Dec 14

MCA Records

MCA RECORDS

 
MCA Records  was an American-based record company owned by MCA Inc., which later gave way to the larger MCA Music Entertainment Group (now Universal Music Group), of which MCA Records was still part.  MCA Records was absorbed by Geffen Records in 2003.  MCA’s country division, MCA Nashville Records, is a still active imprint of Universal Music Group Nashville.   (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
John Mellencamp is just John Mellencamp these days; but in the beginning, it wasn’t like that at all.  Early on, he was signed by David Bowie’s manager Tony Defries, who put out his first album in 1976.  Mellencamp was infuriated to find out that the album, Chestnut Street Incident had been released under the name Johnny Cougar (he was already 25 by then and seems a little old to be a “Johnny”).  To add insult to injury, his label MCA Records dropped him; and his second album, The Kid Inside stayed on a shelf for several years until he was able to break through.   
 
(July 2012)
 
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Born blind, Terri Gibbs began playing the piano when she was only three.  After hearing her sing, Nashville legend Chet Atkins asked her for a demo tape, and she came to Nashville and then Miami while still in her teens, where she played keyboards for a band called Sound Dimension.  Gibbs then played locally for several years as the Terri Gibbs Trio in and around her hometown of Augusta, GA. 

 

Her demo tape eventually made its way to a producer and songwriter named Ed Penney, who signed her to a recording contract with MCA Records. 

 

(July 2014)

 
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“Superstar”, with lead vocals by Murray Head, was released in late 1969 before the album Jesus Christ Superstar was even completed, much to the chagrin of MCA Records.  (Head later recorded the main single from another Tim Rice production, Chess, called “One Night in Bangkok”, which came out in 1975). 

 

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A recording of the full Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat musical was released on MCA Records in 1974, featuring Gary Bond, Peter Reeves, and Gordon Waller who had appeared in the 1971 production in Edinburgh.  The review of the album by Sarah Erlewine in Allmusic notes that “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat has the distinction of being the only musical that starred Michael Damian, Donny Osmond and Andy Gibb.”  (Osmond later appeared on a DVD of the musical). 

 

(October 2014)

 

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Meanwhile, Hillel Slovak and Jack Irons were still members of What Is This?; Slovak in particular was not initially ready to cast his lot with Red Hot Chili Peppers.  What Is This? was signed with MCA Records at about the same time that Red Hot Chili Peppers was jointly signed by EMI America Records and Enigma Records.  The debut EP by What Is This?, Squeezed was released in 1984, with Chris Hutchinson playing bass; after that, Hillel Slovak went back to Red Hot Chili Peppers and played on their next two albums.  

 

(April 2015/1)

 

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David White and Sal Rota both performed background vocals on Bernadette Peters’ debut album, Bernadette Peters (1980); the front cover was one of the final “Vargas girls” paintings by Alberto Vargas. In 1992, MCA Records released a CD under the name Bernadette combining 8 tracks from this first album plus 5 from her second album Now Playing (1981) that has a different Vargas painting on the cover; the cover on Bernadette is the same Vargas painting from Bernadette Peters.
 
(August 2015)
Last edited: April 7, 2021