly identical to each other. Aside from that, MCA had a whole roster of different numbering systems, most of which were for double-album sets or for reissues or both. This therefore brought difficulty for anyone trying to assemble a definitive list of MCA releases from beforehand.
The solution was made by taking an album from an artist who was part of its Master Series (bassist Edgar Meyer) and assigning it the number MCAD-10015, then by assigning the next number, MCAD-10016, to a Reba McEntire album and then by using the rest of the series for a mixture of new album releases, double-album sets, reissues and compilations all in the same series for the first time in MCA history.
Subsequently, the 10000 series became the definitive catalogue sequence for MCA, and the series would continue until MCA went out of business. Prior to its 1999 merger with PolyGram (to form the Universal Music Group), MCA used various prefixes for this numbering system, including:
MCAD = MCA Records/MCA Master Series/MCA Classics/MCA Soundtracks/Broadway Gold.
MCAV = MCA Music Video, used for VHS tapes; laserdiscs of MCA Music Video titles were on the Image Entertainment label with an MS suffix.
AED = Art & Electronics, classical label from Russia that was distributed by MCA Classics from approximately late 1990 until mid-1992.
DRND = Decca Records Nashville. Outlet for neo-traditionalist country music, formed in 1994 when MCA still owned the U.S./Canada rights to the Decca trademark. Closed after MCA acquired British Decca as part of its purchase of PolyGram in 1999.
GASD = Gasoline Alley Records.
GASV = Gasoline Alley Video.
DBR = Way Cool Music. Only one MCA-distributed album was on this label, an album named Fuck the Scene by Mr. Mirainga, which had appropriately anti-establishment packaging.
FTD = (510) Records, label known for alternative pop music. Had U.S. rights to the British punk rock group China Drum.
CRGD = Cargo Records. Canadian label that was quite successful in launching that country’s alternative rock scene in the early 1990s, but had fallen on hard times by the time MCA began distributing it in 1997. MCA thus only issued one album on Cargo.
IPTD = Impact Records, production company formed by Carl Sturken and Evan Rogers, who formed Rythm Syndicate in 1991.
JRD = Jirah Records. The hip-hop group Day Ta Day had the only album on that label.
KRD = Krasnow Entertainment. Label founded after Bob Krasnow was unceremoniously fired from Elektra Records as part of a shakeup in management of the Warner Music Group, then owned by Time Warner. The label only existed from 1995 to 1996.
LATD = Universal Music Latino. Latin music arm of MCA.
LSJD = Silas Records, label best known for Aaron Hall and Chante Moore. The first three letters of the prefix were comprised of the initials of that label’s late founder, Louil Silas, Jr.
MRSV = Mechanic Music Video.
MRSD = Mechanic Records, heavy metal label.
RARD = Radioactive Records, alternative rock and EDM label.
REV = Rabbit Ears Video, offering VHS tapes in which celebrities who were popular at the time retell children’s stories.
RFGD = Refuge Records. Label is best known for pop group Mulberry Lane.
SAVD = Savage Records, label best known for issuing David Bowie’s Black the White Noise album . . . but not under MCA distribution.
SKD = Skunk Records, known for being the original home of punk rock/reggae hybrid Sublime. The only releases on the label that MCA distributed were reissues of some of the band’s past albums.
TRKD = The Track Factory.
TWD = Twisted America Records. House music label formed in 1996, and originally distributed by former MCA-distributed label IRS under the name Tribal America. Twisted America was one of the most successful MCA-distributed labels of the 1990s, continuing to put out discs under its umbrella until 2003, when MCA went defunct, which caused Twisted America to switch to EMI for distribution, and then to distribute records on its own for a while.
UPTD = Uptown Records, hip-hop and R&B label.
WMCD = Unknown, but the album that used this prefix, The Blessing’s Locusts & Wild Honey, exists as a promotional disc on MCA in Europe.
WSLD = Wasteland Records. The label only issued Dig’s EP Runt with this prefix.
Two further prefixes joined the series in 1999, if only for a brief while:
CHD = The legendary blues/soul/rock label Chess Records, which beforehand had a 9000 series, launched when MCA acquired that label in 1985.
HIPD = Hip-O Recordings, which had a 40000 numbering sequence beforehand. It was launched in 1996 as a rival reissue label of the by-that-time Warner-owned Rhino Records.
In 1991, MCA switched distribution of its labels in all countries outside of North America from WEA to BMG. Following the switch, the 10000 series became the first from MCA to have almost-total worldwide adoption after a period in which certain countries released MCA albums in numbering systems separate from those used in the U.S. (such as the 25X XXX-1/2/4 sequence used in mainland Europe during the WEA years). Japanese MCA releases, however, still used different numbering sequences even after the switch in distribution.
Most non-U.S. releases usually removed the third letter from the prefix for CDs and cassettes. Canadian releases (on CD) used a letter in between the third and last ones, which usually indicated pressing types. M indicated a disc made for the Quebec market, S indicated a new release, and B usually indicated a markdown. There were additional price codes listed on the back of CDs and cassettes.
MCA’s operations outside of the U.S. and Canada were in ten countries: Japan (as a joint venture with JVC named MCA Victor), Asia, Denmark, Norway, Austria, Belgium, Italy, Mexico, Sweden and the United Kingdom. BMG handled distribution in eight of those countries. At the time of MCA’s merger with PolyGram, the label had been the largest in the U.S. that was still largely licensed to another in most of the world.
In 1995, MCA recognized the advent of the CD-ROM by adding an E as the last letter in the prefix for titles that had features accessible on Windows and Macintosh computers, thus being known, under the RIAA’s terms, as an Enhanced CD. Also in 1995, it launched Universal Records (which, unlike the Jimmy Bowen-fronted label of 1988–89, was completely tied to the film studio of that name); that used a 53000 numbering sequence. Uptown’s releases became part of that sequence the following year.
In 1996, MCA spun off its country music assets into a new subsidiary named MCA Nashville Records, which had its own 70000 numbering sequence.
MCA titles in the 10000 series ran in a 0–0081–1XXXX-X-X barcode numbering sequence, except for the first two titles in that system as the main series, which used the same 0–7673–1XXXX-X-X sequence as the 5100, 6400 and 42000 series. MCA owned the Geffen record combine from 1990 onward and was the distributor of Varese Sarabande since 1988, but those labels had their own catalog and barcode numbering sequences.
In 1999, following PolyGram’s merger with MCA to form the Universal Music Group, the label voluntarily converted its own numbering sequence so that it became more in line with PolyGram’s UPC-derived catalog numbers. Thus, the 10000 series became the 088–11X–XXX–X series (11X–XXX–X internationally), which it remained until Universal Music folded the label into Geffen in 2003. By that time, numbers in the UPC code sequence for MCA got into the 088–113–000s.
The final known non-country MCA release was Cuatro Caminos (088 113 249–2/B0000446–2), by the Mexican alternative rock band Cafe Tacuba, while the last to use an MCA UPC code overall was a 2003 Muddy Waters compilation titled Martin Scorsese Presents the Blues, released on Hip-O B0000482–02 as the soundtrack of the PBS special of that name. The UPC code read as 0–08811–32542–8.
The 10000 series as the main sequence had had a strong beginning in only the first year of it being used that way. Pebbles released Always on MCAD-10025, and it spawned such hits as “Giving You the Benefit” and a duet with Babyface titled “Love Makes Things Happen”. The group Guy hit #16 with their album The Future (MCAD-10115), but the singles proved far more successful on the R&B chart than on the pop one. Ralph Tresvant spun off his career from New Edition during 1990 and his debut album (MCAD-10116) featured “Sensitivity”, the biggest single he would have outside of the group, topping the R&B charts and hitting #4 on the pop charts. Children’s entertainer Raffi, after many years at A&M, came to MCA in 1990 and the company started out his contract at the label by reissuing his famous albums. And Elton John released a compilation called To Be Continued . . . [MCAD4–10110], a compilation of all the material he made up until the late 1980s, which went double platinum in 2016.
On the country front, Conway Twitty released his final top-10 hits during 1990 (“Crazy in Love”, “I Couldn’t See You Leavin’”), Mark Chesnutt, on MCAD-10032, opened his chart career with six big hits from the same album, and Steve Wariner put out a Christmas record. Reissues on the 10000 series in 1990 were of the U.S. Decca cast recordings of the musicals Oklahoma!, Annie Get Your Gun, Carousel, The King and I and Wonderful Town making their CD debuts and compilations on Rick Nelson’s time at U.S. Decca/MCA, Louis Armstrong, the Andrews Sisters, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, and (posthumously) Sammy Davis, Jr., who died on the same day (May 16) as Jim Henson that year.
MCA also rode in on the cartoon-characters-as-recording-artists phase beaconed by the success of The Simpsons Sing the Blues on Geffen, putting out a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles record at MCAC-10080; unusually for 1990, there was no (official) CD counterpart to that album and the cassette version did not have a visible stock number on the packaging. Soundtracks released in 1990 in the 10000 series included those of Edward Scissorhands, The Russia House, State of Grace, Darkman and the television sitcom Murphy Brown. In 1990, MCA was acquired by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd. of Japan, makers of the Panasonic brand of electronics.
1991 was an even better year for MCA than 1990 was. And by quite a margin, too: Sheena Easton arrived and had a top-20 single entry with “What Comes Naturally”, Jodeci had a firm grip on the top slot of the R&B charts with “Forever My Love” (#25 pop single, #18 pop album), and MCA’s release of the soundtrack for the 20th Century Fox film The Commitments on MCAD-10286, adapted from a 1987 novel about Dubliners who form a soul music group that becomes a hit, proved to spawn some hits of its own: the album was on the Billboard Hot 200 for 76 weeks, peaking at #8. The album did better than the film initially did (it bombed despite critical acclaim but eventually rose to cult status). Gladys Knight (minus the Pips) gave MCA another firm #1 R&B album chart-clinger in the album Good Woman [MCAD-10329], but the album was only able to make it to #45 on the pop side. Meanwhile, Bell Biv Devoe hit #18 on the pop and R&B end with WBBD — Bootcity [MCAD-10345], and Patti LaBelle’s Burnin’ [MCAD-10439] spawned five top-5 R&B hits while boasting contributions from the likes of Michael Bolton and Gladys Knight. The year even worked wonders for MCA as far as rock, with Tom Petty scoring a #1 Album Rock and #28 pop hit with “Learning to Fly” off his album Into the Great Wide Open [MCAD-10317].
On the country end of things in 1991, Reba McEntire had another big album out [For My Broken Heart, MCAD-10400], George Jones, a legend of the genre, made his MCA debut with And Along Came Jones on MCAD-10398, Patty Loveless’ Up Against My Heart [MCAD-10336] placed three singles in the top 40 country charts, Trisha Yearwood put out her first album, Vince Gill’s Pocket Full of Gold [MCAD-10140] was an album popular enough to even enter the top-40 on the pop charts even if none of the singles it spawned could, a couple of compilations were done on Brenda Lee and Patsy Cline, and several more were done on the likes of Kitty Wells, Bill Monroe, Loretta Lynn, Red Foley, Ernest Tubb, Jimmie Davis, the Carter Family and the Sons of the Pioneers, all as part of the Country Music Hall of Fame Series.
Other soundtracks released in 1991 included those of Thelma & Louise, a remastering of Alex North’s score for Spartacus, remastered CD versions of the soundtracks for the first two Godfather installments, Point Break, the U.S. Decca Broadway cast recordings of Guys & Dolls, Lost in the Stars and Mr. Wonderful, Switch (which had a separate German version released on MCA in the same year), If Looks Could Kill, Strictly Business, Cape Fear, Fried Green Tomatoes, Black Robe, An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, and the year’s Oscar-winning Best Picture, The Silence of the Lambs.
Oh yes, and up in Canada, on MCAD-10253, a young girl by the name of Alanis put out her first album and became a teenage sensation that swept the nation, with popularity stretching from the Maritimes to Montreal to Toronto to Vancouver to Calgary to Edmonton to Regina to Winnipeg and so on and so forth. At first, this was a delight shared with no one else. Then in 1995, under her full name of Alanis Morissette, she recorded the album Jagged Little Pill on Maverick 9 45901–2/4, and became a completely different kind of sensation: that of one of the world’s most well-known and enduring symbols of the era of grunge rock.
And who could ever forget the Nintendo record White Knuckle Scorin’ on MCAD-10440? This was a record that featured all the various Super Mario Bros. characters learning to read, and only one track dealing with the subject (Jellyfish’s “Ignorance is Bliss”). The results have been debated among video game enthusiasts, but the album did mark the album debut of Roy Orbison’s original 1987 recording of “I Drove All Night”, a pounding, driving tune of romantic obsession that had been a hit for Cyndi Lauper in 1989, and would soon appear on his posthumously released album King of Hearts on the Virgin label.
1992 was quite possibly one of MCA’s biggest years of the 1990s. It scored with Bobby Brown, who had a big album on MCAD-10417 that spawned two Gold singles, Elton John, whose record The One [MCAD-10614] brought him back to life on the American pop scene and also came on the footsteps of him having reissued much of his 1980s albums on MCA for the first time [since the rights to his recordings by this time usually reverted to him in some form], Patty Smyth, a former member of the rock band Scandal who turned on the AC [i.e. adult contemporary] with her Don Henley duet “Sometimes Love Just Ain’t Enough”, which hit #2 on the pop charts and made her self-titled album [MCAD-10633] propel its way up to #47 on the Hot 200, Wreckx-N-Effect had the summertime hit of 1992 with “Rump Shaker”, a massive pop-rap-R&B-dance sensation that emanated from his album Hard or Smooth [MCAD-10792]. In Canada, Alanis Morrissette released a record called Now is the Time [MCAD-10731], which was her second and last record for MCA and the last album she released before becoming the grunge rock icon for which she, even in Canada, remains better known today.
On the country end of things, Wynonna Judd’s first album [MCAD-10529] topped the country chart and made an unexpected appearance in the top-10 on the pop album chart [peaking at #4], although none of its four big country chart singles made it any higher than #83 on the Hot 100. Also, Marty Stuart had a big album and single hit on the country front with This One’s Gonna Hurt You on MCAD-10596, and compilations were done on Tanya Tucker’s tenure at the label, and on the Oak Ridge Boys, as well as (for the Country Music Hall of Fame series), Hank Thompson, Uncle Dave Macon, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, Roy Rogers, and Grandpa Jones.
There were, in 1992, reissue compilations on such artists as Bob Hope, Bobby Bland and other various artists on the Duke and Peacock labels, Bernadette Peters, Judy Garland, Matthews’ Southern Comfort and Al Jolson, though nothing was to top the multi-platinum beast that was Boats, Beaches, Bars & Ballads by Jimmy Buffett on MCAD4–10613. Also reissued were the U.S. Decca cast albums of Porgy & Bess, Call Me Madam, Bloomer Girl, and Mack & Mabel and the soundtrack of the 1967 Julie Andrews vehicle Thoroughly Modern Millie on MCAD-10662. Other MCA soundtracks in 1992 included those of Ferngully: The Last Rainforest, George Strait’s film debut in Pure Country, the television series Northern Exposure, The Babe, Juice, Quentin Tarantino’s first groundbreaker Reservoir Dogs and Beethoven.
The surprise MCA album of 1992 was the comeback of the best-known satire heavy metal music would ever greet: Spinal Tap put out a record called Break Like the Wind [MCAD-10514], which was issued amidst the cult superstardom achieved by Rob Reiner’s widely acclaimed 1984 mockumentary This is Spinal Tap. The album gave them a #35 hit in the UK with “Bitch School” and also contained one of the least likely of all heavy metal cuts: a duet with pop superstar Cher on the song “Just Begin Again”. For her, it would be up there with doing “I Got You Babe” with Beavis & Butthead a couple of years later. And in true Spinal Tap fashion, some copies of the album appeared in an Extra-Long Box [MCAD-666], which was 18 inches tall and satirized the practice of packaging CDs in long boxes for those retailers still clinging on to whatever was left of vinyl in the era after CDs started to dominate the marketplace (a practice that ended in April of the next year due to complaints raised by environmentalists and artists over the heavy amount of cardboard that went into making those boxes).
An even bigger surprise for MCA came in 1993 when a man named Meat Loaf, no newcomer to the music industry by any means, finally managed to find a more than merely successful follow-up to the multi-platinum 1977 blockbuster Bat Out of Hell, after a period in which he had far more plentiful success in Europe. That follow-up came in the form of a sequel to Jim Steinman’s magnum opus titled Bat Out of Hell II: Back Into Hell [MCAD-10699], to which MCA held the North American distribution rights (outside of the U.S., the album, and Meat Loaf’s follow-up to it, were on Virgin). Upon its release on September 14, 1993, it topped the British, American and Canadian charts and proceeded to spin off quite possibly his most famous record to date: “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)” hung around the charts for a very long time that fall and early winter, topping them in eighteen nations. That was soon to be followed by two further major hits: “Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through” (#13 pop, #25 rock) and, on not as strong-selling a scale, “Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Appear Closer Than They Are” (#38 pop). There was no doubt that Meat Loaf had made the big time again that year.
Even so, his was not all the success MCA enjoyed in 1993. Tom Petty’s Greatest Hits album on MCAD-10813 featured the #1 hit “Mary Jane’s Last Dance”, Bell Biv Devoe’s Bootie Mack on MCAD-10853 spawned huge R&B hits, Elton John’s Duets album [MCAD-10926] proved an instant mega-hit on the album charts, Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston scored a hit with the song “Something in Common” from the album Remixes in the Key of B [MCAD-10974], and MCA acquired the North American rights to the entire back catalog of the late Jimi Hendrix, who had died in 1970 from a drug overdose. Under MCA’s stewardship, the remastering work of the Hendrix estate resulted in albums that sold a total of three million copies in 1993.
Country hits in 1993 for MCA came in the form of artists such as Mark Chesnutt coming back again with the album hit Almost Goodbye [MCAD-10851], George Jones returning with High-Tech Redneck [MCAD-10910], Conway Twitty releasing his Final Touches on MCAD-10882 (he died two months prior to its release), and Vince Gill releasing a Christmas album on MCAD-10877.
MCA in 1993 issued CD compilations on Buddy Holly, Three Dog Night and Bing Crosby along with the CD debuts of the records of Tommy Roe, Pat Boone, the Four Aces, the pre-Dunhill years of Jimmy Buffett, and the Brady Bunch, and compilations on the U.S. Decca records of compilations by veteran Broadway composers Rodgers & Hammerstein and George & Ira Gershwin. Also being issued on CD for the first time in 1993 was Richard Harris’ 1968 album A Tramp Shining [MCAD-10780], the record that contained his classic slice of mozzarella, “MacArthur Park”.
Among the soundtracks released in 1993 were of Steven Spielberg’s mega-hit Jurassic Park, Tom and Jerry: The Movie, 8 Seconds, Indecent Proposal, CB4 and Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story.
1994 was marked by a surprisingly close proximity to the #1 slot on the pop album chart by country artist Reba McEntire, in the form of Read My Mind [MCAD-10994], which hit #2, the equally close country-pop placements in the top 10 for fellow country singer Vince Gill in the form of When Love Finds You [MCAD-11047], Big Daddy Kane having a #31 rap hit “In the PJ’s”, Patti LaBelle topping the dance charts with “The Right Kinda Love”, the rock band Boston hitting the top 10 with their comeback album Walk On [MCAD-11099], the #5 pop-R&B arrival of a group named Immature and their hit “Never Lie”, Jimmy Buffett scoring a top-10 Hot 100 album [Fruitcakes, MCAD-11043] for the first time in his long career, the Mavericks finally striking country gold with the double-platinum smash What a Crying Shame [MCAD-10961], and disc sets on Steely Dan, Bill Monroe, Judy Garland, the definitive hit country records of U.S. Decca, Howlin’ Wolf, Conway Twitty, the Chuck Wagon Gang, Loretta Lynn, and U.S. Decca’s rock hits, plus . . . 30 Years of Maximum R&B as recorded by the Who on MCAD4–11020, and the CD debuts of Lloyd Price’s tenure at ABC-Paramount, Brian Hyland’s at Kapp and Uni, and Peggy Lee’s at U.S. Decca, plus 24-bit remasters of Louis Armstrong’s 1968 album What a Wonderful World [MCAD-11168], and Joe Walsh’s 1973 album The Smoker You Drink, The Player You Get [MCAD-11170] as part of the Ultimate Masterdisk series, which used gold discs.
The big soundtracks MCA released in 1994 were that of The Flintstones on MCAD-11045, a film which was a box office hit but was trashed to hell and back by the critics for, among other things, its incorporation of a 1980s-style corporate takeover plot in a 1990s family comedy, and Pulp Fiction on MCAD-11103, a Quentin Tarantino film that is one of only a handful of motion pictures which can truly claim to have revolutionized Hollywood.
1995 in MCA’s history was marked by a number of executive-level layoffs that occurred during the month of November. Al Teller forcibly resigned as chairman and CEO during the year, to be succeeded by Doug Morris, a refuge from the Atlantic portion of the Warner Music Group, which had been encountering its own executive shakeups in the mid-1990s. Richard Palmese ended his tenure as president of the label in 1995, and returned to Arista. Palmese was succeeded by another refuge: Jay Boberg, who left a more severely crumbling former MCA-distributed label named IRS Records, which went out of business the next year.
The layoffs were the most noteworthy events for MCA in 1995, which otherwise had a minimal amount of chart action, but did release some records of interest as well as a novelty.
• Sheena Easton cut an album of love songs (My Cherie, MCAD-11203), but it never went anywhere.
• The Dangerous Minds soundtrack on MCAD-11228, however, did go somewhere, as it became the highest-selling soundtrack of the year, propelled in part by the international #1 hit “Gangsta’s Paradise”, recorded by Coolio, which brought gangster rap to the mainstream worldwide.
• There was also a cast recording for a way-off-Broadway (in this case, Nashville) production named Always . . . Patsy Cline [MCAD-11205], which was recorded at the Ryman Auditorium before a live audience.
• Joe Walsh’s MCA-owned recordings got compiled for the first time on MCAD2–11233, as did the Mills Brothers’ era at the Dot label as part of a double-disc set on MCAD2–11279, Jack Jones’ Kapp recordings [MCAD-11301], which never appeared on CD before, and Sonny & Cher’s Kapp recordings [MCAD2–11300], some of which never appeared on CD before.
• 24-bit remasters that were part of the “Ultimate Masterdisk” series in 1995 were comprised of Buddy Holly’s hits, the 1969 B.B. King album Completely Well [MCAD-11207], the soundtracks of Out of Africa [MCAD-11311] and Schindler’s List [MCAD-11313], Poco’s album Legend [MCAD-11206], and the Who’s Who’s Next [MCAD-11312]. Even a new release in 1995, the soundtrack of Apollo 13 on MCAD-11243, got the 24-bit treatment at MCAD-11316.
• MCA spun off its soundtrack releases into a separate division named MCA Soundtracks.
• MCA, yes, did a 3-CD compilation of songs that were heard on the long-running television series Soul Train at MCAD3–11329.
• Brian Wilson released an album on MCAD-11270 tied to his HBO documentary I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times.
• Meat Loaf came back again with Welcome to the Neighborhood [MCAD-11341] on November 14, to the tune of a #17 chart peak on the Billboard Hot 200, and another top-20 single from him in the form of “I’d Lie for You (And That’s the Truth)”, although the follow-up to that, a beautiful tune named “Not a Dry Eye in the House”, only made it to #82 in the U.S.
• Jimmy Buffett scored his second top-10 Billboard Hot 200 entry in a row [Barometer Soup on MCAD-11247], George Jones and Tammy Wynette reunited for one last album [MCAD-11248], and Al Green attempted a comeback at MCAD-11350.
• The MCA Novelty of 1995 was something called Saturday Morning (Cartoons’ Greatest Hits) on MCAD-11348, in which the stars of Generation X interpreted songs from the cartoons that the generation could remember eating a bowl of cereal and drinking orange juice to.
Another sell-off for the label came in April of 1995, when the Seagram Company, the world’s largest bottler of alcoholic beverages, bought out a controlling 80% stake in MCA from Matsushita; Matsushita had not guided the MCA combine as smoothly as Sony had its music and film combine, and its stewardship of MCA and Universal was marked by a gigantic cultural clash at any point in which Steven Spielberg wasn’t making anything at Universal. In an attempt to finance its acquisition of MCA, Seagram sold off its stake in the chemical company DuPont de Nemours, Inc.
1996 saw MCA spinning off its Nashville division entirely (one of its last releases as part of the 11000 series was Reba McEntire’s What if It’s You on MCAD-11500, which was a big country hit for her, predictably) and also of it responding to the success of the influential CD reissue label Rhino Records by launching a reissue label of its own named Hip-O Recordings, which mainly served to reissue MCA catalog items, but also released an album of heavy metal covers from Pat Boone titled In a Metal Mood: No More Mr. Nice Guy [HIPD-40025].
1996 otherwise was another year of more interesting releases than chart action for MCA, since it saw CD compilations on the Grass Roots, the discs that the Weavers cut for U.S. Decca before they were blacklisted, Burl Ives’ U.S. Decca hits (done a year after his death), Steely Dan (again!), B.B. King’s roster of live performances, a series of blues hits MCA owned at the time, Judy Garland’s participations in U.S. Decca’s Original Cast recordings, the songs of Broadway as seen through the lens of U.S. Decca, Kapp, MCA, and others, Bing Crosby’s Irish-themed tunes (for St. Patrick’s Day), One Way with Alicia Myers and Al Hudson, Bobby Womack’s MCA tenure, Stephanie Mills’ MCA hits, Guy Lombardo’s U.S. Decca work, Bing Crosby’s complete recordings with the Andrews Sisters, and Bobby Bland’s third volume of Duke recordings. Making their MCA CD debuts in 1996 were the three albums [MCAD-11456, MCAD-11457, MCAD-11458] that the Brady Bunch cut together for the Paramount label during the third, fourth and fifth seasons of the series and the albums that the Judds cut together back in the 1980s.
On the charts, New Edition had a huge comeback album in Home Again [MCAD-11480], which went double platinum and spawned such hits as “Hit Me Off”, “I’m Still in Love With You”, and “You Don’t Have to Worry”. Rose Royce’s famed 1976 soundtrack for Car Wash returned to CD in a new 24-bit remaster for its twentieth anniversary on MCAD-11502, Jimmy Buffett did a Christmas album [MCAD-11489], and Vince Gill and George Strait had as-ever chart performances for their 1996 efforts.
On December 9, 1996, Seagram renamed MCA, Inc. to Universal Studios, Inc. and subsequently renamed the MCA Music Entertainment Group to the Universal Music Group, retaining Morris as chairman, Boberg as president, and MCA as a subsidiary of UMG.
1997 was the first truly great year MCA had in a while in terms of pop chart action. A big kickoff to this came in the form of MCA having changed their logo again, this time to a grunge-looking one that also spelled out its acronym (as very few young people knew that MCA stood for the Music Corporation of America). Their distribution of a Gasoline Alley act named Sublime and their self-titled album on GASD-11413 also worked wonders, as it landed at #13 on the Hot 100 and hung around the chart for 179 weeks, simultaneous to which the band’s back-catalog product also appeared on CD and did similarly good business. Jay Boberg also brought Mary J. Blige from Uptown to the MCA label proper, with spectacular results: her new album Share My World [MCAD-11606, later edited for release as MCAD-11619] topped the pop, R&B and hip-hop album surveys and also had pop singles chart entries in the songs “I Can Love You” and “Everything”, which was a big hit in the U.K. Boberg also scored the rights to the Twisted America label, which became by far the most successful MCA-distributed label of the time. It also did well with the soundtracks of Liar Liar [MCAD-11618], The Lost World: Jurassic Park [MCAD-11628], and the comedy Half-Baked [MCAD-11723]. It would also do compilations on Les Paul, Leroy Anderson, Peggy Lee, Joe Walsh, and, perhaps most successfully, more of the back catalog of Jimi Hendrix. Then there was K-Ci & Jojo, who had a triple-platinum smash in the album Love Always [MCAD-11613].
As if that wasn’t enough, MCA became the beneficiary of its first unexpected hit in three years: a satire on artificial femininity titled “Barbie Girl”, recorded by the Danish group Aqua, and derived from their album Aquarium [MCAD-11705]. One of the summertime anthems of 1997, it hit #7 on the Hot 100 and was a #1 hit in many European countries, especially England, where it was on the top of the Singles Chart for four weeks straight. The single had a disclaimer on the back that noted that it “is a social comment and was not created or approved by the makers of the doll”, but that was of no concern to the makers of the doll, Mattel, who were not amused by the record and sued MCA in September, alleging that the record violated and infringed copyright on the Barbie trademark and defamed the Barbie brand by recasting the doll as something of a sexual object. When Mattel likened the record company’s motives to those of a bank robber, the record company countersued, claiming that Mattel’s interpretation of the single differed from that of its composers and listeners. In 2002, a ruling from the Court of Appeals held that the song was, in fact, a parody of the Barbie brand, and, as such, was protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The judge in the case, Alex Kozinski, dismissed the case altogether, and concluded by saying that “the parties are advised to chill”. Aqua, meanwhile, had a small smattering of other hits in the years that followed, and another top-40 entry in the Hot 100 with “Lollipop (Candyman)” (#23), although nothing of quite the same magnitude worldwide again.
1998 was another fine year for MCA on the charts, Mary J. Blige had yet another hit that year with The Tour [MCAD-11848], there was a group called the New Radicals, who had a hit album in Maybe You’ve Been Brainwashed Too [MCAD-11858], a half-radio-friendly rocker, half-indictment of corporate America which spawned a U.S. top-40 hit in “You Get What You Give”, which was an even bigger hit internationally, and there was also a group called Semisonic that spawned big hits from their album Feeling Strangely Fine [MCAD-11733]. The year saw the CD remasters of the soundtracks of Animal House, The Sting, Xanadu, Two of a Kind, Jesus Christ Superstar, and American Graffiti, as well as the CD remasters of the rest of B.B. King’s albums, the Kingston Trio’s U.S. Decca recordings, Junior Parker’s Duke recordings, the Dramatics’ ABC recordings, the first two albums ever recorded by Steely Dan, the Mamas and the Papas’ first album, and even the body of work contributed to the world by Marlene Dietrich.
On May 23, 1998, Seagram made another huge announcement for the Universal Music Group: it had plans to acquire the massive entertainment conglomerate PolyGram from Philips. This huge deal meant that Universal could gain an enormous collection of sister labels (namely Polydor and Mercury), reunite the American Decca with its British counterpart after some six decades of separation, and release recordings on its own worldwide using the world’s various PolyGram distribution channels. The sale, which pretty much guaranteed that UMG was through with BMG as far as international distribution, was completed on December 10, 1998, and although dozens of layoffs between the many labels of the Universal Music Group followed, the MCA label itself was left untouched by these events.
1999 was one of MCA’s best years yet, with compilations done on just about everyone MCA owned the rights to, from artists it had been known to repackage in the past (such as Bing Crosby and Buddy Holly and Judy Garland) to acts like the Irish Rovers, whose master tapes had never even been touched by MCA, outside of its Special Products unit, since the CD era began! Hits for MCA on album in 1999 included Mary J. Blige’s album Mary [MCAD-11929], the Roots’ acclaimed disc Things Fell Apart [MCADE-11948] and subsequent live album The Roots Come Alive [088 112 059–2], Danish hip-hop star Rahzel’s Make the Music 2000 [MCADE-11938], and K-Ci & Jojo’s It’s Real [MCADE-11937], which spawned a top-10 pop-R&B crossover in “Tell Me It’s Real”.
By far the biggest surprise of all for MCA was the fact that an alternative rock group named Blink-182, after their first two albums failed to hit pay dirt on the charts, finally had a massive hit to call its own in the form of Enema of the State on MCADE-11950. Tom DeLonge of this band recalled that “the record guys [at MCA] sat us down and prepared us for three things. ‘First’, they said, ‘you’ll be more famous than you ever thought. Second, you’ll have more money than you ever thought. And third, you’re going to play more arenas than you ever thought.’ I laughed at them. I said, ‘That guy’s on crack!’” He might have seemed to be on that at the time, but he also proved to be onto something else, as the album hit #9 on the Hot 200 and #3 on the Top Internet Albums survey, and the band also had its first major pop hit from the same album, in the form of “All the Small Things”, which hit #6. What was once an underground punk band from San Diego had now become a big-time rock superstar group.
The new millenium for MCA kicked off with the release of a record called Guy III [088 112 054 1/2/4], which exploded into the Hot 100, peaking at #13, and also went to #6 on the R&B end, a surprising feat for a vocal group that hadn’t recorded in a decade. The new star coming to MCA in 2000 was a guy named Common making his first album for a major label: Like Water for Chocolate [088 111 970–2] proved to be one of the most auspicious chart debuts of a rap star ever, with top-twenty chart positions all around, and stealthy all-around acclaim from major critics. The band New Found Glory found itself in the hands of a #15 Modern Rock hit in “Hit or Miss” during 2000, Avant sold just over a million copies with his debut album MY THOUGHTS [088 120 069–2], the FM soundtrack got a CD remaster for the first time [088 112 313–2], as did Neil Diamond’s HOT AUGUST NIGHT [088 112 330–2], and Crosby, Stills & Nash’s ABC recordings [which came back to CD that year after years uf unavailability.].
The surprise hit MCA scored in 2000 was with an artist named Shaggy, who was lured away from Virgin, a label on which his biggest hit had been “Boombastic” in 1995. He hadn’t had a hit since then, but on August 8, 2000, he managed to prove everyone who believed he’d be a one-hit wonder wrong, as his Hot Shot [088 112 096–2] was a worldwide smash which topped the Hot 200 and spawned a #1 pop-rap chartbuster in “It Wasn’t Me”, and another massive seller in “Angel”, ultimately racking up a sextuple Platinum certificate from the RIAA.
2001 had another surprise in store, as MCA had the first punk rock album ever to debut at #1 on the Billboard Hot 200. It was Blink-182’s Take Off Your Pants and Jacket [088 112 627–2/4], which on CD had the unusual distinction of having individual catalog numbers for copies with red [088 112 629–2], yellow [088 112 628–2] and green [088 112 661–2] labels. The album sold 14 million copies worldwide, one million short of their previous album, and spawned big rock hits in “First Date” and “The Rock Show”.
Mary J. Blige also had hits in 2001. Very huge ones. Her album that year was preceded by an across-the-globe chartbuster named “Family Affair” (no relation to the Sly and the Family Stone hit), which topped just about every Billboard mainstream survey that existed for R&B then, on top of being a huge seller in twenty-three countries and also being a chart-topper in France. This, in turn, helped ascend her new album No More Drama [088 112 616–1/2/4] to double platinum status in the U.S.
Other MCA news — distributed and otherwise — for 2001 included Live (on the Radioactive label) having the unfortunate distinction of releasing a new album [V, 088 112 485–2] on the week after 9/11 (their album slightly suffered for that on the Hot 200, where it peaked at #24), Dusty Springfield’s Dunhill product being reissued on CD for the first time, and Bill Cosby’s MCA-owned product getting compiled as part of the 20th Century Masters series (and him gaining the distinction of having the only comedy album in that series as a result).
2002 was not a good year for MCA at all, however, as none of its big releases got into the millions in sales ranking and the gaps and holes in the numbering system became more prominent, which is almost always an ominous sign when you look at a record company’s discography. The biggest seller MCA had all year, New Found Glory’s album Sticks and Stones [088 112 916–2], only sold 863,000+ copies in the U.S. Their second-biggest seller of 2002, Avant’s Ecstasy [088 112 809–2], only sold an estimated 713,000 copies. MCA’s final new movie soundtrack albums came in 2002 in the form of those prepared for the comedy Showtime [088 112 868–2] and the romantic comedy Brown Sugar [088 113 028–2]. MCA’s final Judy Garland compilation ever also came in 2002, when it issued recordings of material taken from The Judy Garland Show. MCA acquired the American rights of an Icelandic band named Sigur Rós away from the PIAS America label, but the group’s first album for their new American home, ( ) [088 113 091–2], fell short of the top-50 on the Hot 200. Swedish band A*Teens only made it to #45 with their album Pop ’Til You Drop, which was not even in MCA’s usual numbering system [it was numbered 440 018 435–2 worldwide]. A group called Something Corporate recorded an album called Leaving Through the Window [088 112 887–2] that proved to be Something Dismal as far as sales were concerned; although it topped the Heatseekers charts, the Hot 200 survey had it dead at #101 and it sold only in upwards of 251,000 copies. The Roots’ Phrenology [088 112 996–2] was acclaimed by critics but could not achieve the same sales rate as Things Fall Apart did in 1999. And Common’s Electric Circus [088 113 114–2] tanked immediately after its December 10 release, only selling some 305,000 copies in the U.S.
MCA was hoping that Shaggy, on October 29, 2002, would be able to break the spell of underperformance it was under. Not even he could do that, however. His Lucky Day album [088 113 070–1/2] was not exactly the worldwide barnburner that the Hot Shot album was two years prior, and although its lead single, “Hey Sexy Lady”, hit the top 10 in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and Portugal, it could not even enter the Bubbling Under chart in the U.S.
The death knell for MCA would inevitably sound from there, and it did: on January 16, 2003, Jay Boberg announced he would be leaving MCA’s presidency. In a farewell statement, he wrote that he took a label that was “anemic, its artistic reputation in tatters” and left it “an artistic and musical gold mine”. With this, Universal Music Group, the parent company of MCA Records, was faced with considerable difficulty in trying to fill his seat, and did not even try: on May 20, 2003, it was announced that MCA would be shut down in the summer, its artists would be signed to Geffen or Interscope or be dropped, and the whole concern would be folded into Geffen (for mainstream non-country artists), Verve (for jazz titles), Deutsche Grammophon (for classical releases), and Decca Broadway (for musical recordings). On June 9, 2003, UMG laid off approximately 75% of the staff of MCA Records. MCA Records then closed its doors in July following the release of Twisted Method’s album Escape from Cape Coma [088 113 206–2/B0000227–02]. For all intents and purposes, the rainbow had gone away in a sad, decrepit fashion.
My contributions to the bulky MCA discography come almost exclusively in the form of a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet on single-album releases from the 2100 series up until the 10000 series, and the double-album sets. I began working on that sheet in 2020, and have mostly gleaned it from Discogs listings, though I occasionally used other sources for information I had discovered in subsequent years. I felt compelled by the incomplete information I found on MCA online, and by my particular desire to explore the 10000 consolidated series in detail, to embark on this endeavor, which has been ongoing for three years. I felt ready to publish my in-progress work, which I have carried over to Google Sheets. I did not feel up to covering most of the albums in the reissue series because MCA used too many numbering sequences for their reissues and the MCA main series discography already seemed confusing enough at times. I also have plans to cover releases on MCA Music Video, which was a video arm of MCA Records founded in 1988, but have not yet figured out how to cover that, especially since MCA’s Music Video items appeared in the regular record album number sequences from 1990 onward.
Already available on the Both Sides Now Publications Website are the following bits of MCA’s discography:
The 300 main series (1973–75)
The reissue series from 1 to 299 (1972–75)
The reissue series from 500 to 699 (1974–80)
The reissue series from 700 to 999 (1981–86)
The 1300 Jazz series (1980–83)
The 1400 classical, soundtrack, and reissue series (1980–87)
Albums on subsidiary label Infinity also have had their discography covered by Both Sides Now Publications, and can be viewed here:
Infinity Album Discography
To see my spreadsheet of titles in MCA’s primary numbering sequences from 1973 to 2003, and titles in MCA’s numbering sequences for double-albums, click here:
MCA Main Albums Series (Late 1973-September 2003)
