Contents
1965 – BBC Radio Enterprises Formed
It was towards the end of 1965 that the BBC decided to form BBC Radio Enterprises to produce and market records or license product for release through commercial labels.
Music Week 1st November 1965
The beginning of the BBC selling records to the public for commercial gain was through licensing BBC material to external record labels. The tenth-anniversary celebration advertorial in Music Week quoted above may have been stretching a point slightly. The BBC Handbook of 1969 states that “Radio Enterprises set up in 1966 makes available to the general public gramophone records based on broadcast material.” 1965 or 1966? In any case, the handbooks are silent about the activities of Radio Enterprises until 1969 where it informs us that
During 1968 it issued a number of records on BBC Radio Enterprises labels and also arranged distribution of other BBC material by British and other leading commercial record companies including Argo, CBS, Decca, Fontana and HMV. Among the many titles issued in this way were `Under Milk Wood’ with Richard Burton, `Boulez Conducts Berg’, `The Tales of Beatrix Potter’, `Tony Hancock from BBC Shows’, `BBC Scrapbooks -1914, 1940 and 1945′ and `The Best of the Goon Shows’.
BBC Handbook 1969
There is an immediate discrepancy here as we’ll see.
To begin at the begining – Under Milk Wood – 1954
A Play For Voices
Under Milk Wood – A Play For Voices, starring Richard Burton is a landmark radio production and was quickly released as a record by the Argo label. Broadcast in January 1954 the Douglas Cleverdon produced radio drama of Dylan Thomas’s “Village of the mad” . The play was commissioned by the BBC and after many years of prevatication and redrafts and only delivered in a “disordered state”(D. Cleverdon) in October 1953, just a month before the writers untimely death. The BBC added a recording of the broadcast to Recorded Programmes Permanent library (24171-3), although this appears to be from the following year (it appears in the Supplemnet 1 catalogue which picks up from 1955).
The Argo label may have been set-up in 1951 to release “British Music played by British artists” but quickly divereged into world music and then focussed on spoken word recording. Argo release two Dylan Thomas LPs in 1954, no doubt due to the success of UMW and his tragic early passing. Homage To Dylan Thomas (RG 29) was recorded on the same day as the first part of UMW, 24th January, at a memorial programme staged at The Globe Theatre, London. UMW meanwhile was of course taken from the radio broadcast and labelled ‘Recorded with the cooperation of the British Broadcasting Corporation’. It was issued in the UK, Australia, South Africa and also the United States on the Westminster label.
So, long before BBC Radio Enterprises there was a licensing arrangement being made. The UMW sleeve contains clarifying warning that the record is not for public broadcast a Argo do not hold the rights to that.
Drumbeats – 1959
An LP on Parlophone and a single on Fontana were released in 1959 which were both taken from the BBC Television programme Drumbeat “Yes! Yes! Yest It’s DRUMBEAT on disc.”
Hancock’s Half Our Business
- Pieces of Hancock – PYE – 1960
- Little Pieces Of Hancock – PYE – 1960 (single)
- This Is Hancock – PYE – 1960
- The Publicity Photograph – PYE – 1960
- The Blood Donor/ The Radio Ham – PYE – 1961
- Highlights From The Blood Donor – PYE 1961 (single)
- Wing Commander Hancock – Test Pilot – PYE – 1963 (single)
- Face To Face with John Freeman – Picadilly – 1963
- It’s Hancock – Decca – 1965 (not BBC?)
Scrapbooks – 1963-65
Fontana Records rummaged in the BBC archives for war-year anthologies 1940 ,1914 and 1945 in the years 1963, 64, 65. These were all compiled by Leslie Bailey with narration by Freddie Grisewood.
Enterprising
Boulez Conducts Berg – 1967
CBS records licensed this recording of the BBC’s chamber and symphony orchestras.
Also released in the USA, Japan, Italy and France.
The Tales of Beatrix Potter – 1967
Also on CBS records, four 7″ EPS of stories from Beatrix Potter read by David Davis
‘Recorded by arrangement with BBC Radio Enterprises”Recorded by arrangement with BBC Radio Enterprises’