Kapp, Jack, 1901-1949

Jack Kapp, the founder and president of American Decca Records, made American Decca the second largest record company in the U.S. by 1938. Decca innovations during Kapp's years at the helm included the first mass marketed American "original cast recording" (for Oklahoma!) and the "album" package containing notes and promotional information. Decca artists included hugely popular performers such as Bing Crosby, the Boswell Sisters, the Andrews Sisters, the Ink Spots, Ted Lewis, and the Guy Lombardo Orchestra. Jack Kapp died in 1949.

Biographical Note

Born in Chicago in 1901, Jack Kapp began his phonograph industry career at the age of fourteen by working as a part-time shipping clerk for Columbia Records. Later he oversaw artists and repertoire for Brunswick, and in 1934, backed by the owner of British Decca, Ltd., he founded the American Decca Records Company. By substantially lowering the price of popular records on his Decca label and selecting artists and repertoire to maximize sales, Kapp made American Decca the second largest record company in the U.S. by 1938 and helped the industry pull out of a slump attributed to radio broadcasting and the Great Depression. Decca artists included immensely popular performers such as Bing Crosby, the Boswell Sisters, the Andrews Sisters, the Ink Spots, Ted Lewis, and the Guy Lombardo Orchestra. Decca innovations included the first mass marketed American "original cast recording" (for Oklahoma! ) and the "album" record package containing notes and promotional information.

During the 1940s, American recording companies, including Kapp's label, struggled against new challenges, such as the 1942-1944 recording ban of the American Federation of Musicians. The ban was rooted in the concern of professional musicians that they lost jobs due to sound films and did not benefit economically from the growth of the recording and broadcasting industries. In 1940, they elected as president of the American Federation of Musicians (AFM) a trumpeter named James Caesar Petrillo. His aggressive actions to counter the loss of musicians' jobs due to the prevalence of the jukebox and the recorded motion picture soundtrack made Petrillo one of the most famous and highly paid union leaders in American history and led to depictions of him in the press as a Mussolini-like character often called "Little Caesar."

In 1942, led by Petrillo, the AFM banned its members from performing for the record industry. Petrillo was undeterred by the efforts of such government agencies as the Office of War Information and the National War Labor Board to end the ban; he even refused President Franklin Roosevelt's request to order the musicians back to work. Jack Kapp's Decca Records, followed by most other American record and radio transcription companies, agreed to pay royalties to the AFM in 1943, but for Columbia and RCA Records, which refused to settle, the ban continued. In late 1944, those two companies also came to an agreement with the union and the ban ended completely; however, the 1946 passage of the Lea Act (often called the "Anti-Petrillo Act") and the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act severely weakened the terms of the agreement between the musicians union and the recording industry. A new recording ban was put into effect in early 1948, but toward the end of the year it was lifted. During the following decade, the industry grew both financially and technologically. Petrillo's retirement from the AFM in 1958 brought an end to the publicity the union had received during the 1940s.

Jack Kapp died in 1949. His brother Dave succeeded him at Decca.