Vogue

Vogue and Contemporary-Vogue, and Swing

1. Swing

The French Jazz label Swing was founded in 1937 by music writer and concert promoter Charles Delauney, then editor of the Hot Club de France,  and Hughes Panassie, to release American and French swing jazz artists like Sidney Bechet, Django Reinhart and Stephane Grapelli. Remarkably, they apparently  continued to issue records during the Nazi occupation, with any American  references removed. No Jazz in Jackboots collaboration for them,  according to Wikipedia.fr Delauney joined the French Resistance. (Wiki claims, unverifiable). Swing recordings were made through the French branch of EMI (Pathe Marconi) or licensed from American labels.

Photo courtesy of Johnny

The Hot Club De France organisation officially considered only jazz  of the ’20s, 30’s and ’40s authentic, ending at 1950. Thus the  rise of be-bop was vigorously rejected by Panassie as “inauthentic jazz”,  and the controversy split The Hot Club.   In 1951, Delauney parted company with Panassie, instead teaming up with Leon Cabat to create a new jazz label Disques Vogue, with a more modern-facing jazz agenda.

2. Disques Vogue

Its early catalogue of Disques Vogue includes some extraordinarily rare and expensive albums like the debut Barney Wilen album “Tilt”, and Roy Haynes. Good stuff.

Label: ( sample – late ’60s)

Starting out as a jazz label, in the later ’50s Disques Vogue branched into pop, and by the ’80s were releasing commercial mainstream artists like Francoise Hardy, ABBA and Johnny Haliday. C’est la vie.

 3. Vogue Records (UK)

Disques Vogue was also established in the UK  in 1951,  but was subsequently taken over by Decca around 1956, and active mainly 1962-1968 as Vogue Records, the rights to the trademark having reverted to the French company Disques Vogue.

British Vogue were mastered and pressed the UK at Decca’s New Malden plant. The run-out displays the usual Decca matrix machine-stamp, in this case “VMGT xxxxx 1 B” system for identifying the original matrix number xxxx, pressing history (1=first) and the engineer’s name code (B)

4. Vocalion (UK)

A sub-label of Vogue Records. The runout shows the same factory production stamp system as Vogue, indicating the same has the same mastering/pressing source ie the Decca plant at New Malden, South West London. It seems Decca’s answer to everything marketing and creative was “lets create another new label”

5. Contemporary Vogue (UK)

Decca’s vehicle to release US Contemporary catalogue in the UK was another new jazz label, Contemporary Vogue. The greenish-yellow UK label marks it out from the US bright yellow. UK Contemporary Vogue sold in good numbers and a large catalogue of 50’s and early 60’s West Coast jazz are available fairly cheaply here (£15 – £25 for general artists, £30-50 for the most collectible artists  like Howard MacGhee and early Art Pepper)

While the US Contemporary label was subject to widespread cloning in the 90’s, UK Contemporary Vogues are invariably geniune period first UK releases from the Fifties and Sixties, ofen seen with an inner or outer deep groove in the label area.

The Vogue label has since been acquired by Sony BMG Music Entertainment, who now own the rights to the label’s catalogue, but show no inclination to do anything with it. 

Postscript

Aaron’s extra label  – 10″

No indication of country of origin…