You know something`s up when Columbia Records is getting phone calls asking for an interview with Robert Johnson.
Robert Johnson happens to be one of Columbia`s hottest artists. His double-CD set has sold close to 400,000 copies, won a Grammy and been certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America.
He`s also been dead since 1938.
Still, Johnson is only the most striking success story in what has become the headiest corner of the popular music biz these days: reissues.
From 1920s stars Bessie Smith and Jimmie Rodgers through Nat King Cole, Elvis and the Beach Boys, up to the Flaming Groovies, James Brown and Lou Reed, record companies large and small have found it lucrative to resell the music of the past.
The appeal of reissues to record companies starts with the obvious:
Compared with new releases, they cost almost nothing to put out. The music is there already, and while the conversion to digital sound can take time, most costs remain modest.
So a giant like MCA can reissue virtually the entire Chess catalog, or Columbia/Sony can issue all or most of the recordings by Johnson, Bessie Smith or Louis Armstrong. RCA repackages Elvis Presley a dozen more ways, baited with newly discovered caches of alternate takes. Capitol finally even released the Beach Boys` long-awaited ”Pet Sounds.”
Where sales get too small for the majors, small labels move in. Both MCA and Capitol have issued Nat King Cole packages, but it falls to Mosaic Records, a small Stamford, Conn., label, to reissue the entire output of the King Cole Trio. That will fill 27 albums or 18 CDs. It`s due in September.
Rhino Records in Los Angeles licenses `50s-`70s rock `n` roll that major labels wouldn`t bother with, or is willing to sublet for theme packages. Shanachie Records issues old reggae and world beat music, some of which had been available only on hard-to-find imports. Shanachie also took over the Yazoo label, which can issue the complete Blind Willie McTell sessions where a Columbia compilation will include only two McTell cuts.
”We fill the gaps,” says Randall Grass of Shanachie. ”We don`t require very high sales, so if it`s music we think should be out there, we`ll put it out.”
Larry Cohn, who produces the Columbia Roots `n Blues series that has included Robert Johnson and Bessie Smith, notes that many small labels are
”bootleg” operations, since they don`t buy the rights to many of the obscure records they release.
By rarely taking any kind of legal action, however, the majors have tacitly conceded that there is a place for these small operations. Executives at some major companies will even say, privately, that small labels kept blues, country and folk markets alive over the last quarter-century while the majors were ignoring them.
The reason they pay more attention now is not surprising: They`ve discovered there`s money there. Some major labels reportedly make up to a quarter of their profits now on ”catalog” items.
The tidal wave of reissues began several years ago with surprisingly successful packages like the 1984 ”Elvis: A Golden Celebration” and the 1985 Bob Dylan ”Biograph” boxed sets. These proved that quality music, with attractive, intelligent packaging, could sell hundreds of thousands of copies. But what really sent the market into overdrive was the compact disc. With its greater convenience and (some say) better sound, the CD was an excuse for companies to resell middle-aged consumers all that music they loved on LP. Since that music had been selling at low levels and many of those consumers hadn`t been buying at all, this was a found market, a near-total bonus.
Its financial power became clear with Capitol`s much-hyped rerelease of the Beatles` album catalog. These sold so well that virtually all rock `n`
roll classics were soon issued on CD, in tandem with a growing number of repackaged boxed sets and best-of collections. Eric Clapton`s ”Crossroads”
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box sold enormously well, as did boxes like the ambitious ”Rolling Stones Singles Collection.”
”The advent of the CD was a major factor,” Cohn says. ”Every company started looking for a catalog to exploit. With something like Robert Johnson, I think we found three markets: Older collectors will generally buy anything by a favorite artist; people from the `60s who grew up listening to blues guitarists like Clapton; and younger collectors looking for new musical ideas. ”I`ve had friends of my kids play Led Zeppelin, then I play them a Memphis Minnie original. They`re amazed. They assumed Led Zeppelin wrote all this stuff. We`ve had a lot of heavy metal fans buy the Robert Johnson box.” Grass says reissues often do open new markets. ”Ethnic music, like Irish or reggae, often doesn`t sell just to that ethnic group. Other people are discovering it.”
In general, he says, the reissue market is good. Sales of Yazoo records, which collects acoustic blues from the `20s and `30s, ”have surpassed expectations,” he says-a conclusion echoed by Cohn for Columbia releases.
The Columbia Roots `n Blues series, which covers that same musical ground, has moved 25,000 to 50,000 units apiece, Cohn says-below Robert Johnson, but still well above past expectations.
This is especially profitable for the company, he notes, because ”many of these are non-royalty artists. They were paid a flat fee for their songs.” That was often $50 or $100, which looks rather slim today though it was standard practice then.
The big question for many fans now is whether the reissue boom will last. They wonder if all these new releases are regarded as tests, with future releases hinging on their success.
Grass says that`s not a real concern with a label like Shanachie-”We keep almost everything in catalog indefinitely”-and Cohn says Columbia would like to do the same where possible. ”The idea is that these are records to be discovered. If someone finds Volume 6 of a Billie Holiday series, we should have Volumes 1 to 5 still available in case that person comes back.”
Not everything can stay in catalog, however, and Andy McKaie, who heads MCA`s reissue program, says some potential releases have been jeopardized or doomed by slow sales of similar material. Rhythm and blues vocal groups have been the worst sellers in the Chess series, for instance, which means that if there are choices about `50s music in the future, MCA might choose to go with better-selling individual artists like Muddy Waters.
So even as some music was never transferred from 78 rpm discs to LPs, much music will also not make the transfer to CD. Some of it will eventually be lost, and while it`s easy to say some of it deserves to be, it`s not easy to decide which.
”It`s true that some will probably never be on CD,” Grass says. ”We just have to go on instinct and trust ourselves.”
”Ourselves,” incidentally, includes a surprisingly small number of people-the ones who handle the nuts and bolts of reissues for both majors and small labels. These people are generally fans and collectors themselves, and this tends to be reflected in the music they choose.
When they`re good, there`s a good reissue program. If not, there isn`t. RCA`s helter-skelter treatment of the Presley catalog for many years was a good example of the latter. Smaller labels like Mosaic, Rhino, Rounder, County, Relic, Stash or Rosetta tend to be run by semi-fanatics in the first place.
In any case, it`s enough of a base so reissues will continue to be big business even if some of the majors decide to give them a rest. And Robert Johnson can`t do interviews.