Hi everyone,

I have a different kind of a question, perhaps directed at our German friends.

The studio in which Bert Kaempfert and James Last worked, in a northern suburb of Hamburg (Rahlstedt), was opened at the beginning of the 1960s. According to Marion Kaempfert, everyone referred to it as the "Polydor Studio" but it was in fact owned by Deutsche Grammofon Gesellschaft (DGG), the classical recording company based in Hamburg. They used it for studio recordings of classical repertoire.

My question: Was Polydor always a subsidiary company of DGG? If not, when did DGG and Polydor come together? (I gather that everything was eventually taken over by Universal (in the '80s?), but to me that is a less interesting story than what went on between the 1950s and the 1970s).

I would be grateful for any insights into what went on commercially between the two companies during Bert's lifetime.

Geändert von Alistair am 08.02.2008 um 20:18

Hello Alistair, please follow the link below. Very interesting. Polydor was a branch of DGG (owned by Siemens) merged with Philips into Polygram and so forth. Kind regards. Folke.


www.essex.ac.uk/…/WP03-12.pdf

In fact, Polydor always been a branch of DGG since his foundation in 1924. Polydor was the "popular music" label and Heliodor was the low cost classical label (re-issue of former high cost classical records). You can get all the informations on Wikipedia : Polydor records. The famous studio was used for popular and classical recordings.

Paul, the mention of Heliodor makes me think of that it would be nice if BK Music could re-issue the Heliodor recordings by Bert Kaempfert under the Bob Parker name. Kind regards. Nils Folke Persson.